Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction-Cup Mount

by Panavise

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 13 x 3 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000246ST6
• California residents: Click here for Proposition 65 warning.
• Item model number: 809
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (153 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: June 25, 2004

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

A powerful suction pad attaches this mount to car, truck, van and SUV windows. Designed for temporary surveillance or in-vehicle camera systems. Ideal for POV cameras, camcorders and action sports cameras.

Product Description

PanaVise is a major manufacture of CCTV Camera Mounts & Audio/Video Mounts. PanaVise's "Tilt, Turn & Rotate" technology has been applied to the CCTV Camera Mount Line & The Audio/ Video Mount Line. There's a camera mount available for every installation requirement! All PanaVise Products are covered by a Limited Lifetime Warranty!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

149 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More solid than expected, April 4, 2009

By 

Tomas (University Place, WA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction-Cup Mount (Electronics)

Length:: 1:44 Mins

I was looking for a simple way to attach a camera to the windshield of my Scion xB to enable me to record on-the-go videos quickly and easily.

When I got the Panavise 809 from Amazon, my first reaction to it was amazement at how heavily it was constructed, and how well all the individual parts did their job.

Since getting it, I've made a number of videos using it, and one video showing it in use.

It holds the camera very steadily, is very easy to set up, and is EASILY worth the price at Amazon.

Recommended

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too much vibration, December 14, 2009

By 

david_f_knight - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction-Cup Mount (Electronics)

Due to the low price and generally good reviews, I bought this item. The suction grip is very strong; there seems to be no risk that this will fall off a window even with a small camcorder attached. Mine did not come with the extension arm, so my camcorder had to be mounted upside down on the windshield. The image can easily be rotated 180 degrees within Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9 editing software, so being upside down is not a problem for me. Furthermore, having an extension arm might likely result in less stability, so it's probably best to use the shortest/sturdiest mount possible. (I haven't tested that claim so it might not be true.) My camcorder, with optical image stabilization, zoomed all the way out for the widest view (also the least sensitive to vibration), and driving on a reasonably smooth paved road even as slow as 20mph exhibited very noticeable vibration. The vibration is too great to use the video. Much smoother video is obtained by hand holding a camcorder in a moving vehicle; your body and arms act as shock absorbers and dampen vibration preventing it from reaching the camera. With this mount, small vibrations from the moving vehicle are transmitted directly to the camcorder and it seems to be amplified by the time it gets there. Furthermore, my high-definition camcorder, with a CMOS image sensor (which uses a "rolling shutter"), exhibits noticeable skewing artifacts from frame to frame as a result of the vibration, so there are not just blurred frames and jittery motion, but distorted frames as well. Consequently, even using a motion stabilization algorithm during post production won't produce acceptable results.

This mount should be excellent for situations where there is no vibration and no need to pan or otherwise modify the camera settings or view during exposure, but seems useless from a moving vehicle unless it's moving very slowly on smooth pavement.

---------- IMPORTANT UPDATE -----------

I just noticed a few recent reviews that mentioned they received a knock-off, rather than a genuine Panavise 809. After studying the Panavise picture on this page very closely, I see that my unit is not a genuine Panavise 809, either. (There is no manufacturer or product ID on my unit or on the packaging, so I have no idea who manufactured it or what its true model name is.) I purchased my unit from Vangoddy through amazon.com. Perhaps that explains why so many other reviews are so good (especially the video review left by Thomas which shows, though at slow speed, how good his unit works) and my results are so bad -- and I mean BAAAD, truly unusable. There is no comparison between the results I obtained and those that Thomas showed in his video.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but not for off-label use, June 29, 2008

By 

New Englander (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panavise 809 Camera Window Suction-Cup Mount (Electronics)

This clearly is designed to be a CCTV mount. As such, with most CCTV cameras having top mounted attachment, I have no doubt that it works flawlessly.It is very well constructed and does indeed have amazing suction power and solid construction without any "wriggles".

I bought it hoping that I could use it on the fairly steeply raked windshield of a late model Civic to film driving routes with my digital camera. Even though I have a low profile "ultracompact" digital camera, there was not enough room between the windshield and the mount to allow me to mount the camera - unless I mounted it upside down, which I obviously could not do because of the inability to rotate the resulting movie.

FORTUNATELY I discovered that the Civic has a flat non-porous ( i.e. plastic ) top gauge cover, and was able to mount it on that. But the vast majority of cars have curved top gauge covers, so I don't think this will be suitable for any but a few car models for the purpose I'm using it for.

If Panavise could come up with the same assembly and a U - shaped holder for mounting a camera with a standard tripod screw thread from the bottom, BELOW the mount - now that would be far more useful.