I got the inspiration from the boat race camera’s that Oxford and Cambridge use like the one here:

My aim was to come up with one that was a little less permanently attached, could be easily adjusted and is a cheap and eas to make, since im not exactly a DIY legend.

Thankfully I was able to make quite a simple design, which I unveil below

Now I know it may not look like much, but the mount is actually surprisingly secure when mounted on the boat, and allows shots like this:

Notice the racing start, so it hung on pretty well!

To make it is extremely simple, only 4 parts (and glue):

• A Hama 75 Tripod mount – About £10 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-Star-Tripod-Carry-Case/dp/B000EOMQM2
• 3 x camera suction mounts – (search ebay for “camera suction mounts, usually £3 from China)
• Glue to stick it together

To build it couldnt be simpler, at the end of each of the legs of the Hama tripod mounts are little plastic “feet” that cover the hollow ends of the legs, if you remove these feet (takes some brute force) then you expose the hollow of each leg

Now take the camera mounts, like this one

and inset the screw into the hole, and glue in place like this

Once all 3 legs are done, that’s it give yourself a pat on the back, you now you are ready!

As to mounting on an 8+, heres some points of advice:

• The tripod has adjustable legs and neck, personally I try and make sure I use both to get a good height using both the legs and the neck to make sure its as stable as possible, have a play with it before you try it on the water
• Try and mount the camera behind the cox but as close as possible to the cox to get a good shot, be careful you’re not interfering with the coxing cables/rudder however
• Although the mounts do suction on very well (and i’ve actually done an outing in an 8+ where one of the legs actually lost suction and the mount was fine) I would still advise attaching some string to the mount incase it does come lose, and similarly use a waterproof camera “just in case”
• For a camera, the lighter the better, personally I use my Gopro (using the tripod mount) although the fisheye lens does mean the bow pair looks distored/rowing short so take that into account before laying into their technique

I hope this helps! Please feel free to ask any questions, in further posts ill go over some of the other mounts ive made.

One tool a lot of international squads have started to use are something called the visual feedback system,the idea being as the rower rows they can view themselves and spot/correct their technique during the outing, currently one option is below for £1795

http://www.active-tools.com/ProductDetail.aspx?Pid=5907a5b8-0e81-4aaa-bddf-f48d2de01f6b

This is an excellent system and very high quality with benefits that are obvious, however it is very much out of the price range of a lot of rowers (especially after buying your own boat!), however one of the features of the ContourGPS may offer a solution to people looking for a cheaper option.

The Contour range of camera’s are a less popular version when compared to the standard GoPro Range, however they do have a lot of excellent features that make then stand out in comparison, for one the option to add a bluetooth card to the camera and then download an app to your smartphone and then have a wireless “live view” from the camera

http://contour.com/software/mobile/overview

SO with the smartphone attached in the boat you can actually view the live footage as you are rowing, you could even invest in a pair of video sunglasses to view the footage on the iPhone

http://www.zetronix.com/product_info.php?cPath=26&products_id=136&gclid=CND7-OGj-qwCFZQhtAodhgvjSQ

The major drawback to this is the low refresh rate of the live camera at only 8 FPS so its certainly not an ideal system and not as refined as the Activetools version, however it is certainl

http://gopro.com/hd-hero2-cameras/

It seems to be a minor update rather than a major update, although the new 170degree option at 1080p will be welcome to users wanting to mount the camera closer to themselves, and the 120fps (frames per second) option would be great for silky smooth slow motion replay. Plus, most importantly, it will push down the price of the original gopro making it an even better option (at time of writing the gopro hd was £170 on amazon)

Danish head video footage

Which came out with some excellent footage, but I think makes you look a little odd!

As an alternative to this, and wondering if I could find anything that could be used in a race, I bought myself a pair of video sunglasses from camsports

Although I have a pair go cheap generic sunglasses, these actually go up to 720p and also have a lens that views 135 degrees so gives a much wider view of what’s going on.

In use the sunglasses are very comfortable, and switch on and off with just a single press of the button on the side so is very easy to start while you are waiting for the start of a race. Here is a video I took of a recent sculling race
Camsports sculling footage

Certainly gives a new angle on re-viewing a race! Not so useful for reviewing technique in this set up, however you could give them to a cox of a sternloader to review the rowing/coxing talking or even the bowman of a 4- as I had in the video below

4s head

After quite a lot of experimentation I managed to find a working combination which can result in videos like this:

Requirements:

iPhone (running the NK Speedcoach app) – To capture the data from rowing

Camera (see my previous post on possible cameras)

PC software – Dashware

- Your video editor of choice (to edit the Dashware output) – Mine is                                            Powerdirector

1) Collect the data

Mount the camera and attach your iPhone running the NK app to the boat, personally I have an iDry which I have put velcro on the back to secure it to the boat, this means the phone is dry and safe and can be easily removed.

