Documenting adventures with minimal effort to relive them later: My experience with GoPros

Background

I bought my first GoPro in 2011, stuck it on my helmet and went dirt biking. The video was OK, but it didn’t “pop” like the ads. The only moments worth watching were the crashes. The rest of the feature-length video was torturous monotony.

Part of the problem was editing. Having only one distorted fisheye perspective was a bore, and the overall video quality didn’t make me feel like I was reliving the ride at all. The audio was a joke.

After a while I started editing videos down to concentrate the action e.g. turning a 12-hour ride into a 6-minute clip. I got good results by alternating between first-person and ride-bys, splicing in some drone footage and adding dramatic music in the background. This was my approach to documenting the motorcycle adventure I took with my father in Europe in September 2017.

But this process of editing is incredibly time consuming, so invariably I ended up compromising on quality, and it made me sick of the footage itself. I still haven’t edited our Scotland trip because I’ve burned out multiple external hard drives just trying to wrangle the terabytes of 2.7k 60fps video all into one place. Bummer.

These days I’m somewhat less ambitious, but the end result is still worthwhile. I use my action camera to document my rides so I can watch them on days when I can’t get out. I try to shoot only my favorite parts (often descents) to minimize time spent editing and maximize the “flow”.

Experiment results as follows.

Which action camera to buy?

I’m still mad at GoPro for all the random bugs I have to work around. To fend off Chinese competitors they prioritize gimmicky new features over stability and quality. Nevertheless, they’re probably the most user-friendly of the bunch (based on independent reviews). I think the Hero7 (two generations old at time of writing) is a good value at the moment, as is the DJI Osmo Action. In 2020, for around $200 you get remarkable 4k60 100mbps video quality in lightweight and robust package.

I’m intrigued by the Sony RX0 ii, which promises vastly better image quality and more advanced tuning options. The inability to autofocus while shooting doesn’t bother me in my “like you’re really there” use case as much as it would bother somebody who frequently alternates between close and faraway subjects (e.g. a selfie-happy vlogger). But it’s pricey and doesn’t do 4k @ 60fps (or even 2.7k60), which is a shame. Perhaps they’ll fix that with their next revision. I would still snap one of these up if the price fell.

Whatever you buy, it’s crucial to play around and get to know it before you take it on any once-in-a-lifetime trips. In general you’ll improve the quality more by rapid-prototyping with a mid-spec camera than you would by plonking down an extra $200 for the latest-and-greatest flagship GoPro.

Mount

The best mount is the one can you bring everywhere without it being a huge burden. For a while I used chest and helmet mounts like every nerd out there but at this point I’m convinced the best option is a chin or mouth mount. Wrap-style full-face helmet chin mounts are available on Amazon for like $15, but if you’re not wearing a full-face you can use something like the Pro Standard Grill Mount. Not only is your head an excellent gimbal, but the perspective also looks quite natural. It’s easy to simply pop it out of your mouth for quick third-person perspectives as well. It’s less fussy than any other mount and it’s incredibly versatile. I do recommend molding the part that you bite down on in hot water to match your teeth - this way it doesn’t require as much teeth-clenching (which, believe it or not, gets tiring after a while) to keep the camera secure.

Resolution

If you’re just shooting for Instagram, 1080p is going to look great. If you (like me) want to watch your videos on your computer or (gasp) your TV, the upgrade to 4k will be noticeable. In a pinch, 2.7k is a reasonable compromise and is vastly easier to edit.

Fun fact: If you shoot in 4k or 2.7k and downscale to 1080p in post, the resulting footage looks considerably sharper than it would if you had just shot in 1080p to begin with.

Frame rate

24fps looks cinematic, but in first-person action cam footage it can look really choppy depending on shutter speed (see subsequent section on shutter speed). 30fps looks fine. 60fps looks smooth and glossy - ideal for flow. Most electronic image stabilization (EIS) is optimized for higher frame rates. Most monitors can’t even display more than 60fps, so the only reason to go higher is if you want to do slow-mo stuff.

Shutter speed

I wouldn’t insist on strict adherence to the so-called “180 shutter rule” (shutter open duration = 1/2 frame rate), but it’s a good starting point.

If you’re shooting lower frame rates (24-30fps), your footage will look weird and jerky if your shutter speed is too high (faster than 1/60 or so). On the other extreme end, lazier shutter speeds contribute to motion blur; i.e. You can make first-person video look super fast by having a longer shutter speed. This is fine and dandy, but it causes a weird jittery effect when combined with electronic image stabilization. My advice: If you’re using EIS (rather than a gimbal) in a first-person action video, keep the shutter speed at 1/120 or greater (preferably 1/240).

