Here are a couple of stills of the iPhone carrier I built from basswood, balsa, and Starbucks stir strips. I designed it to fit in a Lionel gondola. A negative is that the camera lens is offset so the camera angle is a bit “out of scale.” Meets are quite thrilling.
The test video is too long to post so that will have to wait.
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There are tripod adapters for phones with a 1/4-20 screw thread on the bottom. Works fine, except the width of the phone encounters obstacles everywhere - especially bridges.
For this show season, I built a "prism cam" using a large right-angle prism from my collection of telescope parts. The phone is mounted longitudinally on the flatcar, the prism directs the camera's view down the tracks. It worked pretty well and the videos I shot go completely around the layout. The design was a quick hack using solid wood blocks to mount the prism and bind the phone onto one face of the prism. Problems to deal with are: 1) some flare and reflection issues from the prism (prism cam V2 will address this with masks and flat black paint); 2) the image is reversed left to right (video software can deal with this but I haven't done the conversion yet); and 3) the weight of the phone and prism, plus wood blocks holding the prism made the center of gravity high on the car which makes the image sway (a steel plate weight under the car helped some).
I will probably cast a lead weight for under the flat car to get the center of gravity lower. I'll substitute a first surface mirror to replace the heavy solid glass prism and rebuild the solid wood blocks holding the prism with something lighter.
Will try to get videos uploaded and post links soon.
Ha ha ha... well I snagged my crossing signal and tumped over my house of sticks. In fact it needs rebuilding!
Video.... too big to post!
Uploaded two unedited videos. The first is the prism cam with the prism at the bottom of the load (phone is upside down), extra weight on the car.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/WXYkNJvLExyLxToV8 (4 minute video)
The second is the prism cam with the prism at the top of the car - annoying vibration is visible. 8 minute video.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/GjTeBMnS7oh1d62a6
Compared with videos taken with a compact camera last year, there is much more vibration visible this year. Will have to work on a solution since the phone has better video than the older camera. One major difference with the car setup is the camera was attached with a 1/4-20 tripod screw while the phone and prism block was rubber-banded to the car.
Kudos to you guys for figuring out how to do this without shooting VERTICAL VIDEO!
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