Self-leveling camera head

A self-leveling camera head includes an eccentric leveling weight assembly that is supported inside an outer housing for free rotation about an axis. The leveling weight assembly can be removably coupled to a separate camera module assembly supported inside the outer housing for rotation about the axis so that its images will be "upright", i.e. earth normal. A slip ring assembly includes a fixedly mounted connector assembly that removably mates with a contact assembly mounted to the camera module assembly. In an alternative embodiment the camera module assembly does not rotate within the outer housing. Instead a processing circuit processes a video output from a high resolution image sensing device in the camera module assembly, generates a sub-sampled region and rotates it into a predetermined orientation for display. The output of an orientation sensor in the camera head may be processed to achieve the predetermined desired orientation of the video that is stored or displayed.