A while back I bought a Canon ZR950 camera off Woot. Seemed like a good deal, even though I know nothing when it comes to video cameras. And being a firm believer in "you get what you pay for", I knew I wasn't getting anything THAT great. But then after the camera arrived in the mail I thought to myself "ok, now what?"
One night of web browsing I came across the brilliant idea of mounting a camera on the handlebars of a bicycle. It seemed easy enough, and it would be pretty cool to ride around town giving this a try.
Now, remember, this is a cheap camera. Not exactly top of the line with state-of-the-art steady cam technology. So putting this camera on the handlebars of a bicycle, well, let's just say any twitch of the steering or the smallest bump in the road gives a fantastic BlairWitchProject shaky camera effect. That is, if the BlairWitchProject effect was actually fantastic.
The only other variable which could really foul this idea up is low light. But really, how often do i go bike riding at night anymore? Well...
The idea of filming the L.A.T.E. Ride from the handlebars of my bike may have seemed like a good idea in theory, it didn't really pan out all that great. Turns out bike riding and keeping a camera in focus at the same time is REALLY hard.
I gave it a try anyway. From the hours of about midnight to 6am I shot a little over an hour total of the ride (wasn't sure how long the battery would last, so i didn't take very long stretches of continous footage and wanted to make sure I had enough juice to shoot the sun rise). A lot of what I ended up with was really shaky, a lot of it was too dark and grainy, and turns out the angle of the camera on the handlebars is right at ass-level of the people in front of you, so in the more congested areas of the ride i didn't even bother.
The 25 mile ride itself took about 3 and a half hours as I didn't start until about 2am, made one rest stop for bananas, energy bars, and water, and caught the sun rise near North Avenue at about 5:30. Of that, a little over an hour of video was recorded, which my YouTube video distills down to about 10 minutes. YouTube wouldn't let me upload any more... I've got a 14 minute version that I'm playing with, adding a little extra soundtrack (maybe a little of Patsy Cline's Walking After Midnight, Airborne Toxic Event's Sometime Around Midnight perhaps) and playing around with the other toys that iMovie has to offer.
P.S.: Just when I think my pocket digital camera is about to go on the fritz and bite the dust, it surprises the hell out of me with a shot like this:
And of course, the obligatory L.A.T.E. Ride sunrise shot...
