Tail mount
Also known as: rear mount, board tail mount
A camera fixed to the back of a board, bike or vehicle, looking forward past the rider towards whatever they are riding into.
Updated
What it means
A tail mount sits behind the subject and looks ahead. The rider stays in frame with the line in front of them, which is a composition no body worn mount can produce.
It gives the one angle that shows both the person and the terrain together. A Chest mount shows where somebody is going and a tail mount shows them going there, which is a different story.
The position also means the camera is low and close, so speed reads strongly. Ground passing a few inches from a wide lens is far more convincing than the same speed shot from further away.
How it works in practice
Mounting rigidly matters more than mounting precisely. A tail flexes under load and a mount that moves with it produces vibration that stabilisation then has to absorb.
Aiming slightly up keeps the rider in frame rather than the ground. A camera pointed level from a low position fills most of the frame with surface and loses the subject.
Checking the shot loaded rather than static is essential, since a board or a bike sits at a quite different angle with somebody on it than it does on a stand. A Front screen makes that check possible alone.
What to watch out for
Spray, mud and dust all arrive here first, so the lens needs checking between runs and a Lens protector is worth its weight on anything wet or dirty.
The mount is also the most exposed one on the vehicle, which makes a Camera tether the difference between losing a camera and retrieving it after a crash.
Vibration from a hard mount is a particular problem, because the frequency is high and regular rather than random, and that is precisely the kind electronic correction handles worst. A softer mount does more about it than any setting on the camera.
How RawClip handles it
Rear facing angles are weighted as action material rather than establishing, since they show the subject and the line together. Clips where the lens is obscured by spray or dirt score low and rarely survive into the cut.