BikeCam Mk I

Day began with fail. Checking the tyre pressure this morning I decided to top-up the front tyre of the bike, however, the valve cap was stiff and in the process of removing it I managed to let all the air out. Having found what I now know to be a 'Dunlop/Woods' valve (thanks to the Sheldon Brown website), it then took a while to figure out that one can use a Presta attachment to inflate it. Unfortunately, by the time I was done with all this it was too late to get to church on time; next week I guess (in hindsight, perhaps I should've found a 'backup' church with an evening service).

Now the bike was ready I didn't wish to waste the effort, so planned to cycle to VU, in an attempt to gauge the time required for the journey. I hadn't taken into account the Amsterdam marathon which had closed, or restricted access to the roads around the Olympic stadium [Amsterdam hosted the 1928 Olympics, fact fans], on the way to VU. I attempted a detour, but got a little lost and found myself heading back toward the house instead.

This journey was recorded using BikeCam [Mk 1], which is currently just my GorillaPod tripod wrapped around the handlebars. There's certainly room for improvement:

Attachment to bike
Steadying/suspension
Appropriate lenses
Cable release/remote trigger
Rain cover
Charging/dynamo

I thought best to keep in simple at first, stuck on a fisheye lens, set in to manual focus at infinity, aperture at f8 (so everything should be in focus down to about half a metre) set the ISO at 400 to try to keep the shutter speed high to counteract the camera shake from the motion of the bike [the bright day helped]. It seemed to work alright.

Hopefully, they'll be more exotic things that 'BikeCam' to distract me soon, I suppose we'll see.