2) Transfer the data to the PC

Copy the video and iPhone data to your PC (i usually order the videos intheir own folders per date). To get the data off the iPhone go into the app, select history, select the workout that you are after, click the specific workout (I usually have recorded the workout as “just go”, click “export CSV” then you can download the data from the iPhone within itunes

3) Adding the gauges in Dashware

Before you start with Dashware you need to add the NK gauge and the profile for the iPhone data into dashware, these can be found here. Under Windows 7 the folders that they need to be added to are under “libraries” -> “Documents” -> “Dashware” -> Add the NK gauge to “Gauges” and the profile to “dataprofiles”

Load up Dashware and it will ask you to select a new video, select the video you have taken and wait for it to load. Once it is loaded click on the plus symbol in the data file and add your data file from the iphone you saved earlier, Dashware should automatically come up with the “speedcoach for iPhone” profile

Now all you have to do is change the gauges to the one you prefer (usually the NK gauge and possibly the map), synchronise the data with the video using the synchronisation tab and then file -> create video (note: not sure if its the same for everyone but I find the output video type Mpeg2 High quility, large file size to be the best and works bets with Powerdirector)

4) Editing/adding to the video

As mentioned, I use powerdirector just to trim the video down from the usual 1-2 hour videos to the important things, plus in the video editor you can add more information  like a readout from GoogleEarth/other camera footage etc, as an example:

I have filmed myself running through this process so if it helps to watch it being done (and helps clarify points I have missed/any questions you may have)

Hope this helps! Best of luck creating your own videos!

http://performancephones.com/speedcoach-mobile/

This is an application that means your iPhone can replace a strokecoach/speedcoach in the boat by using the iPhones accelerometer and GPS to calculate strokerate, boatcheck and boat speed, all for a one off payment of £29.99.

When you compare this to the cheapest strokecoach from NK at £144 you can see there is a big saving to make. This obviously doesn’t take into account protecting the phone from water damage, but I personally use an iDry which is a reasonably priced case at £13.49 on amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003SAIBGE/ref=asc_df_B003SAIBGE2327377/?tag=googlecouk06-21&creative=22134&creativeASIN=B003SAIBGE&linkCode=asn

Theres a very good review of the app here,

http://kossevconsortium.org/docs/SpeedCoach_Mobile_Review_v1_0.pdf

Note: The review does mention a downside of the app being having to use Facebook to download and share workouts, however the app has been updated so that to download your workouts directly to the PC so you can use your own software to analyse your workout.

My personal feeling? It is a great app with a lot of potential (see my last post where I have added the data from the iPhone ontop of the videos taken of the rowing) and the strokerates/speed/location is very useful, not just for the rowers but also the cox (for head races you can analyse the course the cox has taken so you can give additional advice). plus when I go to regattas on my own or even go sculling at night on my own) its nice to be sure you have your phone with you at all times!

However before you start looking how to use the video footage, first you have to get some! And for that you have to pick your camera and how to mount the camera:

Choices of camera

If you are mounting a camera on your boat, then you’re going to be filming at very close to your subject and in order to get all of the boat into shot (from blade tip to blade tip) you will have to consider a camera with a wide angle lens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-angle_lens

Thankfully there is quite a range of sports cameras with wide angle lens available, two of the most popular ive listed below:

Go Pro Hero

http://gopro.com/

The GoPro is a very popular option, with the widest angle lens (180 degrees) its possible to mount the camera very close to the rower and still get the whole boat into shot. The case camera is made from plastic so it does have almost a toy like quality, however it is protected by a clear case which is also completely watertight so it is a very solid option. There are a wide range of mounting options. The picture quality is very good (see the link below for some good footage), however I have found that the wide angle of the lens does mean that there is some distortion of the image (as discussed in the wiki article posted above), and so if you are filming larger crews (like 8+’s) blade angles can look a little off

Example video using a GoPro camera

The top of the range GoPro can record at 1080p High Definition at 30 fps, or 720p at 60 fps, but can be quite expensive (especially in the UK at around £265), however there is a cheaper GoPro 960 which can record at 720p 30 fps and at the time of writing is closer to £200

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GoPro-HD-Naked-HERO-Camera/dp/B0030ZESEQ

Contour

http://contour.com/

The Contour HD camera is also a very popular sports camera, unlike the GoPro it is made from metal so feels very solid in the hand. It sports a rotating lens (for aligning the camera to the horizontal depending on how its mounted) and has two lasers that can be used to align the camera and make sure its filming horizontal.

Unfortunatly, although the Contour cameras are splashproof, they aren’t waterproof, so you would have to consider the waterproof camera if you thought there was a high chance of the camera getting wet!

The Contour has a narrower field of view at 135 degree lens, however I still found this was wide enough to get all of the boat in as long as it was well mounted

Filmed on a contourhd 720p version

The Contour camera have several options so you can tailor your purchase to the features you need, going from the ContourHD which films in 720p, all the way up to the top of the range ContourGPS which not only films in 1080p but also has a GPS chip built in, so can be used as an all in one option if you are looking to bring GPS data into your video footage (which ill get into in a future post), but at a cost of over £300

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Contour-GPS-Full-Helmet-Camera/dp/B00426DQ2W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299746571&sr=8-1