Take us for a drive in your country

Veritable: Where did you mount the camera? That angle looks perfect. I'm assuming you used the flexible helmet mount on the headrest and recorded in 720p.

Headrest is too low.... Here's a sample video when I tried it, me getting blown-by by a Ferrari FR coupe of some sort, not sure if 599 or 612:


Anyways yes, it's hanging off the sunroof, with the GoPro set to capture upside down. Here's some pictures taken today for you guys:

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Dug a hole into the side of the waterproof housing in order to access the charging port. The car charger adapter is coming out of the cigarette lighter port in the center armrest. Some of my driving trips are 8hrs worth so this is the only way for me to continuously record into the 32GB SDHC card :)
 
Driving through San Diego

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So that's where they actually filmed the moon landings? San Diego :lol:
 
:( I need a sunroof...

Webastos aren't that expensive, only 300 euro + installation. I paid more for the gopro. :S
 
Okay, here we go:

[video=youtube;Z--pSevezZs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z--pSevezZs[/video]

 
^ Wow that is extremely steady - maybe I should look into one of those.

I took the camera out in the Saab today, and tried 2 angles. One from the sunroof similar to Veritable's angle, but my camera isn't as wide-angle. And the second on the lower corner on the passenger's side attached to the windscreen. With that I put the camera strap so it was caught in the door - it seemed to work very well as a damping system having a taught cable of some kind attached to the camera directly :) It still moves about a bit, but it does get rid of the rattling, which was the main issue. Its still processing, and after that it'll be encoding, then after that it'll be uploading. Then I'll post it :lol:

This is what the sunroof set up was. I reckon with an extension piece of string or something I could trap that in the sunroof and get some damping from that. :)

http://img862.imageshack.**/img862/1062/84861100.jpg
 
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So that's where they actually filmed the moon landings? San Diego :lol:

Yes. When I get a moment I'll stick my camera in my car and show you guys the extent of it.
 
^ Wow that is extremely steady - maybe I should look into one of those.

I think you also get a much better sense of speed, when you can also see what's in the rear view mirror.

I deliberately picked the time shortly before sunset, because then the daylight is still efficient enough but the car has already switched to low beam and the dials in the dashboard are illuminated in red, which makes reading them easier.

3 o'clock position of the speedo marks 220 km/h, btw.
 
I use premiere pro and that doesn't happen to me. If you're not interested in using such a hog of a program, though, you can also set the gopro to record upside down. You'll need the latest firmware update, though.
 
I also use Premiere Pro, but it took 3 hours to process this 11 minute film. I think I do need a better computer for video stuff <_<

Anyway, its finally uploaded. The first angle is with the camera strap bracing it, and the second angle is the same as it has always been, but with just a bit less rattling than in the Kangoo because the Saab is a smoother ride :p But it works very well I think :)

And I'm glad that without the rattling I have decent audio :p However with the windows open and the camera behind them; it is a bit worse.

 
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That's odd... our Kangoo has the most comfortable ride of all 4 cars we own. :D That Saab must be Jaguar territory.
 
Speedtouch: Interesting camera angles.

Driving style critic: (No offence, just observations, I assume from your age you got your driving licence not that long ago)
- Have a look at your aprupt steering corrections at 7:00, 07:25 and 8:30, and the way you are holding the wheel at 8:09.
 
Last Friday I made a longer trip with the 5er, so it has become a rather long journey (as a warning for those who get easily bored and cannot be bothered).

For those, who are actually interested, it is a drive from the lovely town of Papenburg back home to my hometown of Wilhelmshaven -- about 120 km all in all, containing country roads and Autobahn of course. If you have Google Earth on your PC, the drive starts at 53? 3'4.00"N 7?19'52.23"E and ends at 53?31'51.39"N 8? 6'24.87"E.

I chose to record the trip back home and not the journey there. Because when you drive from north to south, you have the sun against you all the way. From south to north, though, you have perfect lighting.

The journey starts in a suburb of Papenburg called Aschendorf, where I had stopped to clean the windscreen from crushed insects (they really went from 0 to 100 in a few sunny days last week) prior to recording.

