Video Cameras

[Cody J]

Do you guys know of video cameras that will fit in the cab of an HO SD40-2 and B23-7?

Also, where might I find these cameras and what might be the estimated price?

thanks,
cody

[pdlethbridge]

The only one I know about is this
http://www.gadgettom.com/GadgetCAM.htm

[Tylerf]

I've seen quite a few( never in person) that look ok. I've always wanted to be able to drive my trains from the cab however I'm detered by the fact that many of the systems still have poor quality images and I'm yet to actually see or hear of a truely good one.

[Jim Banner]

A few years ago we tried out a number of cameras on our group's large scale portable layout.  The cameras we tried included both B&W and colour cameras in the $50 to $500 range.  They all came with transmitters built in or attached and receivers with audio and video outputs.  Some of the cameras were small enough that they would have fit it a dummy F-unit, complete with their transmitters and batteries.

The more expensive cameras produced clearer pictures (no surprise there) and the black and white cameras produced clearer pictures than colour units of similar price (again no surprise.)  But all the cameras suffered from two problems.  First, as they moved around the layout, they went through dead zones where we lost the picture.  As I understand it, that is from the receiver being in the near field of the transmitter.  The other problem was the trains rock and rolling around the layout, even at low speed.  Trying to drive the trains using just the picture on the tv screen was possible but at the risk of getting sea sick.  I suspect this problem would be even worse in H0 scale.

I have also taken video by mounting a camera on a flat car and pushing it around the track with a locomotive.  Over the years, I have used a Super 8 film camera, an analogue camcorder and digital still cameras in movie mode.  The digital still cameras work the best if they have image stabilization.  Next I would like to try a digital camcorder with image stabilization.

Jim

[RAM]

I was at a train show last month.  They had a large ho layout.  They had the camera mounted in an F unit looking out the mars light.  It was in color and was quite good.  What I didn't like was when they got to a turn the picture did not follow the track, which you would do if you were in the cab. 

[pdlethbridge]

The one from Gadget Tom's seemed pretty steady. They have a video of one showing the different views it can show. It's in a 50' athearn high cube boxcar

[Jim Banner]

... What I didn't like was when they got to a turn the picture did not follow the track, which you would do if you were in the cab. 

RAM, In real life the camera appears to follow the curve while in scale life, it appears not to, even though in both cases the camera is firmly affixed to the locomotive.  I believe this is because of the sharpness of the curves.  A real life 10^o curve scales down to about an 80 inch radius in H0.  So if you ran the camera equipped H0 train on an 80" radius curve, it would appear to follow the curve too.  I am not sure what the easements of real life curves do to our perceptions, other than to make our models appear to jerk into and out of our too tight curves.

Jim

[pdlethbridge]

The curves in the Gadget Tom's video were in the 22" to 28" radius and the camera did follow the track very well