You are viewing an outdated page on Rzoops.com. Please see the home page for the latest news!

Cost: About $4

Purpose: To make your own in-car camera mount that bolts onto your headrests for stable video coverage on a budget

Time: Up to about 2 hours

Materials and tools needed: PVC pipe roughly 1" in diameter, power drill and various bits, ruler, 1/4" carriage bolt with matching nuts and washers

Worth it? As a temporary solution - definitely.

Continue reading for the step by step process I used..

1) First you'll need to head to a local hardware store, like Home Depot or Lowe's, and buy some 1" diameter PVC pipe. It comes in other diameters such as 1/2" and 3/4", but you'll want to make sure that it is sturdy enough to remain stable while driving. Usually they sell them in 10 feet long poles, but you can generally have a clerk cut it up into smaller sections of 3-4 feet for you.

You'll also need to buy a 1/4" carriage bolt or two that is threaded the entire length. This will serve as the mount for your camera, and should be the same size as a standard tripod mount screw. I suggest bringing your camera in with you, just to make absolutely sure it will work. The bolt needs to be at least 3" long, but you can use longer ones to adjust your field of view. I would buy a 3", 4", and 5" bolt in case you need to make minor adjustments. Make sure you get at least 2 washers and nuts to secure the bolt to the PVC pipe.

2) The actual work behind this project is very straightforward, but it can be time consuming and tricky. Basically, you need to drill vertical holes through your PVC pipe that the headrest "poles" will firmly stick through, as pictured.

Although there are many ways to proceed, I'll talk mainly about the process I used. I began by placing about a 3 ft. piece of the pipe right below the headrests, and made little marks where the holes needed to be. Then I took one headrest out to help measure as I was drilling through.

3) The actual drilling is by far the most time consuming part of this project, as it is mostly trial and error with getting everything to line up right. It's best to just take it slow.. drill one hole all the way through, and make sure the headrest pole fits firmly into it. Then use the other pole from the same headrest to see exactly how far apart to drill.

Once you've got one pair of holes drilled, jam the headrest through and mount it. Now you can get a much better idea for where to drill the holes for the opposite side. Make sure the PVC pipe is perfectly and sturdily mounted before you move on.

4) Hop in the back seat with your camera and begin visualizing where you want the camera to be mounted. Keep in mind how broad your shoulders are, as you don't want to mount the camera too close to the driver's side. I ended up mounting mine about 2" closer to the passenger side from dead center.

Once you know where you want the camera at, and what angle to face the dashboard, you can sketch a mark for where to drill the final hole. This hole is the most important to get right, as you will need to firmly screw the bolt into the hole. Test your drilled holes every once in awhile by trying to thread your 1/4" bolt through them.

Now that you've got a stable camera mounting screw in place, you need to make it even more stable. That's where the nuts and washers come in. The best way I can think of is how I have it pictured. I use open ended wrenches to tighten the nuts down to the PVC pipe until you can see indentations into the pipe.

5) This last step could be the shortest or longest part of the entire process - testing it to make sure the camera angle is good enough. The picture to the left was after my very first mounting attempt.. and if you follow my directions of being very careful with measuring and cutting, your first attempt should be fairly accurate as well.

You'll want to adjust the center bolt so that when the camera is fully tightened down, it is facing where you want it to be. Trying to force the camera to turn the screw may cause serious damage to the camera mount and the camera body itself.

Overall, this cheap and effective camera mount has been a great success for me. It is easy to swap in and out for race days, and takes up almost no room in the trunk when I need to haul it around with all of my other gear. It is extremely sturdy, and doesn't even flinch with a regular point and shoot camera mounted on it. My Canon dSLR, which weighs about 3 pounds all together, was also mounted just fine, and didn't make the PVC pipe bend or anything.

At the time of this post, my movie section is still being worked on. However, you can view one of my previous videos from this setup here. As the video shows, the camera remains almost perfectly still throughout the run.