Posted by: RAHrider
Where do you carry the camera? My phone slips in my jersey pocket and is water (sweat) proof. I haven't owned a camera in a decade, curious what they are like now....
Good question as that answer drove what camera I bought. If I put the camera in a backpack I could both carry a bigger format camera and protect it well enough that damage was unlikely. Thing is I hate packs while riding so I'd never have the camera with me and even if I did wear a pack having to stop, take off the pack, find the camera and then snap a photo would mean it rarely got used. Carrying a camera on a waist belt/fanny pack is an easy way to damage it...which gets expensive and I don't like wearing even a fanny pack when I ride. Also falling on a hard object like a camera could result in a bad injury if it was in the spine area like fanny pack.
Both of my shreddy hardtails have the same two frame bag setups shown above. The lower one is harder to access, but holds all my tools/supplies. So I put the camera in the upper one. It's easy to access and I've never damaged anything I've put in a frame bag like that so the camera is pretty safe.
I put the camera inside a padded case. I don't bother zipping it up. It's just meant to keep the camera from banging around in the frame bag, which it does well.
Then the padded case goes into my frame bag. There is enough room left in there for a couple energy bars and a wind vest so I still get some cargo capacity out of that bag. When I want the camera I leave the padded case where it is and just pull out the camera. That saves me a step and makes the whole process more efficient for quickly snapping a photo.
Is it worth it? It just depends how much you care about taking photos on rides. There is no right or wrong answer. I hate taking shitty blurry ride photos in the [usually] dark forest. So I either want to take quality photos or not bother at all. When I was just using my phone's camera I was ending up with photos I was embarrassed to share, but at the same time I wanted to post stuff about my rides on forums and my blog. Photo above is my phone and photo below is the G7. Similar winter riding situations.
All in all I am pretty happy with the G7. It's not the highest quality camera I could have bought, but the small size and relatively low cost mean I'll take it with me every ride and the image quality is definitely a step up from what I was able to take with my phone.