Choosing the right Action Camera & accessories

[pagheca]

I am considering buying a GoPro Hero 11 Mini -like action camera (other brands considered). Mainly, I would use it to take photos and short videos or timelapses while riding my e-bike. I am looking for something light and small, and I don't want to spend an arm and a leg, but also buy the right set of accessories: helmet and handlebar mount, memory, battery, cables, etc.

Any advice?

 

[n0kin0bu]

Look into 'Akaso' 4k ultra hd, EK7000 far less than half the price of any Go Pro and more accessories. has many features the GoPro doesn't
in a smaller package. Just saying.....

 

[m@Robertson]

I would also recommend the Akaso brand for a cheap alternative, but not the EK7000. Mostly because it has poor image stabilization compared to others from Akaso. Amazon tells me I purchased my EK7000 in 2019 so its quite an old model.

I use action cams for dashcams on all of my bikes. Both front and rear on a couple of them. So I have a lot of these things in daily service. I wrote up a complete how-to on the whole process, including parts lists, extra scuba boxes, USB extensions and small power packs so you aren't worrying about batteries running out. You just connect to a power bank and have enough continuous power to do anything all day.

DIY Bicycle Front (And Rear) Dash Cam, Part 1

You know dashcams create a record of evidence. Surprisingly, they are also visible to nearby drivers, and become a deterrent just by being in plain sight.

talesontwowheels.com

I am using the Akaso V50x ($99, but a $20 coupon is available via the link in the parts list in the article above), and running 4 of the things (two each on two bikes). It is going to give you native 4K, 30 fps storage which is good enough to read an oncoming license plate starting clear over on the other side of the street.

 

[m@Robertson]

oh and also stay away from the GoPros.

I tried one early on in my action cam assessment process and it was nothing but trouble. Overheated like crazy for starters. I found at the time there were tons of bad reviews to go along with the good ones and I was not surprised after experiencing one myself. Just for starters the fancy schmancy app was twitchy as hell and a marketing tool for GoPro as much as it was something useful to me. Its far better to use something like an Akaso that stores vids in a universal format. Just pull the chip, stick it into a reader on your PC, copy to your hard drive and use whatever video processing software (free stuff is available) you want.

 

[pagheca]

thanks to you all, folks. Veeeeeeeery interesting!

@m@Robertson: how long ago was that? Just to understand if they fixed the issue because GoPro looks as "the standard" in the field and I wonder why.

 

[m@Robertson]

thanks to you all, folks. Veeeeeeeery interesting!

@m@Robertson: how long ago was that? Just to understand if they fixed the issue because GoPro looks as "the standard" in the field and I wonder why.

Amazon tells me it was a Gopro Hero 5... in 2017. So its been awhile. What that should also tell you is I have been doing this just fine without GoPros for 6+ years.

The native 4k 30 fps thing is really a big deal. Native operation means the 4k mode is pretty much the optimum for the system

Here I did this sample footage at Sea Otter last year, when I was riding out of Laguna Seca and going home. Youtube does not want to display at this resolution because of bandwidth. What you want to do is first view it on Youtube, and not in this forum. Then, click the little gear icon, choose Quality from the menu and select 2160p, which is 4k resolution. You can pretty much blow up the screen and do things like freeze frame the display to see the license plates of the oncoming cars (pretend you are the police trying to figure out who ran you over, and you'll see the evidentiary value of 4k/30fps resolution on a dashcam).

Using Windows video software you can freeze frame and then zoom focus on a license plate over and above what you can do on Youtube and the plate lettering is enlarged and clear as a bell.

Bear in mind the above is also using the 'EIS' mode in 4k/30fps, which is something else you cannot take for granted. First of all, EIS is 'electronic' image stabilization and you want that rather than the lesser mechanical stabilization that IIRC the EK7000 has. Try running with a lesser stabilization quality, or none, and your ability to see what the camera records is severely compromised. Something you REALLY want to look out for is which modes your chosen camera will run EIS in. It won't do it in all of them, or maybe not even in any of the better ones. This is partly why you want the camera running native in a hi res mode like 4k.

That article series I linked gets into all sorts of details like this.

 

[m@Robertson]

I forgot I still had this. This is the same v50X model running test footage in 2021. I was trying out the 60 fps mode, which - best I could get at the time - was 1080p @ 60 fps with EIS turned on. This is the v50X model, but it is 2 years older and does not have the native 4k mode. The newer ones are definitely superior in license plate reading at 4k/30. Tested extensively with the 2023 cameras to be sure of that.

 

[Django]

I have a GoPro 10. I haven’t had any issues and have been happy with it. I use the chest mount. I tried the helmet and the handlebar mount, but I like the chest mount and I can easily redirect the angle to pan off to the side. The image stabilization works very well and you can set it so that the image either remains level or banks with you. Here is an example, (it is better before YouTube does their thing and please set to HD).

 

[pagheca]

@Django: can you tell me please how many MB/min it use at this modality, more or less? Alternatively for how long you can record with your currently mem card.

