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Chin mounted cameras

What's not to love?

· Ramblings,Skydiving

The debate between top mount and chin mounted cameras will rage forever now that cameras are small enough for the decision to be personal choice.

Personally, if they're done well, I love chin mounts, less snaggy, less likely to be bashed in the plane and if a GoPro, I can see the light showing confirming it's on.

Of course, there are some very poor chin mount options that extend a long way from the helmet and/or are poorly secured. I'd avoid the VMag Chin mount and anything chin mounted that doesn't have built in flex in the system. At some point you will get knocked and you will lose it. There is at least one DZ in the UK that has banned VMag chinmounts and

 

My current favourite option:

Camera: Insta360 Go 2 

Mount from Skydive.parts

 

The Insta360 Go 2 is NOT a 360 deg camera, that's just the company name. (I spend a lot of time saying this sentence on the DZ). It's named the Go 2 and you can see who they are competing with from that name. It's great little camera albeit not up to GoPro11 standards but is plenty good enough for skydiving.

It can film 1440p and has image stabilisation.

 

Downsides

  • I sometimes knock the button to turn it on when its on the ground.
  • The light to indicate it is recording is a flashing white light, why it isn't red, I have no idea. If you are jumping from a dark skyvan then you'll experience 0.5 sec of light flare while the sensor adjusts to the brightness of the sky.
  • I have not had this issue from a caravan though, I guess the number of windows helps with this.
  • The battery life and memory is limited but with the carry case you can always keep it charged and emptying the memory forces you to have good housekeeping.

 

The mount is from my friend Joe and we worked on multiple iterations until we ended up on V4 which I now have 300+ jumps on, 3x kicks to the face and zero lost cameras. It's easy to take on and off - weekly in my case as I use the same helmet for tunnel and sky. The mount can be a little tricky to install initially. You may need someone with small fingers to help with tying the bungee cord.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

PS I'll try and pop some photos of my helmet set up here in due course.