A not-fun fact: With GoPros, shutter speed is either fully auto or fixed. It’s a shame one can’t specify lower and upper bounds like you can with ISO (to be discussed later).

A fun fact: If you shoot in bright environments a lot, you can slow down your shutter speed without overexposing by using something called an ND filter. We don’t have bright environments in the PNW in November, so I haven’t messed around with this yet.

ISO

Oversimplified: The ISO is your image sensor’s sensitivity to light. Raise it and the image will get brighter, but also grainier.

Exposure comp

The camera has its own idea about optimal exposure (put simply: image brightness), and in the case of GoPros, they seem to always overexpose (stuff is too bright). This stinks, because for “blown out” whites there’s no way to recover that detail in post, and it can look really bad. Thankfully, most cameras allow you to adjust the “EV Comp”. Setting this to a negative value will cause the camera to underexpose relative to its intuition. Unfortunately this option is greyed out when shutter speed is manually selected (even though the camera still uses a floating ISO to adjust exposure).

Color

There are lots of good tutorials out there on how to do professional-style color correction and grading. Personally I never got the hang of it. I’m the color equivalent of tone deaf, so sometimes I’ll edit something on Monday only to revisit it on Friday and discover an ugly green tinge that I hadn’t noticed before. In any case, my goal isn’t to capture color exactly as it happened - with “like you’re really there” videos I want the color to make me feel like I felt on the day of the shot. So I take a shortcut and use something called FilmConvert (atop Final Cut Pro X). For me, FilmConvert is the perfect balance of user friendly but powerful. I’m going to mangle the terminology here, but here goes: It can take the ugly flat video files produced by my camera and apply look-up tables (LUTs) to make that footage look like it was shot on a specified type of film. This makes it ideal for quickly adding character to the shots, as well as matching the color between multiple different cameras from multiple manufacturers. It’s kinda like an Instagram filter, but a little more powerful and not ugly and overblown - so I guess more like a Lightroom preset.

White ball

I record native white ball and adjust the temperature in post. If you have no idea what I just said: Cameras don’t know what should be truly neutral white. It’s like how we were confused by The Dress. Shooting native white ball seems to give me plenty of flexibility to fix in post.

Result:

Not so bad, right? I notice a couple of remaining issues: The wind noise is distracting and the Hero7 tends to jam up for all the good parts (in this case the descent). Despite searching online I haven’t found a good solution for the freezing-up other than to stop and re-start the video periodically before it has a chance to crash. I’ve tried factory resets, new SD cards, varying resolution and frame rate settings, etc…it’s just a known issue with the Hero7, they tend to crash a lot. It seems to happen less if the equipment is kept physically warm, and if you use fully charged batteries all the time (even though the batteries typically have 30-40% charge left in them when the camera fails).

The wind noise was a considerably easier fix: You buy the GoPro a little sweater for it to wear that covers the mic and protects it from wind.

Put all these things together and you can get some fairly nice looking video that makes you feel like you’re really “there”, with minimal effort.

Trail Riding Mount St. Helens

On a clear day in the Pacific Northwest, you can look to the horizon and see mountains. It’s beautifully eerie. Rainier, St. Helens, the Olympics, Hood, Adams - these guys loom over you day and night, in clear weather and in haze whether you can see them or not. They were there long before you, and they’ll be there long after you leave.

As someone who grew up on the plains, I’m irrationally terrified of the giants that stand above us in the mist. I don’t know why. It’s almost like an inverse fear of heights - it’s not like I’m afraid to be atop these things. I’m just scared they exist.

On a foggy day some weeks ago, I was driving along some nice forest roads when I passed a sign for Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. Pulling over at a vista point, I saw pretty much nothing beyond nearby ridges. Sure wish it were clear today, grumble grumble. Might be a nice view.

In the time it took to find the next viewpoint and start the Peakfinder AR app, a light gust began to pull back the curtains on the giant that leered over me. I turned around and saw this great ominous shape, seemingly coming at me from the void.

I courageously drove away, pretending my mirrors don’t exist. Nope nope nope nope.

Photo credit: albertine.squarespace.com

About a month after my narrow escape from Mount St. Helens’ clutches, I found myself once again at its base, this time with a mountain bike - the fully rigid, dropbar Salsa Cutthroat (to be detailed in a subsequent post).

