Mounting a GoPro in a F40?

I have the opportunity to mount a GoPro in a friend's F40 tonight for a nice drive tomorrow.

I'm thinking about mounting it to the roll bar for an over the shoulder, out the windshield view but haven't looked at an F40 close enough to know if this is possible.

I won't have the luxury of trial and error so any advise as to mounting possibilities would be greatly appreciated. I'd really hate to blow it by mounting somewhere that has too much vibration or something like that.

I'm using a GoPro hero 3 Black and can preview the view via the iphone app. I also have all the GoPro mounts, roll bar, suction cup and stuff to change the angle or extend from the mount. As cool as it would look, the owner and I agreed that we wouldn't use the suction cup mount on the outside of the car so its inside or not at all.

If I'm successful I'll post the results in this thread hopefully with some nice pictures as well.

 

Interior shots looking outside into the sunlight never looked good me, it effects the cameras white balance plus depending one the lens, it might look too far off with a wide angle lens. I have a Hero 1 but had software issues with it, I'm a lot of the newer versions have improved. You're better off mounting it outside of the car on the glass for the best results, those mounts are stronger than you think.

 

You can specify where on the image the hero 3 black adjusts it's white balance to, so just make sure you specify that spot outside of the car (I made the mistake of not specifying it at our last race, but the video still came out pretty well). You can also specify whether it's wide angle, mid or narrow with the hero 3 black. In my 355, suction cup mount to the back window (inside) works well, just depends on your mount and if you can get the height where you want it mounting like that. If he's got a harness bar or cage, that should be a good place to mount and vibration shouldn't be an issue. We mounted on the cage of our 944 chump car and had no vibration issues even when banging hard off of the curbs. We use wide angle so we could see the gauges and driver actions and it worked well.

 

for one thing, not all f40's have a roll bar.
i would try putting it on the outside too - better view.

 

Thanks for the input guys I appreciate it

The 3 is much improved over the 1 so the balance of light between inside the car and outside is near equal so I'm not too worried about that. He will be driving city streets and I'd like to capture him driving, shifting and the cars interior more than the road as that won't be as interesting as say a winding country road.

If it were my F40 I would mount it everywhere possible inside and out to get some amazing video. There is no way I can suggest and be responsible for my camera on someone else's car. If I mount it outside on the top of the windshield and it fails and rolls over the car causing damage it would be devastating. I know the GoPros are VERY reliable with all their mounts and I've seen them on Enzos and Veyrons but I can not cover the risk. If he wants to and completely understands and accepts the risk I'm fine with that. When we first talked he wasn't interested in mounting it outside.

This Enzo is tracking at Daytona so having it outside is a great view because you are featuring the track high banks and all. My friend is going to be driving his F40 about 15 miles through the city from his house to a car show and won't get over 50 mph. Even if there wasn't any risk I'd still go for an inside mount as it features more of the car. If it were up to me I'd mount it inside for the trip to the show ( early morning low sun ) and then outside when he leaves through the crowd.

This is the F40 which has the roll bar so I was thinking I would mount to that.
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spot meter setting might help when shooting video from inside a car with a GoPro. test this before shooting your video. You say your using the app to control the GoPro so changing settings should be a snap. post the video here when your done we want to see it

 

I'll be mounting it tonight inside his garage. I'll use the app to check the view and make changes. He will have to turn it on in the morning before the drive as I'll already be at the car show. His drive will be early morning with the sun barely clearing the trees yet so there shouldn't be much of a contrast.

Tomorrow has the potential to get some nice pictures and video.

If I get something worthwhile I'll certainly post it.

 

video of a F40 standing still will be worth posting you are very lucky

 

I found this vid on the Youtube and this perspective is what I had in mind.
I especially like how you can see the driver's face in the rear view mirror.

It also shows how the outside is washed out like you guys were pointing out but the video is a few years old which means
it wasn't taken with the GoPro 3 which will help a lot in that regard.





[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddZELAk1BF0]Ferrari F40 LM In Car Footage - YouTube[/ame]

 

The bar to which you refer is in the engine bay, not the cockpit. Might make for interesting audio, but you will be shooting through the back glass

 

Be sure to shut off the wifi after you get it set up as otherwise it'll eat the battery pretty quickly.

 

Sounds awful! The chatter and whine!

Not my cup...

SV

 

When I asked him about putting my GoPro in his car he said the same as you.

