The Ultimate Helmet-Cam (Maybe)

The Ultimate All-Weather Helmet-Cam came to my attention just a
couple of days ago. To fill in the blanks, I have been looking for
a small and inexpensive weather resistant helmet-mounted camera for
a while. Judging by a few of the e-mails I have received from
others, this is a common need in the video production industry.
Most cameras set up for this tend to be costly, bulky, and too
fragile for many applications.

I still do a lot of work in the safety and emergency response
training fields. A couple of days ago I was talking to a Senior
Captain with a fire department that I have done some contract work
for. I noticed that he had an odd-looking flashlight mounted under
the brim of his fire helmet. When I asked him about his fancy new
“flashlight,” he proudly showed me his helmet cam.

I was impressed. The camera was small, weighed less than half a
pound, cost less than $100.00, and recorded 640×480 video at 30 fps
onto an SD memory chip. A 2gig chip will give you around one hour
of recording time.

The design is far from perfect. The video resolution is limited,
vibration seems to create annoying waves in the video, the file
format is not supported by many computers, and the camera appears
to be susceptible to RF interference. Even so, for less than
$100.00 (on-line retailers) it could be a pretty useful addition
for sports video producers.

Here is a link to the Oregon Scientific ATC-2000 web site.

http://www2.oregonscientific.com/shop/browse.asp?cid=30&scid=127

You can find better prices from other sources, but the OS site will
give you some of the particulars of the camera.

Find out more and get a free white paper report on producing How-To and Special Interest Videos. Go to www.HowToDVDPro.com and hit “subscribe.”

~ by howtovideoproducer on October 21, 2007.