Just like I can’t explain my fear of mountains, I can’t explain what draws me to them, either. The thunderstorms from the previous night had been sporadically retreating, and the sun started coloring in the youthful forest that surrounds the volcano.

Yes, Mount St. Helens is an active volcano. It erupted - powerfully - in the spring of 1980. The force of this major event caused the biggest landslide in recorded history.

It lopped 1,300 feet off the top of the mountain and leveled much of the surrounding forestland, killing 57 people and thousands of animals. Scientists are still grappling with the biosphere’s continuing recovery and adaptation to a landscape that has only existed in a recognizable form for a few decades.

Ask anyone from the area old enough to remember and they’ll tell you where they were and what they were doing on that day when ash darkened the skies and rained down on cities as far away as Canada.

Today, you can just walk right up to this thing. Or ride. On this particular day, I parked at the trailhead, unloaded the bike and got ready to hop some roots.

At the start, the forest was lush with vegetation and full of old trees that had survived the blast. The ground was classic PNW mineral soil, admirably clomped and maintained by trail builders. Climbing a couple thousand feet over a few miles is a good workout and keeps the trail somewhat exclusive, which I am grateful for in this age of monuments being destroyed by hordes of selfie-snapping, fern-trampling litterers. (don’t get me started)

But anyway. As I approached the volcano, the trail got gnarlier: the edges were more overgrown, the roots were wetter and knucklier, and the clouds started to close in. The whole ensemble appeared to have been directed by Peter Jackson.

Every once in a while, there was an opening in the trees, and I looked up to see the mountain a lot closer than I remembered it being just a few minutes prior. In any case, gazing off the side of the trail soon proved to be sketchy - the paths were eroding in spots and the drop-offs were…severe.

Eventually, I reached a lookout just above the cloud line. That was when things started to get especially surreal, and more than a little scary. Gone was the familiarity of Northwest wooded single track - in this environment, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the scale of the topography.

The haze was swirling around me, selectively unveiling parts of the landscape while defying my best attempts to get a representative panorama. I was there alone - the only sounds I heard were the wind and the occasional pebble rolling its way down the unstable slopes into abyss. There wasn’t even much of an echo - the space was simply too open to bounce sounds back to you. The sheer bigness was somehow claustrophobic and suffocatingly, achingly beautiful.

That’s Mount Adams off in the distance (I think), distracting me while Mount St. Helens snuck up from behind.

It was difficult to judge how far away things were, like distant trails or passing marmots. President Jimmy Carter said the area made the surface of the moon look like a golf course, and I endorse that characterization. Ape Canyon is a jagged scar in the earth - a gaping mouth that you step around to continue along the trail. (I’m not totally sure where my instinctual fears went wrong, where I fear mountains in the abstract but have absolutely no qualms about casually stepping along damp rocks over a giant death-chasm.)

Here you can see where the trail follows the edge of the canyon and - look closely - slides into it, with Mt St. Helens as the backdrop.

My biggest regret for the day was riding there alone. I almost hit a snake, and wasn’t quite sure what my plan would’ve been had I been bitten. My gravel/road racing tires were designed to be light and supple, not tough or grippy on slippery roots, soft dirt or jagged pumice. I was running tubeless, with a basic patch kit and a single spare “get out of trail free” inner tube. My Salsa Cutthroat is fully rigid - no suspension on either wheel to take the edge off harsher bumps.

Now I’ve covered my bases with excuses, I won’t lie - there were some hike-a-bike moments where the trail dropped off and sidehill riding just didn’t seem wise, so I hoisted the bike over my shoulder and clambered around on foot. All this in mind, I didn’t “complete the loop” on this particular trip - that is, I did not ride beyond the Plains of Abraham and return via the Smith Creek trail - for various reasons I was on a schedule to return to Seattle that day.

I thoroughly enjoyed the descent back to the trailhead, though I wouldn’t call it a heart-pumping shredder in the same vein as Olallie - too many blind corners, sheer drop-offs and sneaky pedal-snatching rocks and roots hidden just behind seemingly soft vegetation along the edges.

As I rolled to the bottom, the sun came out again, and so did the rain.

