FPS cams?

[drg]

Outdoor

That does help the Oregon Scientific one then. It's hard to beat the price for an integrated unit like that. Alternatively you can consider a small all-in-one device (Aiptek type) or video-capable still camera, and rig up a mounting system. Sometimes those can produce better video at that price point.

[Severe]

I've made a number of FPS videos using the ATC2K helmet cam. It's functional but obviously you get what you pay for. You should be able to find these cams on Ebay or various other e-tailers for under your $100 budget.

You can sample my vids at http://www.youtube.com/severevsf

I've tried several options with the cam with mounting. So far, having it on the opposite side of my shooting hand appears to work best. I've done this with my teammates also. Mounting on the barrel/marker, gives you a unique perspective but most shooters don't keep their markers up for good video except when shooting.

A couple of pointers.

YouTube video quality is MUCH worse than the camera can do. I use a 2GB SD card recording at 640x480@ 30FPS in .avi. I edit my vids using Windows Movie Maker and reduce the size to 320x240 so it's closer to the native YouTube resolution. Unfortunately you get in to a problem where the cam is compressing the video and then YouTube does it again. The end result is quality suffers. However, I have not uploaded any new videos since YouTube moved to the 1GB file size limit and the 480x360 resolution.

Sound. The ATC2K is designed to be 'waterproof' to 3 feet or so. For me, it has been in some rafting tests. However, for paintball, you'll need to modify the cam to get decent sound quality. Basically there's a rubber cover to the mic. If you remove this and then put a small piece of cotton/sound dampener material in, sound quality is significantly better..but you loose the waterproof feature. It is reversible so no worries.

The ATC2K is a fun little toy, but if you can hold off and save a bit more money, I'd recommend checking out VHoldR from Twenty20. It's about $350 but significantly better than the ATC-2K. Is it 3x better?...I don't know for sure.