Camera mounts? Wakeye vs Ski-Doc Orbit mount

[C5Quest]

Hello,

Im looking to invest in a quality camera mount for this season to break down my crappy technique. Any help on pros/cons of the Wakeye (https://www.wakeye.com/collections/water-ski) or the Ski-Doc Orbital mount (http://www.theskidoc.com/ski-doc-camera-mount-orbit.htm) would be great. Also, iPhone vs GoPro use? I use both for different things. I like the idea of the Wakeye App and the auto on/off feature with speed. With Tech these days seems either is good option. Thank you....and my crappy technique with thank you later.

[ScottScott]

I have the ski doc orbit mount and it works good. No auto record based on speed but I just record the whole set, then download to computer when home and watch there. The orbit mount comes with cell phone holder if you want to use wake eye app. I don't have experience with other setups so can't really give a comparison.

[Jmoski]

My friend has the Wakeye, I have the ski-orbit. I think the ski-orbit is easier for changing rope lengths and is less intrusive in the boat. I often put my hand on top of the pylon as I turn while entering or exiting the driver seat, you can’t do that with the wakeye.

 

I run a gopro, note the ski-orbit doesn’t come with the gopro adapter.

 

I love the Wakeye iPhone app speed control, I logged a request with Gopro to add the same auto on/off based on speed to their mobile app.

[ScottScott]

The ski doc orbit doesn't come with go pro mount, but you just get the tripod adapter for go pro to easily mount into the orbit.

[UWSkier]

Go with a combo. Get the Orbit, then buy the Wakeye app. Been using that combo going on 3 years now with great success. Orbit is a great unit.

[sodbuster88]

I have the orbit, but like using the Olympus TG5. My go pro works beautiful but is too wide angle and I haven’t been able to get my iPhone image appropriately stabilized due to pylon vibration.

[ozski]

I love my Wakeye but its always breaking. They have amazing customer service but I'm thinking of getting an Orbit..

[C5Quest]

Thanks. Looks like I’ll start with the Orbital and experiment from there.

[pmski]

I have been using the wakeye for a couple of years with my iphone, the wakeye app is very easy to use just set your speed and no more viewing unwanted video, I had one issue with the arm after a year of use so I contacted them to buy a new arm, John from wakeye told me they had made an upgrade to the part and sent it to me at no charge, to say I'm impressed would be an understatement I ski an average of 5 days a week so it gets a lot of use and reviewing my skiing on my phone is an awesome trainer

[UWSkier]

More on the Wakeye app... if you use Google Photos, you can tell your phone to automagically sync video to the cloud over wifi. Google Photos has unlimited storage. My ski buddies and I area all part of a Google Group Album. Once our videos are uploaded to the cloud, we select and drop them into the group album for others to view as well.

 

Benefits of this:

You can watch on a computer or on your big screen, at High Def, in Slow-Mo as it uses the Youtube player.

Your buddies can help you spot stuff from afar. My friend in TX who's a way better skier than I can provide remote coaching

It helps feed your obsession... as if that needed help...

[Ed_Johnson]

For those using the Orbit. Does the Camera mounted on the side give a accurate view of the skier throughout the course, especially at short line ??

What about Vibration ???

 

I have a Wake-Eye, but the Plastic pivot mount that holds the Camera, completely came apart, sending a $1200 camera to the floor. Not impressed and looking for options.

 

 

 

[C5Quest]

I’m concerned about vibration as well. From all the sample video I have seen it looks like both the ski doc and the wakeye shake quite a bit when the skier begins the pull after the buoy. Maybe impossible to get rid of pylon shake?

[ScottScott]

I'm thinking its tough to get rid of the pylon shake, I see little on the go pro due to its stabilization. You are mostly going to be relying on the devices stabilization.....of course I'm not pulling on it as hard as a real shortliner would.....

[vtmecheng]

I have been thinking about the shake issue. Mechanical devices really aren't going to help much. If you make it soft enough to really dampen out the shock at the frequencies I'm guessing really matter then the material may be too soft, making the camera move too much all the time but the big shocks are not bad. Maybe the damper could be such that it only works in rotation about the vertical axis and not horizontal ones. I'm not sure that would work well either. The cameras internal stability is still the best.

