One of the most common mistakes made with a sports action camera is the mounting position. How many point of view videos have you watched on YouTube or Vimeo where the video has been shot from a car bonnet, boat’s deck or a bike’s handlebars without any fixed objects in the shot. The resulting footage is just dull and boring and looks like a camera floating through space.

This is because the camera has been mounted without any objects in the foreground to act as a reference point for the viewer. A great example I will use for this post is a race boat. Too many times, I have seen race boats firing down the river or around the circuit with a GoPro camera planted right on the nose of the boat, pointing forward. The recorded footage just shows the water whizzing past and gives you little to no feel of the intensity of the sport.

This is the first in our series of ‘Mounting How-To Articles’ with recommendations and ideas for mounting your action sports camera to maximize the impact of your action videos.

GoPro, Contour & VIO cameras are usually referred to as point of view (POV) cameras. This may be one of their primary uses, but with the massive range of mounting solutions available the sky, or should I say in this case, the ground is the limit.

Point of View, or helmet mounting may be quick, easy and convenient. Yet in a lot of cases this is not the ideal mounting solution to gain the full effect of the sport or activity you are videoing. We have experimented with many different sports and many different mounting positions, be it standard, extreme and just plain weird mounting concepts. Some positions work quite well, some don’t. You need patience and creativity to get the perfect angle for capturing the action of your sporting endeavours.