I cut the whole trip into four pieces and will publish them one after the other, when they have finished uploading. Since it is meant to be a scenic drive to show the landscape of my current home turf and not so much a road test, I allowed myself to put some music in as a score. It's 1970's prog rock, the music I loved to listen to as a teenager. If you can't stand it, stop watching or cut down the volume but don't complain, since this is full of my childhood memories. So don't mess with me :p

Alright, first part is here:



I chose Papenburg as a starting point, because (as some of my fellow Germans will know), it is the town, where the currently most famous shipyard of Germany is located, the Meyer Werft. It's become famous for its top-of-the-line cruise ships and the fact, that those ships are made indoors in some of the biggest construction hangars in the world (up to 400 m long) and not at seaside or at a big river, where big shipards are usually located, but about 50 km inland at the rather small river Ems, which is often not wider than 90 meters.

The cruise ships are launched there and then manoeuvered carefully through this eye-of-a-needle river to the North Sea. The last cruise ships they launched there, was the 340 m long "Disney Dream" and the 252 m long "AIDASol".

The Meyer Werft's order book is quite packed at the moment:

2011 Celebrity Silhouette ("Solstice" Class), for Celebrity Cruises (USA)
2012 AIDAmar ("Sphinx"-Class), for AIDA Cruises (Germany)
2011 Disney Fantasy for Disney Cruise Line (USA)
2012 Celebrity Reflection ("Solstice"-Class) for Celebrity Cruise Line (USA)
2013 AIDA Sphinx VII / Ikarus IV ("Sphinx"-Class) for AIDA Cruises (Germany)
2013 Unknown name yet, 143.500 CT ship for Norwegian Cruise Line (USA)
2013 Unknown name yet, 143.500 CT ship for Norwegian Cruise Line (USA)
2014 Projekt "Sunshine", a 158.000 CT ship for Royal Caribbean Cruises (USA)

So if you are in the area, the Meyer Werft ist definetely worth a visit. They have guided tours and the launch of ships is a mega event each time, which hundreds of thousands of spectators are watching alongside the river Ems.

The first part ends in a traffic jam of Easter Weekend holidayers on their way to the North Sea coast.
 
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Alright, here's part 2:

I spare you most of the traffic jam but wanted show what we call the "zipper method", when 2 lanes become 1. It's traffic rule. Other drivers have to let you in. It's nice to see, that it also works in practice for a change :)



By the way: This is the same stretch of Autobahn Jeremy Clarkson used in the car vs. boat race to Oslo.

EDIT: As a personal remark I'd like to say, that if you're overtaken by a bus on the Autobahn, you're doing it wrong!

EDIT 2: Any estimations about the current fuel consumption of the Dodge RAM at 19:10? He was doing about 180 km/h.
 
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I made another one today, went for max speed on the highway. It's kinda illegal, so not uploading it anywhere public. :p
 
That's odd... our Kangoo has the most comfortable ride of all 4 cars we own. :D That Saab must be Jaguar territory.

Hmm interesting. I've never really paid attention to the rides in other cars. Sure the Kangoo is comfy but I guess the Saab is better. The un-damped footage is better than the stuff I've had in the Kangoo though :dunno:


Driving style critic: (No offence, just observations, I assume from your age you got your driving licence not that long ago)
- Have a look at your aprupt steering corrections at 7:00, 07:25 and 8:30, and the way you are holding the wheel at 8:09.

Looking back at it again, I can see exactly what you're on about (and no offense taken, obviously). All I can say is that that was only the 3rd time I'd driven the car and the first on non-main twisty roads. I still have a bit of perfection to get used to the steering, which is much less direct than the Kangoo's. And I've had my license for nearly two years now, so excuses arent quite the best excuse. :p
At 7 and 7:25 I dunno what that was - exactly as you say, just inexperience I guess. The junction at 8 is almost completely blind from all directions and I can honestly say I cannot recall ever seeing a car parked there before. The road at 8:30 is where it gets very narrow and even though that's the road I live on, it still freaks me out when there's another car coming :S

So basically I still have to get used to the car but there is plenty of room for improvement in me too :)

But thanks anyhow! Sorry for the long post though; and I have plenty more camera angles to try out...
 
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