Wanted to point out a fairly new product on the market that may be of interest to illusionists or magicians. We recently purchased 5 of these http://www.gopro.com cameras in which are very small, come in protective cases, and the cases are waterproof. What makes these handy are the various ways they can be mounted. These cameras were featured at xgames due to their easy of mounting. Where do illusionists come in....

...some of you use cameras on stage to project to a large screen. Now you can mount these whereever you need...a closeup table or even on your body to give people a magicians eye view of an illusion. Havent thought a lot about it, but I know there is an application or two out there. These cameras record on SD memory cards. The best part, they record full HD in various formats. They also act as a still camera in shich you can time it to take a number of photos in a row. A professional photographer will normally take 10 or more shots of movement and you pick out the best. This camera does it for you, and you choose how its timed.

These are being used in high speed and action sports for the most part...but my company has been using them to film things we avoided in the past...for example tree trimmers up 40 feet in trees cutting branches...the camera is mounted on the worker. Weve recently done 2 car commercials mounting the cameras all over the car for a number of views. Ive now mounted one of these on my roll on table I use on stage as well as 2 are suction cupped to the front stage. During the show, my tech has the option to project either camera onto the screen without the need of a camera man or large bulky cameras.

Check them out...highly recommended at the price. In my opinion, they are about $600 to cheap considering all of the applications on land and water. Id be interested to hear how others might use them in the entertainment world.

Definitely will be purchasing one of these.

Was surprised I actually only heard about these when the 3D set up came out.

Certainly a lot cheaper than the Canon 5D MKII. The picture compares favorably, especially in wide-angle applications.
Very unobtrusive for stage work too. A clever set designer could make them invisible.

We have 3 GoPros. One older SD and two newer HD versions. We use them in various ways, both professionally and for personal use. In our stunt show, Movie Stunt Adventure, we use them to shoot video of patrons going through our stunt course. On their final jump they wear the camera on their head so they can share with everyone their point of view when making a high fall.

We use them for promo purposes. We have placed them in Kristen's water torture cell many times...including when we had a three foot rare albino alligator in the water cell with her. We also place them on our Kabuki drop when Kristen is doing her aerial stunts. Most all these examples can be seen on youtube on our channel. http://www.youtube.com/livingillusions

For personal use, we place them on our motorcycles when we're going out to great riding places like Deal's Gap(The Dragon).

They are great cameras and the 3D setup is brilliant in how it works.

Several months ago they were selling these at Costco. They were only SD version I believe, just remember that something was downgraded from the more expensive versions.
But they may work for your needs if they still carry them. I've used them the last couple years for event videos whereever water is involved. Provide great POV shots for water slides and that type of thing because of the waterproof casing and being able to easily strap them on people.

I have one similar http://replayxd.com/product/replay-xd108......-system/

Living Illusions....great to hear that you take advantage of these cameras for magic. I was hoping someone would bring up the water torture cell or similar. Great work! Heres something to think about, and you may have already done this. But you can show your uses of the gopro on gopro's facebook page. With audience they have on their page, you would get a ton of exposure...and appreciation from the company in how you used their cameras. Go post how you used their cameras with a link to your video and see what happens.

I recorded myself doing "ice from water". To ensure there was nothing in the water that someone couldn't see on youtube video, I dipped the camera in the water and the water was clearly empty. I posted it on gopros facebook and got over 300,000 hits on the video in two days. I took the video down shortly after as I added this aspect to my stage show by dipping the camera in water for people to see on a large screen and didn't want the idea copied...im sure it will eventually get copied, but no reason to keep and educational video on youtube for all to easily find.

Videoman....great idea on the water slide, ive thought about that for our local park. There are so many applications for video producers. Ive got an entire list of clients I would not have been able to satisfy with regular cameras, much like you mention with the water park.

Tommy, Ive seen this one before. Its another nice camera..my only negative finding was it was so easy to rotate the camera just slighly where the video was not level. But there are a number of applications in which this camera is as good if not better in certain cases. I personally like the gopro due to the destruction proof casing because in the cases I'm using these, there is always good chance for injury to the camera itself. Thanks for your link though...may look more into getting one to put in my case.