Modern Vespa

I purchased a Go Pro Hero Wide helmet camera (standard definition model) and took it out for a test ride this morning. I mounted it on one of my helmets using one of the supplied mounts and it held steady at speeds up to 70 mph. I was riding my 1981 BMW R100. This is a pretty good little camera for the money: $139 including a 4 GB SD card and it will record 112 minutes of video with that SD card. Easy to use.
I uploaded the video to Youtube:

Very nice...not much traffic...great!

Saw the HiDef unit displayed at Best Buy. Per your post the standard definition works fine for me.

Applications are great for hands free video...hiking, climbing, etc.

I can already see kids (just kids ?) using this for skate boarding and air soft gun engagements.

Thanks for sharing!

I saw a display in Costco, $99. I might have to go take another look.

I heard that Costco had them but I went to two of them and they didn't have them. If you can get the helmet mounted "wide" model for $99, it would be a good deal. You would only need to add a SD card and rechargeable AAA batteries. The earlier models would only record for 56 minutes on a 2 GB card but they are upgradeable through a firmware update so they can record for 112 minutes on the 4 GB card. Mine came with the upgrade.

Costco had them on Thursday; maybe I can talk my brother in to going tomorrow.

I added another video that was also taken this morning. This road has a lot of twisties to dance with.

What a gorgeous ride - everything is so green. One thing I hate about California - it turns brown in the summer.

The GoPro is a great little camera. I have one but it has the standard (not the wide angle) lens. I wish I'd got the "wide" version. Nice videos you made.

-Craig

Its not brown, it golden!!

You can have both gold and green along the summit road in the Santa Cruz mountains with plenty of twisties and lots of short straight aways from S San Francisco all the way to Watsonville. Some other good riding on the Santa Cruz side of the mountains thru the redwoods.

Also, those golden hills come without mosquitos or humidity.
Best
Miguel

XLR8,
THe video's look fantastic. Thx for posting them. I'm sure they're much better on your computer than those that get relayed via Utube. I've always avoided vid cams but for $130, its hard to ignore.
Best
Miguel

Miguel, the video is sharper when played directly on my computer from the camera but even though I have a very fast processor in my computer (and also in my wife's computer), it will stutter every five seconds because the video cards can't keep up with the camera. We have a 65", flat screen tv and I discovered that I can plug the camera (with the supplied cord) into the tv and watch them.............they look really good on the tv. I've wanted a small camera like this for a while but have also avoided them but the price was too low to ignore. As Scooter Gal posted earlier, Costco has been selling them but they didn't have them at the Costco's in our area and I don't know if they are the "wide' models or if they are the helmet models with all of the extra mounts that come with this model. The price is hard to beat for the quality. We have a zillion roads that are great for motorcycling/scootering and I'm going to enjoy shooting some scenery.
Re. the green foliage vs the golden hills of CA: We lived in San Diego for 30 years and I remember the first time that I saw the brown hills vs the green ones in the south. I was born and lived in this area until I went into the military, got out four years later and came back here for several years before going to CA. Yes, it's more humid than CA but not nearly as much in the upper western part of SC since we're less than 15 miles from the mountains. I haven't been bitten by a mosquito since we moved here, five years ago. Now, if you live very close to a lake or river or go further south or east, the weather becomes more oppressive in the summer and the mosquitoes will feast on you.

I've talked my brother into going this morning so I can look at this camera again. The camera was in the sporting goods section, next to bicycle helmets. I didn't get a good look at them because I was with my mom, but they had four mounts, I think it had two AA batteries and if I'm not mistaken, it said "Wide", but I'll have to check it this morning to confirm. I looked on their Web page and it was not listed as an item.

This is the camera at Costco.

If you are getting stutter when you play it on your computer but not when you play it on your TV, then it's your computer, not the SD card causing the stutter. If you see the stutter on both the TV and the computer, go look for a faster SD card (they are not all the same speed). I bought my card seperately from the GoPro camera and I bought one that had the smallest write latency time I could find. I've never seen any stutter from my GoPro in the year I've had it.

-Craig

Brown = golden = dead grass

ScooterGal: That's the same camera that I have but it's packaged differently. It could be an earlier model that will need the firmware upgrade from the GoPro site so you can use a 4gb sd card and double your recording time but it's the "wide" model. There are instructions on the GoPro site that tell you to look inside the battery compartment and read the serial number; if the serial number is lower than a certain number, you need to do the upgrade. Also, if the batteries that are in the box are not rechargeable, you'll need some AAA size bateries and a charger for them. Costco usually sells a package deal with four AA and four AAA rechargeables plus a charger.

Caschnd1: Yep, it happens only on both of our computers but not on the television so I just upload to Youtube and although the quality is not as clear as on the computer the Youtube video is good enough. It looks really good on the tv.

I ended up not getting a camera. I'm kinda determined to make my Flip camera do what I want, which, if I can get rid of the vibration, I'll be happy.

Are you copying the file from the SD card to the computer to play it back or are you playing it back from the SD card? If you are playing it back from the SD card try copying it to the computer first and then playing it from the computers hard drive. The SD card should read plenty fast enough, but it's possible that your SD card reader is the bottle neck.

-Craig

I am playing it back directly from the camera. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow. Thanks for the tip.