Gadgetime!

There's been this big thing going around where people are investing in expensive helmet cameras to film their epic cycling adventures.  Most of them go hand in hand with the overpriced toy bicycles being snapped up by would be athletes who can't afford a Maserati and were never the athletes they want to be.  In other words overpriced.  Now Go-Pro cameras and their infinitely pricey accessories are really good.  I don't question the quality of the product or the price they ask.  The judgement of the people who buy them to record their "epic" charity rides on their crabon crotch rockets is definitely questionable. I have never been that guy who could utilized one really, because I don't do aerial gymnastics on bicycles over cliffs, trails and canyons that would make Evil Knievel's gonads shrivel up and hide.  I do go places in traffic.  I don't want to bore the general public or my relatives with a record of that achievement, but I think it might be useful to have a video recording  running, just case something bad happened.  If it did, I would have a video of what happened proceeding and following the incident.  The lawyer of my heirs would probably find it convenient to gain justice and collect a big fee.  So the interweb came to the rescue and the infinitely intellectual advertising platform of Google actually produced.  

I got me one of these, a Minoura handlebar camera mount.  It is a quick release way to mount a camera on your handlebars.  It can be handy with a regular camera, while traveling and taking pictures, your handlebars can be used in place of a tripod for a stable shot, or action stills.

I also found this, the RetiCam holder for a cell phone meant to attach a cell phone to a tripod.

I ignored the fact that they can't spell "ready." 

 Don't  tell me it's a trademark issue, nobody owns the word "ready."

Put together the two look like this.  Ignore the inadvertant "F," it really is a scratch on the desk and means nothing.  They look a little goofy until you put a cell phone in there,

 then they look like, "Hurry up, what is the point?"

The point is they attach a cell phone conveniently to the handlebars so a video of a bike ride can be recorded. NBD,  No special anything, just another way to use a smart phone.  The video is not the quality I have seen on the proprietary cameras and camcorders, but in the past 40 years I haven't needed the reference, how great does it have to be?  I think the convenience of it might be worth something,  When I know I am riding in traffic, I'll use it, when I'm not I won't.  The $40 worth of mounts will each find other uses and probably more than a $100-$500 piece of professional quality equipment.  I expected the quality of the video to be worse than it was.  The handlebars have to create more vibration than a helmet mount, but it wasn't that bad.  Since it is a quick release utilitarian device, I was pretty happy with both the quality and convenience.

                                               

Don't bore yourself with much, it will give you an idea of the quality.

This was taken over packed ice/snow with a couple inches of loose snow on top.

I expected much more vibration than I saw.