Being a car buff, involved in motorsport both passively and actively and also interested in filmmaking it is perhaps inevitable that over the years I've tried many devices and gizmos and contraptions to shoot video from inside my car.

My first purchase in specialist equipment was from my namesake company in the UK (B. Hague and Co) and was a large suction mount device as used by Top Gear and 5^th Gear and around about $300 off memory. The suction cup which is about 6 inches across is married to a Manfrotto gimbal and is very powerful. It can sit on the inside or outside of a window or windscreen and once the camera is mounted to it there is full 360° movement. I used this particular mount when driving through Europe about three years ago including on the famous top gear “best road in the world“ drive.

(As an aside when going to immigration to get on the Eurostar train in Paris to go to London, the local gendarmes took exception to the suction cup when my baggage went through x-ray. They mistakenly took the imaging from the x-ray to be that of a landmine and I was well and truly given the third degree by two very heavily armed policeman and watched closely by a rather large German shepherd.)

My second purchase was from the same company but this time it's a seat headrest mount which is designed to look through the windscreen and again is very stable especially if someone is sitting on the seat it is mounted to. On both of these mounts I've used a small Sony domestic hard disk-based camcorder and also a CANON XHA1 mid-size tape-based camcorder with great success.

The secret in all cases to getting car footage is simply stability; the slightest jitter makes the footage unwatchable. It is also necessary to go to manual focus so that as mentioned the camera is “looking” through the windscreen and not trying to focus on it – all that will give you is lots of dirty windscreen shots, finger marks, smudges, dead insects and so on.

It was therefore with a little cynicism the other day I received a Kaiser Baas unit that purported to do the same things I have been doing with reasonably expensive gear. It supports high-definition 24-bit RGB with audio, takes infrared night video and also 5 megapixel stills - all for under $100.

The unit itself is quite small, maybe the size of an iPod and is mounted to the windscreen with a standard suction cup as used by GPS systems. Switches on the right-hand side allow you to select the various functions and change modes, and the left-hand side contains a USB port, external A/V out, DC power in and a battery indicator. An SD card slot is on the rear of the unit and there is a drop-down LCD panel.

Video is picked up by 1/4 inch CMOS sensor and output can be in various sizes up to 2048 x 1536. The focus ranges from 5 cm to infinity and colour compensation and white balance are both automatic. The camera shoots using a 120° viewing angle and you can activate it via a built-in motion sensor or by simply turning it on. A microphone is also built in.

In actual practice is very easy to use the unit - with a caveat as discussed shortly - and the footage is really not bad at all. It would be silly to compare it to the footage from the Canon XHA1 of course or even perhaps the Sony, but it is also fair to say that for the price you pay - $99 - it is very good indeed and for the intended usage this sort of camera will get, more than adequate.

There are drawbacks of course; the controls being down the side of the camera make it a little difficult to operate when you are driving, making the claim made in the advertising blurb that in the case of an accident you can take a shot to prove innocence patently impossible. The port controls down the far side - away from the driver - means that to do anything with those you have to swivel the camera's gimbal and therefore lose any settings you have in terms of positioning. It will be much better if the unit was made a little bit larger and all controls and ports were on the rear and therefore immediately accessible. Another problem is the LCD itself. Although it flips down it doesn't have any latitude in its positioning. It's either open or its shut. This means that depending on where on the windscreen it is mounted, the angle you are viewing it at means that sometimes you can't see an image, just vague shapes; the viewing angle is very shallow in other words. I’d also like to see a brightness control available for the LCD.

The menu system is quite straightforward although it is not immediately obvious that after selecting a menu item, chosen by pressing up or down keys, you press the record key.

These are mainly niggles I admit, but if implemented would make a better than average product become a very good product.

One small issue is that is after release of the unit, Kaiser Bass discovered that the original DriveCam name they've marketed the unit under has been elsewhere trademarked. This means there is a number of firmware upgrades needed in order to add some new features and also replace the existing splash screen. This is an easy process however.

Contact: Lako Pacific – www.lakopacific .com

Price: $99.95

Auscam Scoreboard

Performance                          8/10

Documentation                      7/10

Features                                7/10

Setup                                    8/10

Value for Money                     9/10

Help Functions.                      6/10

To go into the draw to win one of three Kaiser Baas Car Cameras, simply click here and follow the easy instructions!

By David Hague

David Hague is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He now lives back in WA (Mandurah) on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety (he is on the Roadwise committee for Mandurah City Council), fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com, vbthedog@gmail.com via Twitter via @vbthedog. or