That's right THE CLEAT is actually what the new car mount is actually called. The cleat is a suction cup camera/video mounting system that I'll be using during autocross events to take video from inside and outside the cars during their runs. I picked up from filmtools as an early birthday present for myself.
Like with all new toys you have to play with it when you get it and after taking some pictures that's exactly what I did. Ran out and stuck it my roommate's RX-8 to see how it would look at different places and took some more pictures. The next step of course was to test out how the videos would look and that had a to wait a day or two before we could do that. You can find some more pictures of the mount at Flickr and see some different mounting options.
The weekend finally rolled around and we took the camera mount out and tested it, first on the inside of the car and while the videos looked good I wasn't about to post videos that included my roommmate and I being complete dorks so those got promptly deleted. Then we stopped and mounted it to the outside of the car and discovered one huge flaw in the design. Wind, what an annoyence that can be. That's a huge problem with the handycam setup but I'm currently working on a suitable solution and hopefully I'll have that worked out before the next autocross event.
The next day Scott took the camera mount with him to the dragstrip to test it there and get some in car video this time. If you're wondering what the rounded edges are all about that's from the UV Filter that Scott got me for my birthday it's a good way to protect the lens and offers some haze and glare reduction as well. The day after that we mounted it to the Subaru when we went out to the firing range (I posted that video in the weekly review) to give it an even heavier knock around test and while I learned a lession to make sure that the camera is tightend down to the base the thing will pretty much hang on for dear life and is pretty steady considering everything we did to it. Once I figure out the wind problem I'm sure it will be a great set up and I'm also thinking of picking up a wide angle lens for it as well but I have to find a good quality one first.
