The Camera Rig

Most Sundays, Marty, of Banal Leakage, puts up a video of himself tooling around Utah on his scooter. (In the winter the videos are replaced with Snowy Sunday videos).

(Typically, most Sundays, I, of What’s a Delmer Look Like, put up a post that is heavy on the commas and full of suspect asides set off by parenthesis.)

Not long ago I thought I’d take a crack at making a camera mount for my bicycle so I’d be able to take videos of me tooling around Central Ohio.

I’d read Marty’s description of the process he’d used to make a camera mount but, in true man fashion, opted not to print it out and take it to the hardware store when I went to buy the bits and pieces I thought I’d need. I’m not even sure I measured the diameter of the handlebars. As a matter of fact I think I found myself at Home Depot one afternoon and thought I’d just pick some things up.

In any case I knew my handlebars were not round and they may be oversized (I’m not sure… I just know they are bigger around than The Mighty Schwinn’s handlebars).

These are the bits I bought.

I’ve got a T-shaped piece of PVC pipe, a plug that goes into it, some bolts that fit the hole on the bottom of my camera, a couple of hose clamps and some Great Stuff (you squirt it into gaps and it expands to fill voids), and a smaller plug that screws into the other plug.

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I’ve cut the PVC T in two and did a bit of sanding. Keep an eye on the little plug with the hose clamp circling it.

I prepped the PVC with whatever that purple stuff is called. I then glued the two pieces with purple on them together. The little plug I told you about in the previous picture… I drilled a hole it it and screwed it into the hole in the piece I glued into the hole in the PVC T. (There’s a frog on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.)

Here you can see the bolt in the plug. You’ll also notice some plastic wrap on my handlebars – that’s there to keep The Great Stuff from messing up the handlebar tape…I shot some up between the handlebars and PVC to fill in the space between the roundness of the PVC T and the non-roundness of my handlebars. (In this photo you can see the other PVC T I bought. It’s a smaller size; I wasn’t sure which one I needed.)

The whole thing took about half an hour to make. I’d written down the song list that played while I’d put it all together, but I’ve misplaced it.

On the road the camera wants to tilt back a bit more than I’d like before The Great Stuff stops it (I should have used more) – BUT – when viewing the movie I shot I couldn’t tell much (any?) difference between the camera being where I wanted it to be and where it wanted to be.

I need to trim the excess part of the T to make it look tidier.

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