I tried making a mouth mount for my GoPro myself once. I took an old mouth piece from the diving mask snorkel, lots of silvertape and I taped the standard mount to it, screwed in my GoPro and off I went. It kind of worked, but it also kind of didn’t. The silicone mouth piece was too soft and the GoPro bounced, rocked and swayed like the head of that bobble-head dog puppet that people have in their cars. That dog looks cute, but shaky GoPro footage doesn’t, it’s only useful to get rid of unwanted house guest by forcing them to watch two hours of footage from your last surf trip (this works especially well if they aren’t surfers). Next idea was to simply bite into the foam of the floaty backdoor that you should have on your camera anyway if you are bringing it into the water. This works. But it does get annoying fast because your jaw starts to hurt and you footage will feature lots of perv like heavy breathing. Which comes in handy only in certain type of footage…ahem. So I was happy when I got a chance to test the mouth mount from Ho Stevie that is made especially for GoPro and for surfing (check the link if you want it).
Here is what was in the package:
The mount works really well. The mouth piece fits great between your teeth and is just the right hardness, anodized aluminium bolt feels really solid in compare with the standard GoPro bolts and the camera stays in place. If you put the float cushion on the backdoor of your housing the mount is just the right size so that the cushion sits on your chin which makes the camera and the footage even more stable. Using a leash you can secure the camera to your wetsuit or around your neck and you are good to go.
Surfing With GoPro in Your Mouth
I had no troubles paddling, duckdiving, and surfing with the mount in my mouth. There are even holes at the end of the mount through which you can breathe and if you don’t breathe in during duckdiving (it’s not an underwater breathing apparatus:) ) no water will get into your mouth. Thumbs up. Even though it is designed for surfing that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for other purposes. It is really practical because you just take it out of your pocket stick it into your mouth and you are good to go. No screwing, adjusting, and asking your friends “Is my GoPro on? Is the red light blinking? Can you check?”. Of course it works better on certain occasions and in others not so well. Here is a short test of what you can do with this mount :)
If I had to mention a weakness then it would be that after catching a few consecutive waves, when you get your heart pumping, the air holes feel a bit small and I needed to take a few lungfuls of air without the mount in my mouth. And that if the bolt is not screwed into the nut to hold the camera in place the nut can fall out of the mount and you might loose it, so be careful.
This is pretty much it, if you are tired of surfing footage featuring you doing squats on your board mix it up with this mount:) Here is a short video from our last windswell chasing surf trip.