[OSUwaterskier]

Has anyone tried attaching some kind of swivel mount to the underside of the bimini then attaching to the rope somehow? Would the shake be just as bad, if not worse, because of the wind?

[DefectiveDave]

Wire rope isolators work well. You just have to choose the right wire and length to damp out frequencies above 10 Hz or so. Camera stabilizers often assume any shake is at low frequencies, not those higher frequencies coming through a pylon, which is why they don't work well. So the wire rope isolators help mitigate that design limitation.

 

Cameras meant for drones are another option, given those have higher frequencies. However, the amplitude is often less than what comes through the pylons. Finally, many have had luck with JVC camcorders which use digital stabilization which works at higher frequencies.

[DefectiveDave]

Here's a previous thread:

 

https://www.ballofspray.com/forum#/discussion/comment/221741

[vtmecheng]

I have used wire rope isolators for shock isolation. The ones I've used are generally designed for vertical and horizontal shock inputs, not rotational. Also, I still think the design would be threading a needle between isolating the rope shock and not having the isolator hit a natural frequency that causes a constant camera shake. Could be done but would need some data to start with. Yeah, the camera has digital stabilization but they have limits and you may not want to push that to help another a little. All this said, I'd love to see the shock data from a rope versus the the vibration the rest of the time.

 

Maybe I'm off base here, my specialty is more on the high amplitude, short duration side.

[Ed_Johnson]

I was just about to order the Orbit, and I found on their Web-Site it will only hold a camera weight of 7 oz. If that's true, that's not much. The Canon Vixia G-40 I use weights 1.98lbs, and has excellent stabilization, plus a remote to play back fast or slow motion from your easy chair. So I guess it won't work, unless you have a really small camera.

 

 

[AbR_Ski_Student]

Or, you can build your own on the cheap*!

 

 

*P.S. I don't actually recommend doing this unless you have a mountain of time to burn on troubleshooting.

[DaveD]

@AbR_Ski_Student Nice work, but I wouldn't really call 80/20 cheap unless you have leftovers from another expensive project.

[C5Quest]

Wow that’s crazy lookin.

 

[AbR_Ski_Student]

@DaveD

Very true. I was fortunate to have leftovers from a different project.

[braindamage]

@AbR_Ski_Student that looks like a lot of sharp edges that can scrape. I’d suggest some rubber or foam padding.

 

The zipties are a nice touch though

[tap]

Big fan of the ski dock orbit. The ease of use with rope changes is pretty hard to beat. Also, it's a reasonably sturdy mount. With just a phone directly on the orbit it had a lot of vibration that made the videos pretty hard to watch. So, I made an isolation mount to filter out all of the higher frequency content. It works great and the orbit is rigid enough to the pylon to prevent excessive low frequency motion. I still get a bit of rope induced motion, but it's pretty minor.

 

Never used a wakeye mount, but their phone app is fantastic.

 

The top plate is supported by rubber tubbing that is very low stiffness for lateral motion but still reasonably stiff for vertical loads to support the weight of the top plate and attached phone. The orange foam is just a snubber incase someone decides to push on it, it's not in contact with the top plate.

 

 

[C5Quest]

I used my new ski-doc orbit mount with my iPhone this morning. Our club have a new MasterCraft. It mounted up no problem but the vibration basically made it unwatchable. Very frustrating. Anyone have good results out of the box or is it reality that you hAve to modify it. Enter luck with GoPro?

[ScottScott]

Go pro works very good. Wish there was optical zoom....but your phone doesn't have optical zoom either. The stabilization is good.

[C5Quest]

Thanks. I’ll try it

 

 

[ScottScott]

If youve been watching the masters web cast, there is a handheld camera in boat that shows them changing rope lengths. You'll notice there is a ski doc orbit mount on the pylon for the pylon camera.

[blakeyates]

I guess I’ll be buying the Orbit; so, I either need to modify it as did @tap or buy a GoPro to go with it? I have an iPhone 8 and I like the idea of the App to allow for minimizing unwanted video. I don’t believe I have that option with the GoPro. Any additional advice?

