So what’s with this crazy obsession with extreme sports? Jumping out of space balloons and flying through flaming hoops, it’s all going to end in tears, you mark our words. But in the meantime, there’s a living to be made from video taping all this stuff, and we blame YouTube. Who would have thought you could earn money from people watching you scream in terror?
Up till now you needed to invest in an ‘action camera’ in order to grab the footage you need, but now you can attach any old compact digital camera to your head and dive out of that plane, happy in the knowledge your exploits are being captured for posterity. Or your obituary.
The Camera Demon mounting system comprises a universal tripod screw compatible camera mount, with a ‘high bonding’ 3M pad which is secured to your safety helmet (you are wearing one, aren’t you?). Stick the pad to the helmet, attach your compact camera of choice, press the video button and off you go. The mount is fully tilt and swivel so you can adjust the view to the one you prefer, and if you need to remove the mount, just heat it up with a hair dryer and off it pops. We’re not sure if it’s re-attachable after that though, which could be a factor.
We recommend you don’t use your massively expensive Leica camera on the thing…y’know, just in case, but it definitely looks like a cheap and effective alternative to buying a GoPro or investing in a complex camera mounting system for your head or body. We’re also thinking that if you pop along to Amazon and buy one of these clever Hama Mini Tripod mounts for cell phones, you might even get away with attaching a phone to the helmet without problems. Again, don’t try this with your most expensive Galaxy S4 will you?
We would like to see an optional head bracket which you can use as a mount instead of a helmet, and if the pad is not re-usable it would be nice if they offered some means of replacing the pad so you can move it between helmets at will. The product is priced at $33.95.