Wearable Cameras and Microphones
A major focus of our research is using head-mounted cameras to capture a child’s perspective on their early environment.
At the moment we’re using two types of camera to do this. First, for a project where we need an entire day’s worth of data, we’re using the Narrative Clip cameras – which are small and light enough even for a small baby to wear. For reasons of battery life we’ve adapted them to record a 5-second burst of video every minute. And after much umming and aahing we’re building them into clothes, on childrens’ lapels – which means we get lots of shots showing just the bottom halves of peoples’ faces! – but does mean that they stay in position nicely and give us a whole days’ worth of recording.
The other type of camera that we’re using, for shorter recordings, is the Babyeyes camera. This gives us about two hours’ worth of continuous recording before the battery runs out. We’re putting it on a headband on our participants’ heads – and it’s proving really good data so far!