[jhughes]

We use a homemade one out of PVC pipe, works perfectly.

[blakeyates]

@Gloersen , it sounded as though there’s a lot of movement that makes the video very bad thus the reason @tap made those additions. You don’t see the need to do anything else? If so, that’s good.

[Garn]

Might be a dumb question, but why is a goPro better then a cellphone? Does it have stabilization built into it?

[Ed_Johnson]

I am using a Canon G40 with the Orbit, and it works flawlessly, no vibration whatsoever. Much better than my Wakeye that broke twice due to the plastic parts holding the Camera.

The G40 weighs 1.9 lbs, and I believe a heavier Camera works well, versus a Cell Phone that is really light and has no auto stabilization.

 

What I like best is the G40 has a remote that allows you to hook the Camera direct to your big screen via HDMI, sit back in your recliner, and fast forward through the parts you don't want in seconds, and run your skiing in Normal or 1/2 speed, or 1/8th speed.

 

 

[jedgell]

@Ed_Johnson are you able to use a shock tube with the Orbit?

[Ed_Johnson]

@jedgell...Yes you can use a shock tube. You can separately attach it with a lanyard and a clip to the area directly beneath the Orbit to the pylon itself.

 

I use to have a Caribbeaner zip tied to the pylon, so I could detach the shock tube anytime I wanted to. I no longer feel the need for the shock tube, but it worked well when I had it.

 

 

[Gus]

I also made DIY PVC ones, they perform reasonable, but I'm starting to think that for tricks anything pylon mounted is unsuitable. Anyone tried filming tricks using wake-eye cylon? Maybe the solution for tricks is decoupling from the pylon.

[Zman]

@Gus I'm thinking for tricks, the mount will need to be able to pan up and down as well as side to side.

I video tournament trick runs for scoring, and the height some trickers get with flips will go off screen without panning up, or zooming out a lot.

There are mounts that can pan in multiple directions, but not sure if one has been adapted to a pylon mount?

[sixball]

Dammer try a gopro head band for the spotter.

[MichaelWiebe]

We use the Orbit with GoPro. Works very well.

Short line at 35 and 38 off does have vibration after the turn.

A friend's Wake Eye has vibration even at long lines.

Check out YouTube for our Orbit videos, at 5am ski club.

It's amateur skill level though.

[blakeyates]

I just installed my Orbit yesterday. Mounted the iPhone and basically I’m just figuring out how to use it. Did several successful videos. What is the preferred zoom setting? I also need to ad the orange foam dampener as there were many in the box.

[skispray]

@tap would you mind providing a parts list and some assembly instructions for that dampening device you’ve created? Looks intriguing and I’d like to give it a try but not sure what exactly you’ve built.

[BraceMaker]

 

 

@Gloersen maybe a detail on yours? That’s a toilet flange on a pvc with a T doing anything at the floor to interface the pvc to the carpet smoothly?

 

 

 

[MZito]

my little project.

 

 

[DaveD]

Looks great @MZito Can you share some video?

[Stevie Boy]

Ski Doc a few Go Pro bits and pieces and a Iphone Case.

 

 

[RGilmore]

If you look closely at some of The Waterski Broadcasting Company's videos you can catch a glimpse or two of the system they use. It looks like a homemade version of a "Steadicam" used by commercial filmmakers, and their videos seem pretty flawless to me.

[MISkier]

You need something with gimbals in it to get the real quality. Any one of these mounts could work just fine with some gimbals to perform the stabilization that the software in the cameras cannot do.

[JC McCavit]

I've discovered you cannot use the high end video cameras on the back of the new cell phones, Samsung or iPhone, with the Wakeye or Ski-Doc Orbit. All you get is wavy unusable video. If you flip the phone over and use the front facing lower quality Selfie camera, the video works fine but you can't zoom or anything like that. This problem makes no sense to me with todays technology. Why can't someone write an app to fix this?

[BugHunter]

JC, what do you mean with 'new' cell phones?

I have an iPhone 10 and used it with Wakeye and the Ski-Doc on Saturday. Video was pretty good from the front facing cam, zoomed 1.5x.