Leinster

I presume there are some on here who ride with cameras on their setup, be it on the bars, on the helmet, etc. I'm going on a long trip in May, and would love to record progress for posterity, but without having to think about digging out a camera it'd be nice to just have a front-facing camera that I can press the start button, and leave it to run for multiple hours per day. And maybe at the end package it up for highlights/souvenir.

I'd prefer something compact. Something with long battery life and internal memory to last a full day in the saddle (probably 5-6hrs/day). Easy to upload footage online/wifi/whatever, or at least have the capacity to store a week's worth of footage. Easy to edit footage from a compact/portable device (iphone, ipad). I'd be more than happy with 1080p resolution, I don't need 4k. Anyone have recommendations?

texbiker

A camera that can meet most of your needs is a Drift Ghost XL or one of the other Drift cameras. It has a long battery life and you can exchange microsd cards. Audio can be added with an external mic. I have the Ghost XL and have used it to record 4 to 5 hour rides easily. It is not the quality of a GoPro but pretty good.

pdlamb

Just FWIW:

I got a camera a half-dozen years ago when our local club century offered a good deal. Used it religiously for six months or so just in case some wanker hit me on my commute. After the first week, I only pulled the video off once I can remember, and that was to find out what all that screeching was at one particular intersection. (Cager spinning out after I'd crossed the larger arterial, FWIW.)

Why didn't I review, edit, and post scintillating highlights? Because it was boring. Even my long weekend rides, out into the hinterlands of the county, were fun to ride, but boring to watch the slow ... progress ... of ... a ... camera ... moving ... at ... bike ... speed. Fresh air? Neat. Pavement going under my wheel? Not so much.

But of course, YMMV.

rumrunn6

video cameras create enormous files, I hope you have a powerful computer
weeding thru lots of video clips is very time consuming
some of my videos, even w/ a lot of editing, are so bad, I can't even watch them
however, I love having a video camera, even if I'm only doing an occasional frame grab to share
whatever you get, I highly recommend a camera w/ digital image stabilization
I like quick release mounts so that I can take it off whatever it's mounted to, & do some hand held stuff

helmet mounts let you look around & capture what you see

bar mounts are just fine for most every day stuff

good luck & we look forward to seeing what you share!

Bald Paul

I have two cameras - a forward facing GoPro with external battery pack, and a Garmin RTC715 facing rearward. Both of them are there solely for the purpose of incident recording. If I come back from a ride intact, I just delete all the files without even looking at them. If there was something memorable on the ride (other than me getting creamed) then I'll go through the recordings, clip and save.

fooferdoggie 

seems that the only time something I want captured happens is when I forgot the camera. last time we were on the bike path and a cop car hits lights and sirens to have us move over so they could past fast.

Troul 

drift xl seems to meet majority of your requirements. depending on settings, the quality can be good, at the cost of battery life & memory usage. You can slave it with a battery bank, but the memory card would need to be dumped or replaced. SD cards are not that expensive, just have somewhere to stow them out of harms way.

Daniel4

Here are some questions you may want to ask. Some may sound obvious but you never know if something slips by because you made an assumption that's wrong.

1) Are spare batteries and a separate charger available? My first camera, I had to buy more spare batteries but no separate charger existed.

2) What is the operating range? Again, my first camera cut out when I was riding at 40C.

3) What happens to the video clip when the camera runs out of batteries? Is it still playable or is it corrupted?

4) Does it retain the date and time stamp when you change batteries? One of my cameras retains that data only if you remember to plug it into an external power source.

5) What is the maximum memory size of the sd micro card? I didn't read the specs and one of my cameras was only 32GB which gave me 3hr at 1080p30 which was good enough but my other camera at 1080p60 gave me 8hr with a 64 GB card. So I bought a second sdmicro card for longer rides.

6) Image stabilisation. A nice feature.

alxsmlv

I got go pro hero 11 with some batteries and couldn't be happier.