I’ve recently been experimenting with a new idea, whereby a camera is mounted out the front, looking back at the Bullitt:
How it works
All you need is a light-weight, but very stiff and rigid, length that you can strap securely to the side of the cargo deck, and mount the camera out the front. I’m using an old carpenters spirit-level which I found in a skip. But you could use anything else that was appropriate – I was looking at new broom handles: the 28mm ones looked like they might be long enough and stiff enough.
Above left: the spirit-level lashed to the side of the Bullitt using rope. The white cable is a power cable, as I’ve made a custom battery pack for the camera so I can shoot longer takes.
Above right: the camera as mounted, which luckily is just large enough to securely fit around the spirit-level. Rubber bungies secure the power cable.
Above left: the inside padding from an mattresses is excellent for packing and protecting delicate objects; here I’ve recycled some and have used it in two ways:
- To protect the frame from damage / scatches.
- To pad out the spirit-level so that it’s on a very slight angle, angling out away from the from the front wheel.
Above right: the amount of clearance.
You may notice the rear lashing-point has no visible padding. On this very first experiment I just used the rope itself to keep the spirit-level off the frame, but in the first road-test I ditched that approach in favour of an approach very similar to the front-lashing: using some protective cloth, but not as thickly.
Verdict
I’m really happy with the results – it seems to work fairly well. As expected there’s a fair amount of vibration – especially when going over uneven surfaces. I’m interested to try it again and see if I can more rigidly mount the spirit-level to the frame.
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