The Fly12 is designed to be an handlebar cam. But how does it perform as an helmet cam? I tried it on one of our best trail in the Santa Monica Mountains here in Los Angeles California.
It totally works! The footage looks quite good and smooth. It's missing some vertical field of view (FOV), which makes the video look zoomed in compared to a GoPro. So yeah, it makes the footage look a bit slower, but I was slow for real too! I haven't been riding enduro much lately. Which is about to change soon :D
For a camera not meant to be wearable, the Fly12 performed surprisingly well. It won’t replace your GoPro for that purpose anytime soon, but it’s great to see that you can totally mount it differently and get a new perspective when riding the trails. They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and the Fly12 & iPhone are very often the only two cameras I have with me.
The video was shot at 720p 60fps in "Off-road mode". The bitrate of the recorded file was around 12,000 kbps, which happens to be what YouTube compresses at. And at that rate, the image does contain some compression artifacts when the scenery has complex “textures” scrolling fast. But for some (mysterious) reason, YouTube always dumps another layer of artifacts on top of it even though the rendered file is at the target rate.
I edited the footage in Final Cut Pro and re-touched the colors slightly by adding a little bit more contrast and saturation. The file was rendered at 1080p 60fps (upscaling from the 720p source).
Camera: Cycliq Fly12
Helmet: Giro Cipher
Bike: Santa Cruz Bronson 27.5
Googles: POC Lobes
Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Trail: Sullivan Ridge (aka Jedi Plunge & Squirl Cage)
Trail Map HERE
Date: May 22, 2016
Check out my XC Fly12 test HERE
Check out my road test HERE