How to reduce vibrations to handlebars on aluminium road bike Question: How can I reduce the vibrations to the handlebars on an all-aluminium road bike?   Either to the rider's hands or to the camera, or both.

I have been riding an all-alloy road bike for the last couple months, and while its so much faster than the MTB its terribly tiring.

I've suspected that its a harsh ride because there are lots of buzzes and rattles that come and go with different road surfaces.

A recent night ride demonstrated the problem in pictures.... I have a gopro on the stem and here are some comparison shots.

Example Smooth Here's some tarmac which is less than a couple months old.  Its really nice on which to ride:


Example Buzzy Here are two stills cropped to show lights at night.  The road is chip-seal which is quite common locally.



A video at night time was no good, but here's a short clip showing the buzz in sunlight.

                
            

Hand interface  I've tried


Padded Cycling gloves - helped a little with the hands, but they were cold.  I've been wearing my full hand cycling gloves with no padding.
Hand positions - I'm 99% on the hoods, either near the bend or up on the brake hoods.  I never use the drops, they're out of reach, and the tops only occasionally.  On a long ride I might put hands on top of the brakes for some variety ("high hoods") 
Bar tape - I've fitted some bar tape which is labelled as "cork" but was really a diamond-shape of firm foam.  This helped, but the hand position is now unnaturally squishy.


Yet to try:


A shorter stem, the old one is 120mm long.  Finding one is difficult because its an odd sized quill stem.  Still searching.
A replacement front fork of steel or carbon ?  Seems like an expensive solution for an older bike.
Lower tyre pressure helps, but I'm over 100 KG so I can't really go lower than 100 PSI on 25mm tyres.  
Replacement bars ?  Would carbon bars be any better at damping the vibrations?
Other suggestions?


Camera mount  I've got one of these on my stem.  There's a layer of dense foam underneath which helps a little.



There are other mounts like this one, but they have no vibration take-up mechanism, so I'm leery about dropping money on them.


Searching web sites like instructables.com has returned steadicam-type mounts for hand usage, but not for biking.

Summary: How to reduce the road buzz that is transmitted through the fork/frame/stem and the handlebars?
I have an aluminium bike with a rubber dampener built into the handle bar, it's part of Specializeds range, not sure if there are general versions.

A suspension fork would iron out more bumps than a carbon one, but may not fit your bike.

I've taken videos from a handlebar mounted camera too and I think there will always be a lot of jolting that is impossible to dampen. Low light will make this worse.

I think the best answer is to use a helmet mounted cam, so the suspension system is your body and neck. I've seen some fantastic videos of the New York alley cat races and they all use helmet cams. They also need strong necks!

How much image stabilization can your camera provide?