Introduction
After yesterday's failed attempts to produce a passable driving-action clip in Porkkalanniemi I got thinking, how to make my clips less comparable to crap? After a quick analyze I figured I have to eliminate the human-factor from the equation, so it was obvious I had to get a mount of some kind.
After spending the night online trying to find some mounts I was beginning to come to the conclusion that I wasn't wealthy or stupid enough to be a youtube-driver. I fell asleep depressed.
After a good night's sleep I got it. I was going to make a mount of my own, I mean how hard could it be? After putting on my engineer-hat and meditating for a while I came up with a very simple, yet effective solution. I figured the easiest/cheapest way to do it was by doing a mount that's attached to the head-rest. My plan was basically to slap the camera onto a PVC-pipe and attach that pipe to the head-rest, simple but genious. That way the bumps and jumps would only affect the camera as much as they affected the seat in relation to the car, which will make it look natural, and in that design your bodyweight will also act as a stabilizer. Hurray for being fat (well I'm actually not, but if you are then good for you!).
Having figured out the design-details I went off to the local hardware store. From there I picked up all I needed, checked the receipt and was proud of myself, all in all it'd only set me back 14,70€ (You'll manage cheaper because this is Finland, and no matter where you live it's probably going to be cheaper there).
So onto the instructions then!
The making of
Okay, so first, the shopping-list. For this job you'll need:
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| Bolts and drill bit |
*Two U-bolts for fastening the pipe to the two steel-bars going to your headrest
*One regular bolt that attaches to the built-in screw-thread in your camera
*Nuts and spacers for the U-bolts
*Nut for the camera-bolt (important)
And tools you'll need:
*Hand drilling machine
*Drill bits that match your chosen bolt-sizes
*Tape measure
*Saw
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| PVC-pipe and drill |
If you've figured out my design you can completely skip this part and get handy right away, but otherwise let me walk you through the build-process.
You start by sawing the PVC-pipe to preferred length, then measure the lengt between the head-rest bars and mark out accordingly where you need to drill holes in the pipe to make the U-bolts align with the steel-bars. Then drill, but note that you should only drill the attachment holes at this point!
Next my advice is to attach the half-done mount to the headrest and from there figure out where you want to drill the camera-bolt hole and mark it, that way you wont cock up so badly.
And here's the genious engineering-part: when you drill the camera-bolt hole, make it a bit bigger horizontally on the bottom-side of the mount, so that you can wiggle the bolt a bit when in the hole (the bolt head will be at the bigger hole when attached). That way you can further adjust the camera-angle.
Finally just bolt the U-bolts and the camera-bolt to the pipe. Observe that the camera bolt should be tightened in a manner that it still is slightly movable so that adjustments to the camera-angle can be made. And voilá, you've saved a fortune not buying a "professional" mount!
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| The finished product |
Here's a demonstration of the DIY camera-mount in action! Pretty good 'eh? And don't mind my camera, it's garbage.
Now I can finally join those noble men who post driving-clips on the 'tube!
-HS
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