I am trying to find a way to record my unicycling more easily, unlike with a tripod, which you have to always set up. I tried to look for head or chest mounts, but they all looked so bulky because I only have my phone for recording, and I don’t even know if it would look good if I recorded POV. Do any of you have any ideas?
The chest mount is not good because the camera cannot compensate for the body movement you have while riding a unicycle. I tried it myself and it doesn’t work well with the GoPro 7 Black. Everything is blurry. A helmet mount would be a good idea, but I don’t think you can see the route that well. It’s best if you film from outside. That’s what resonates most with the audience.
Ok, thanks!
Depending what you’re doing and how heavy your phone is you could try using a phone mount on a selfie stick. You would need to angle the phone camera towards you / down the length of the selfie stick (which might involve an extra gopro style fitting adapter) and you would therefore have it in shot, but if you didn’t mind that then you could hopefully get shots from whichever direction you held the stick out at. I use a selfie stick when filming with a 360 camera, however that then hides the selfie stick from view when generating the footage, so you don’t see it. It also gives a distant seeming perspective even with a relatively short stick because of the fish eye lenses. Some examples with me riding with our dog are here.
I’ll probably get a better tripod that is more like a selfie stick.
Fabio makes cool videos with a small helmet-mounted camera. Mostly distance rides: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDHIyA5ETAc, but he somehow learned to stabilize the camera well enough to film some other unicycle sports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EgUJGlELZU
In this video you can see his camera mounted on the right side of the helmet.
P.S. I was told by one of the NAUCC 2023 participants that the unicycle basketball video linked above was shot by a chest-mounted camera.
I’ll look into that, I think I have seen that mini camera before.
There’s also the option of having a drone follow you around. The hoverair x1 and DJI neo work well.
Here’s a video made with the hoverair x1 drone:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8o3lEDwhA10
More recently, I bought the hoverair x1 pro to film in low light, it can keep up with me at 25+kph, and I can also fly it manually. It weighs less than 200g and can be folded in 2 and stored in a pocket.
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First, that video is super cool, I’ve never used one, but I love cruiser unicycles. Also, I don’t think that people at the skatepark would appreciate a drone flying around😂
I’ve tried and it never translates well, at least for Muni. Unlike a mountain bike where the front wheel is in the view and gives context to what you are riding, you can’t get a perspective and only see the scenery moving.
You can use it as a stylistic device in edits, but to actually show the riding, you need to film third person.
I’d get one of those tripod/selfie stick combinations for a phone to start with, then you can see if you want to add a different camera (stabilization of action cams like GoPro is nice), or perhaps a drone later on.
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I don’t unicycle anymore, I’ve taken to mountain biking. I just got a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Excellent for POV recording.
Here is a Video from the Chesty View. It doesn’t work for Unicycling.
It looks more like a leg view.
As far as on-person mounts, I find a chin mount on a full face helmet works about the best, a lot better than top of helmet (too high, not much detail), or chest (lots of movement, sometimes bad angles depending on torso angle).