Last year, we rolled with a GoPro Hero 3 Black, and 2 Contour HD’s. Mounts are easy – I used the RAM suction mount, worked great. Some important things to consider, though. Power, heat, and memory.
– You’ll want a BUNCH of memory cards – HD video soaks ’em up. You’ll have to transfer the video off to your laptop nightly, and that takes a while.
– Battery life on all those cameras is pretty laughable. You’ll want the correct USB cord (something you can route easily, and keep out of the way) and car charger doodad… Keep in mind you’ll also want a free cigarette lighter port to charge your phone, too.. I used a couple of splitters last year, but have a better scheme this year. If a GoPro has a dead battery and you plug it in, it will die until the battery charges – keep the battery full, and the camera supplied with power at all times, unless you want to be swapping batteries way too often
– Heat. These cameras don’t like to get hot – they shut off. And what’s hotter than the windshield of a muscle car in June? No place. We made up a heat shield for the GoPro last year that worked ok out of some hotel room fixtures and double backed tape. Plan ahead for this.
The last camera I’m working on this year is something to snap a picture every few seconds or so for the entire drive, pointed roughly forward but out the side of the passenger side of the car – to capture more of the spectators. By the time we grabbed the camera and fired off a few dozen frames, we had often passed something interesting or amusing…
From there, we also need a remote mic option for one of the GoPro cameras, so we can do a better job on our wrap up videos out of the car – the integral mic on the GoPro isn’t very good for that.
Last on Tech is the radios – I’m thinking we buy FRS type units, or perhaps rent some better quality business band units for the week? We shall see.