If you have the chance to ride or hike this trail, do it. (and bring a friend)

I AM GOING ON A MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURE IN COLORADO

(...he proclaimed on that dreary afternoon)

Maybe this is bad judgment, or maybe it's a healthy departure from my comfort zone. I've decided that I spend too much of my life in the familiarity of flatness. I want to climb mountains - big ones. Actual, literal mountains. Like this one:

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Pikes Peak by Ahodges7

At this point I would love nothing more than to post up dozens of pictures of Colorado for you and I to gaze at - however, virtually all of them are copyrighted and I'm no thief. Don't worry - I plan on taking my A6000, a DJI Mavic Pro drone and a few GoPro cameras so I'll have plenty of media to post once I get there.

Colorado is a big state though, so we have to narrow down what we wish to see most. My head spins with the possibilities available to Coloradans. Beyond Pikes Peak, you've got Rocky Mountains National Park, the Rio Grande National Forest, the Alpine Loop, Aspen, Gunnison...all of these are surrounded by largely untouched public land and campgrounds a'plenty.

We can't be too hasty, however. Aside from most of Colorado currently being under varying feet of snow, work and personal commitments have me booked until Summer 2017 at the earliest. If I'm going to survive a trip up a fourteener, I also have some catch-up to do in the physical fitness department. All this in mind, I'm going to aim for week or so in late July, as that's when the most intense mountain passes open.

I'm told you can explore a lot of Colorado in a beige 2WD sedan, and even more in a rented Jeep. But to get to the most rugged areas you need something a little more stupider. Thankfully, I've been preparing for a while now:

My 2014 KTM 690 Enduro R

The 690 and I have only covered around 3,000mi together so far, mostly offroad and in the neglected wrinkles of Gulf Coast backcountry. While I was based in the US I fitted all the essential upgrades for safety, protection, capacity and performance. But when I was sent to the Netherlands, the cost of shipping and importing the 690 would have been prohibitive - instead, I stored it in Texas.

So I need someone to yank the 690 off the trickle charger, trailer it up to Colorado and help me sweep away the cobwebs. Thankfully, a willing individual exists and his name is Dad. He and I ducked out of a few Christmas traditions a bit early this year, to do some bike prep on the WR450F he'll be riding.

Oil, air filters, extended range fuel tank, tires, suspension, luggage racks, ECU tuning, street-legal lighting and registration...it was all on the table. We even managed to sneak out for a "dry run". Although our tool and camping gear wasn't finalized, we stuffed our bags full of extra water to simulate heavier loads. The bikes performed beautifully at Sam Houston National Forest's sandy, forgiving trails.

We have yet to see how they'll hold up at 14,000ft...

I've started up a thread on ADVrider (daydreamer's paradise) for folks to offer up suggestions on what we should take, where we should go and what we should be aware of before heading off into the wilderness.

Dad and I have done this kind of thing before - in 2013, we met up for some short-range dual-sporting around New Jersey:

Back then we used our cars as a "base camp", always returning at the end of the day to refuel, repair and sleep. This meant we could avoid weighing down our lightweight dual-sports with heavy tools and bulky camping gear.

In 2017, however, we're being a little more ambitious. For Colorado, we're going to venture farther from civilization, and we plan on spending at least a night or two camping in remote places, solely with equipment we carry on the motorcycles. You have no idea how exciting this is to me...

More scheming to follow!

Saluda NC, Fall 2016 - Part I

My family has deep roots, stretching generations, in the Great Smokey Mountains. It all started when my great grandfather got bitten by a snake in Florida, and was instructed by his doctor to seek high-altitude refuge from the Gulf Coast mugginess. He obliged, purchasing a few plots of land near the town of Saluda, NC.

My favorite way to start a day in Saluda is with an early wakeup. There's a quiet in the air, the slight smell of pine and feel of dew - and the morning light in fall is something special.

Don't forget your best friend -

and it's off to the trails to see some local flora -

There's a babbling brook you can traverse in your beloved duck boots, and a waterfall you perch over and make the photographer nervous -

Recently my dad and I have taken to expanding our family's holdings in Saluda, offsetting the expense with sustainable logging. The result has been some colorful views of the Blue Ridge that no one has seen in perhaps decades or more -

Miscanthus sinensis has been running wild in some of these forests. It was originally brought in as an ornamental adder to the native vegetation, but has since become something of an invasive nuisance. The tips appear fluffy, but are actually saw-like and the edge can cut your skin.

You'll find an abundance of pine in the Star Palace (the name will make sense later) -

You can return to the cabin to roast up some s'mores...but you might be tempted to head back into the forest in the night -

If you're the nighttime explorer type, I recommend lights. Big ones. And bring a buddy.

The deeper and darker you go, the brighter the stars in the night sky. This isn't a long-exposure photo -

More to come!