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Rock-Solid Camera Mount

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Rock-Solid Camera Mount

Old 11-16-07, 07:09 PM
  #1  
Cosmoline
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Rock-Solid Camera Mount

I've been using a Manfroto Professional series 2900 Super Clamp on my bike in various locations on the frame to mount a camera. It's by far the most secure mount I've ever seen, and I believe it's designed to hold lighting equipment weighing a lot more than any bike camera. Anyone else try this?


https://www.manfrotto.com/Jahia/site/...ivid=53&idx=54

When it's on there, it goes NOWHERE. Easy to remove the clamp or the camera, and the stud is standard for all camera and lighting material.
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Old 11-18-07, 08:49 AM
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Have you tried doing any movies with this mount? Can you adjust the angle of the camera on the fly? I've done several movies while riding with the one handed method but they are not very steady and it always looks like I"m about to crash...
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Old 11-20-07, 10:11 PM
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I've done a few vids with it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2g9RYh8fNU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY7jlp6lIUE

It's big, but works well. Though I seem to be picking up a lot of creaking from the frame. The bike sounds like an old mule.
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Old 11-21-07, 09:06 AM
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Depending on the weight of the camera/camcorder you might be better off with a RAM mount instead of the manfrotto.
https://www.ram-mount.com/

I have a palm sized sony pc1000 and ram mounts are perfect for that. I bought different kinds and u-bolted them to various parts of the bike, the top tube, fork, handlebars etc. I had to modify the mounts slightly to prevent the ball from slipping too far when loosening the knob for minor reframing.

They're not perfect but you'll have the advantage being able to reframe easily with one-hand, with some practice. If you do go this route I can pass on some little tricks with wires that I devised to limit the rotation of the bottom ball. The biggest problem with ram mounts is that the knob releases both balls and this is rarely what you want.



Last edited by walmart; 11-23-07 at 05:49 AM.
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Old 11-23-07, 06:52 AM
  #5  
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I wouldn't use ram mounts for heavy cameras. The are not meant to support full-sized canon XL type cameras especially if you're subjecting it to vibration like on a bike. But for mounting lighter electronics like cellphones, pdas, and palm sized video cameras on your bike, there is a suitable ram mount more than worthy for the job.

Nevertheless, being ambitious and lazy, I actually tried to mount a canon XL2 on a bike with the largest ball ram mount that was available 1.5" ball i think and while it seemed strong enough - I could not budge it with my hand - the moment I rode the bike I immediately noticed the ball slowly but surely slipping millimetre by millimetre. No matter how tightly I locked the knob the ball would keep slipping.

So I went with the superclamp. I mounted it to the top tube to support a manfrotto video head + XL2. But that was too ambitious. The slick tube was too slippery for the superclamp and luckily I found this out when I did a nudge test and not when I was riding on the road.

Eventually I just fabricated my own mount, a 1" thick steel bar L-bracket that rested on the top tube and U-bolts clamped it to the frame. And I must stress that the u-bolts did not support the weight of the camera + head at all. The load was entirely placed on the steel L-bracket balanced on the top tube. All the U-bolts did was held the bracket in place so it wouldn't slide off. That was the problem with my superclamp method, the load rested on/depended on the clamp, and clamps can be moved out of place, unlike the L-bracket which isn't going to move unless you crack the steel bar over the top tube. Sorry, with lack of pics, this probably doesn't make any sense .

Look for welders in the yellowpages. You might be able to design your own custom bracket to do this sort of thing much better than anything you can buy off the shelf. One bracket idea I had but never fabricated looks like a bike fork and it straddles the top tube and the legs extend to the down tube where bolts lock it off, or it could even be bolted to the existing bottle holder threads though that would need more metal to reach that far. The upper anchorage might be the head tube or whereever. Anyways, with that kind of anchorage you can mount any kind of camera + head without worry. Having said that, I never actually made something like this let alone tested it, so I'm not responsible if anyone actually implements it and decapitates themselves along with 10 others waiting at a bus stop as a result.

Last edited by walmart; 11-23-07 at 07:07 AM.
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Old 01-12-10, 07:10 AM
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Originally Posted by Cosmoline
I've been using a Manfroto Professional series 2900 Super Clamp on my bike in various locations on the frame to mount a camera. It's by far the most secure mount I've ever seen, and I believe it's designed to hold lighting equipment weighing a lot more than any bike camera. Anyone else try this?


https://www.manfrotto.com/Jahia/site/...ivid=53&idx=54

When it's on there, it goes NOWHERE. Easy to remove the clamp or the camera, and the stud is standard for all camera and lighting material.
Sorry for grave digging, but I really wanted to share this with everyone since I was not capable of marketing it to any company for production. It is a very easy solution and costs less than $10


Sorry for the shameless shilling of my blog, but I didn't want to bog down my post with a million images.
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