Nice ride!

 

[Django]

@Django: can you tell me please how many MB/min it use at this modality, more or less? Alternatively for how long you can record with your currently mem card.

Nice ride!

I attached a still so that you can see how it looks before YouTube formats it. The other image is my settings. The Micro SD Card is a 256 gigabyte. I get nearly 8 hours of recording time with these settings and the 256 card and about an hour of recording time per battery.

 

[pagheca]

I am still trying to understand which is the best compromise...

Does anyone have any suggestions on the best contraption to mount it on the helmet and on the handlebar?

 

[m@Robertson]

On the handlebar I link the best mount I have ever found, hands-down, in that article up above. It is rock solid, made of sturdy alloy, can be mounted at center or on a side and can be angled up, down, forward or backward. Also mounts a scuba box great, or any gopro extension of any kind.

Also you want your camera to have a dashcam mode where it records continuously forever. Its called loop recording. The camera records in 2 or 3-minute long snippets, and when it fills up the card it just records over the oldest snippet and keeps going. A 4k/30 2-minute bit is about 1Gb so if you have a 256Gb SD card, you have a LOT of ride history recorded and the stuff getting recorded over is several rides back.

 

[Nvreloader]

I am running the same setup as M Robison posted on my Wart Hog MD 750 ebike, and I can say it works better than expected, I also added a 3rd camera to my helmet + the extra battery supply, 256 SD cards in all 3 camera's, works very well.
Tracked a coyote crossing @ 440yd away across the hay field, and showed great photo's etc.

 

[pagheca]

lucky guys with all those flat roads...

 

[m@Robertson]

No way! Hills make the ride. Thats where you get your exercise. Here's a short snip from a few days ago. I'm in my Bullitt hauling a couple of 50 lb bags of gravel (I need about 100 bags and I carry two at a time, so its a long term project).

Look at the angle of the hill as I turn into a short steep segment. 10 seconds in. I tried to find the clip from last week for a very long stretch that is steep like this for half the hill, then turns left and gets steeper until I 'summit' at a later spot on this same hill. Couldn't find the damn thing. When I put my cameras back after a trip inside the store, I don't differentiate between front and back, so since I pulled my front camera off my bike to get this clip, I only have about half of my rides' forward views on it.

This is the first time I have looked at any of my ride footage in months. Usually I just let it loop record. The cops or the coroner can actually view it if they need to. It turns out this 128GB card can hold about 5 rides before it starts to record over the oldest files, where those rides are 20-30 miles each.

As an aside: Even with a total system weight of well over 400 lbs on this run, I am only pedaling strong in a super low gear, not busting a gut or popping any blood vessels. THAT is what a mid drive gets you in hills that a hub motor can't. If I wanted to go faster there's always throttle but I don't ride like that.

 

[pagheca]

yeah, but imagine you have only supersteep hills...

 

[neutron]

No way! Hills make the ride. Thats where you get your exercise. Here's a short snip from a few days ago. I'm in my Bullitt hauling a couple of 50 lb bags of gravel (I need about 100 bags and I carry two at a time, so its a long term project).

Look at the angle of the hill as I turn into a short steep segment. 10 seconds in. I tried to find the clip from last week for a very long stretch that is steep like this for half the hill, then turns left and gets steeper until I 'summit' at a later spot on this same hill. Couldn't find the damn thing. When I put my cameras back after a trip inside the store, I don't differentiate between front and back, so since I pulled my front camera off my bike to get this clip, I only have about half of my rides' forward views on it.

This is the first time I have looked at any of my ride footage in months. Usually I just let it loop record. The cops or the coroner can actually view it if they need to. It turns out this 128GB card can hold about 5 rides before it starts to record over the oldest files, where those rides are 20-30 miles each.

As an aside: Even with a total system weight of well over 400 lbs on this run, I am only pedaling strong in a super low gear, not busting a gut or popping any blood vessels. THAT is what a mid drive gets you in hills that a hub motor can't. If I wanted to go faster there's always throttle but I don't ride like that.

Wouldn't it be a lot more economical to have a load of gravel delivered rather than buying bagged gravel? 2 1/2 tons in a dump truck. Or is this an exercise thing?

 

[HumanPerson]

Wouldn't it be a lot more economical to have a load of gravel delivered rather than buying bagged gravel? 2 1/2 tons in a dump truck. Or is this an exercise thing?

Personal preference/lowering carbon footprint?

 

[biknut]

A lot of the bike video bloggers I follow hate the new GoPros because they claim they overheat and stop recording. That's probably not as much a problem for typical users as bike bloggers that let their camera run for hours at a time on group rides.

 

[Smaug]

I was thinking of this too, but you must realize that you’ll be in for many hours’ worth of video editing to put together each video.

I wonder if GoPro has software that makes that easy…

I don’t think I’d do a handlebar mount. I saw one YT video of a guy mountain biking with such a mount and when he crashed, he broke his sternum on it. I think helmet or chest mount would be The Way to Go.

I can’t wait to see your videos!