I told him the few F40s I've seen had roll bars but I didn't notice how they ran and often wondered if there was a place I could mount a GoPro. He then went and checked and said he does have a roll bar inside the cockpit and it shouldn't be a problem getting the mount on. We won't know what kind of view we can get until it's mounted and adjusted.

I'm headed there now and if I get to do it I'll take a few iphone pics to show how it mounted.

Thanks for the reminder. Wifi is a huge battery drain. That would be the worst if he took off in the morning and the battery had drained over night

 

Was able to get the GoPro mounted to a roll bar inside the cockpit and using the app confirmed the view I wanted. Got a little video of him taking the F40 out of his garage and he was kind to do a walk through of the other cars in his collection which I also got on video. While he only has one other Ferrari ( 512 BBi ) he has a very impressive collection of muscle cars including at least eight Camaros.

For a bit of interesting trivia he told me that his F40 appeared in the movie " Gone in Sixty Seconds " and was the one in the show room in the background of one scene. ( I have yet to see the movie )

Hopefully tomorrow will go smoothly and I'll return with something to look at.
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Wheels looks amazing fully polished. Thumbs up to your friend.

What's that hiding in the garage?

 

looks like an indy car in the garage. odd.

your friend's f40 is a usa version but with a euro front lip spoiler. strange.

 

+1.

 

Well the GoPro worked great and I got what I wanted and more

All the pictures in this post are frame grabs from the GoPro video.

I've included a few to help answer your questions and curiosity.

I found out that the euro front lip was on the car when he bought it as were the polished wheels. He doesn't know why they were done but said he likes it better that way. He also pointed out that the front lip has little wheels mounted underneath to help when it rubs which comes in real handy when going over the speed bumps in his neighborhood. Another feature not usually found on the F40

Pic 1: Out on the road with the mounted GoPro.

Pic 2: Looking back at his garage with the Pantera pulled out in prep for the Car Show.

Pic 3: The engine in his amazing Pantera.

Pic 4: That is an Indy car which was once raced by Arie Luyendyk in the Indy 500 where he qualified 6th. My friend bought it and drove it in a Vintage series at tracks like Long Beach and downtown Miami. Finished 1st in points one season and said it was a blast to drive.

Pic 5: A pic of him driving his Indy car. The F40 in the pic above is not his.

Pic: 6 Looking deeper into his garage featuring his finished cars.

Pic: 7 Next room over holds cars in various stages of restoration.

Pic: 8 Best of all came when we were going to a different location so I could photograph his car as he drove by me and I was going to follow him in my Jeep and he said forget that, jump in and I'll take you for a ride. It was very hard to get my 6' 6" body in but I didn't care if I had to break my legs and reset them later. I wasn't going to miss out on my first ride in a Ferrari!. He did get on it hard one time from 1st to 3rd and all I can say is OMG

I ended up getting mounted GoPro video of him going to and leaving the Cars on Fifth Car Show, when I rode I hand held the GoPro so I could hang it out the window facing front and back to get the side of the car and I also got in a second chase car and caught the F40 driving beside us. Now I have to focus on Speed Weeks at Daytona so it will be awhile before I can edit the F40 video but at least I've captured it.
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Thanks for the follow up. Nice collection indeed.

 

Props to your friend for sharing.

 

Very cool! Here's the scene featuring your friends F40

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPS02EFgdfE]Gone In 60 Secs - Roger - YouTube[/ame]

 

Thanks for posting that!

 

Where is the VIDEO!!!! pictures are nice but a video (what the GoPro is for) was what we expected

 

I agree, looks like he'll be too busy to put it together anytime soon. Either way, it should be great to see.

 

Spent a week in Naples to photograph the Car Show and also did the F40, some surfing and a fashion shoot for a Model's portfolio. Took my last video Sunday afternoon and then travelled home during the night. Monday was catch up day for the week I was gone and I'm still trying to catch up. The GoPro video has to be converted before I can edit it and that took a few hours which ties up my computer so I can't work on something else. Once I have all the video and pictures sorted I'll know what I have to work with when I start to edit. I'm also waiting for consent from someone as to whether I can us their car ( not the F40 ) publicly in the video which will play a part as to how I edit.

NASCAR takes to the track tomorrow leading up to the Daytona 500 and I'll be there to photograph all that which won't give me any time to edit. So next week will be the first chance I'll get to edit the video and then it will take at least a day to upload the HD video to Youtube.

Wish I had time to get to it right now but I'm stuck in the fast lane and loving every minute of it