Experimenting with Geometry on 360° On-Motorbike Photography

My 360 degree on-motorcycle photography experiment continues.  The process has evolved over time from handheld, manually shot photos to automatic, bike mounted shots.  I've tried half a dozen different cameras and mounts on locations all over the bike, most recently on the tail rack.

I've always wanted to be able to catch the front of the bike while in motion.  Mounted to the windscreen the Ricoh Theta doesn't quite reach.  This time I purchased a 1/4 inch threaded rod and cut it to size (about a foot long) and used it to extend the camera out front of the bike.  Double fastening the camera at one end and the tripod at the other with extra nuts meant I had no trouble with the rig moving.

The results speak for themselves...

Early shots are using the extension rig mounted on the upper windshield.  It clears the camera from the fairing and gives clear shots of the whole machine and rider while in motion.  The rig is stable and holds the camera for steady shots.  It never budged on a variety of roads at various speeds.

From the windshield I moved the camera rig to the right rearview mirror.  There was a bit of flex in the windshield with the rig attached, but none from the mirror.  The shots were once again very stable and steady at a variety of speeds on a variety of different road conditions.  This one is at about 80km.hr on a country back road.  This angle still shows the front of the bike, but gives more of a 3/4 view of the back of the machine.

The distance further off the fairing means a wider view of corners.  Even with energetic riding on the twisty bits the rig was problem free.

Further along I angled the rig up higher for a more top down view.  The tripod ball joint that lets you easily angle it.  If kept tight you can do this on the fly with ease.

One of the benefits of this on-bike camera rig is that it gives a good sense of speed and captures the intimacy of riding because the camera is doing everything the bike and rider are.  Here I'm up to triple digits on a highway.

   

For the last angle I put the camera as far up and out to the side as I could angle it off the rearview mirror.  This catches the whole side of the bike and rider well, as well as offering a good sight lines up and down the road.

 

 

 

That worked.  All images are screen captures in the Ricoh imaging software cleaned up in Adobe Lightroom.

Variations in On-Motorcycle 360 Photography

The other day I tried a variation on the on-bike 360° photography I've previously done.  Rather than mount the camera on a flexible tripod on the front of the bike, I attached a carbon monopod to the rear top-box rack, extended it and put the camera on top.

The bottom part of the monopod had a screw in point.  With that removed I could bolt this very light weight, carbon fibre monopod to the rear luggage rack (which itself is attached to the frame) very securely.  In almost an hour of riding on typically lousy rural Ontario roads both the camera and monopod were very secure and the photos showed no evidence of wobble or blur.

These are the parts used:

• Neewer carbon fibre monopod from Amazon (about fifty bucks)
• Ricoh Theta 360SC camera from Amazon (under $250CAN)

With the camera over a metre above and behind my head, the three-sixty degree pinched perspective makes the bike and I look quite far away:

After doing a round at full extension (the monopod extends to just over five feet or 160cms), I reduced the bottom leg.  I couldn't see the results of the shots until I got back and I was worried that the full extended monopod would produce wobble and blur or be structurally stressed (it didn't and it wasn't).  The monopod only weighs a couple of hundred grams and can hold 10 kilos or 22 pounds of gear - the Theta weighs less than a hundred grams.

With the camera reset closer to four feet above the back deck of the bike I did some more miles, including riding over some very rough roads.  Even in those circumstances the rig was solid, unmoving and took sharp photos, even in the relatively poor light (it had been heavily overcast, foggy and raining on and off all day).

The pavement leading up to the West Montrose Covered Bridge is particularly rough, but even then the photos were clear and sharp.

Good horizons on such a tall camera mount, and this is at the lower setting.

With the camera set so much higher, corners don't seem as dramatic.  When the camera is mounted on the rear view mirror it turns with the handlebars, amplifying the lean effect.

Perhaps the best example of the camera's lack of wobble was the shot from inside the covered bridge.  On an overcast, dim day in a poorly lit environment with the bike bouncing over rough pavement, the sharpness is still surprisingly good.  This was so dim that I had to raise the sun visor in the helmet:

This is a photo uploaded to the Theta 360 site and modified with the little planet geometry tool.

I'd call this a successful test.  Setting up this kind of monopod on a Givi tail mount for a top box works really well.  The monopod base fits snuggly in the tail mount, which is a very solid, over engineering piece of kit designed to carry potentially heavy luggage.  The monopod takes a big quarter inch bolt.  I used a big washer on the bottom and a smaller one that fit perfectly inside the lattice on the top of the rack.  With the monopod tightened down with a ratchet it was extremely secure.

The camera didn't wobble on full extension, but with the monopod retracted one level (the shortest, narrowest one at the bottom) the monopod rubber met the top of the luggage lattice and it was even stronger.  With the camera on the shortened tripod, the photos still offered a surprisingly distant perspective:

With the monopod shortened one level it's still well above six feet off the deck (I'm 6'3").

It's another unique perspective to pursue with 360° on-motorcycle photography, but I have to say, I think it feels a bit alienating because everything is so distant and you can't see the rider's face.  Short of flying a drone perilously close to a rider, there is no other way you could get this perspective though...

One of the few sunny moments on the ride - you can see the monopod's shadow on the road.

Something like this might look really cool on a bike doing a wheelie, or someone knee down in a canyon.  It also does a nice job of capturing the surroundings, but unless I'm looking for shots that are more about the scenery than the ride, I doubt I'll be doing it again.  I prefer the more intimate and exciting angles you get from mounting the camera closer and in front of the rider: