GoPro on a Land Yacht & my history with “on board” video production

We have been capturing some really interesting footage with a GoPro HD Hero for various clients projects for over a year now. Last weekend I finally had the opportunity to mount it on a Land Yacht for the first time capturing some of the excitement of one of the sports I love – Land Sailing.

I have been land yacht sailing in Western Australia since I was 12 years old. I would actually say it is one of the reasons I become involved in Video Production. I always had an interest in photography and video and as a kid was keen to capture the relatively undocumented sport of land sailing which became the first video I ever edited.

The old original "Land Yacht Cam" during the 2005 land sailing championships

Way before GoPro and other high quality small digital cameras, this is a camera suspension and mount system I developed in the 1990’s to capture some of the worlds first steady, good quality on board footage of land sailing. Prior people had only used low quality “lip stick” style cameras or simple hand held a handy cam leaving you with shaky “Blair Witch” style footage.

In the early days some of the original problems posed by trying to capture video footage on board a land yacht included the fact that land yachts have no suspension creating huge vibrations. Also damage from sand, mud, rock impacts, salt and water depending on the surface you were on and also that video cameras were VERY expensive meaning no one wanted to risk their camera.

The plan was to have rig, not only weather proof but strong enough that the if the camera broke off at high it could crash to a stop and survive. My final design to achieve this included a sealed weather and impact resistant steel enclosure, with thick clear acrylic front and back for both the lens and viewfinder. The inside contains foam padding and then the enclosure is completely suspended by rubber within an outer “cage” to adsorb shock and dampen vibration.

My farther and I later adapted the set up to rotate the camera 360 degrees and also include a water jet to wash the lens clean of salt build up, which then allowed it to be mounted in various positions on the land yacht.

Although I haven’t used the set up since the world championships in 2005. I imagine the set up will still be very pratical with some modifications to use it for higher quality HD cameras like the Canon 5D Mark 2 which would be interesting to try one day.

I will have to upload some of the old original footage some time but for now here is some footage of land sailing via the GoPro Hd Hero. Featuring a helmet mount and also clamp mount.

Also if you are interested in Land Yacht Sailing check out the clubs website here.

Interesting Fact – Land Yacht Sailing was first done in Western Australia over 100 years ago at Lake Lefroy, Kambalda.