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.

Cool concept - a little camera called "Light"

This is the first time I can remember clicking on an ad and being pleasantly surprised by what was on the other side - this goofy-lookin' thing:

http://light.co/camera

My understanding is it's 16 small lenses and image sensors stuffed into one pocketable device. Up to 10 of those...sub-cameras?...take a picture when you hit the shutter. After the fact, you use software to choose from and/or combine the images - sort of like sequential HDR, but simultaneous and across multiple parameters like exposure, focal length, aperture etc. That's really neat!

You can read all the good stuff about it at light.co. Me, I have a few reservations:

1. Price is $1,699 (minus a $400 discount for preorders). That's full-frame DSLR territory. I try not to spend that much on things I could easily put through the wash.

2. Sport shooting. They haven't unveiled how many frames per second this camera will take or how fast the shutter (shutters?) will be.

3. Low-light performance. Getting a large number of small sensors with different lenses to capture light in a seamless manner, like a large sensor can, sounds like a big technical hurdle to me, and the result might look really weird.

4. Resolution/file size/storage. On their website they say the camera might capture up to 130 megapixels at one time, but they don't give the resolution of the individual sensors. RAW images are typically around 1MB per megapixel, I believe. Their current spec says they're packing 128GB of built-in storage to the camera, which is a lot, but doesn't appear to be expandable. If my math is right, this means you should be able to store at least ~1,000 images on the camera, which isn't too bad for day-to-day use but won't cut it on a longer vacation with no computer.

5. No interchangeable lenses, so if you don't like the 16 you have on there...well, too bad. How are you going to keep scratches off all them little spider-eyes?

In short, this is an amazing concept - whether it's any good or not will depend entirely on execution.

I'm watchin'.

Sony Alpha 6000 Review for Non-Photography Folk

A relative asked me how I liked my Sony Alpha 6000 digital camera. I like it a lot, for many reasons! Instead of trying to talk really fast, I’m compiling my thoughts here.

So - what is the A6000? Let’s start with the lens format. This is an E mount camera, compatible with any E mount lens. The ability to swap lenses is why it's better than your iPhone.

Most cameras with interchangeable lenses are DSLRs. A DSLR has a mirror inside that enables an optical viewfinder. However, the A6000, along with every E mount camera, is mirrorless, so there’s no optical viewfinder - just a digital one. This isn't a big deal for most people.

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This picture (taken with a Canon T3i) shows how compact the A6000 really is

What matters is this: The omission of a mirror makes the camera cheap and compact. Depending on the lens, you can probably cram an A6000 in your coat pocket. Plus, the design has fewer moving parts - ideal for reliability.

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35mm, 1/640 at f/2.0

You know what else is handy? Reallydamnfastshooting (11 shots per second) and continuous autofocus to follow your subject mid-pounce. Sony says it's the fastest autofocus in the business, and I believe them. The video mode is top-notch, but who needs it when you can take 11 still shots per second?

Shooting at 11fps is ideal for capturing "the" moment...

...and 10 other moments every second that you don't really care about.

Mastering the shooting modes is simple. The interface is intuitive, even though the buttons are cramped on the small body. What you hold feels extremely well put-together. Small details - machined metal surfaces, engraved lettering - are nice touches on the attractive design. The camera presents like a miniaturized DSLR, eschewing plasticky cost-cutting measures that plague most mirrorless competitors.

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Pictured with the E mount 50mm f1.8 mounted, plus the 55-210mm f4.5-6.3 and 35mm f1.8 - all with Sony's superb OSS stabilization.

Cheap, convenient, capable and easy to use…what’s the catch? Well, the APS-C image sensor here (much like most DSLRs under $1,500) is 33% smaller than that of a full-frame DSLR. This means the A6000 will capture less light light and only 66% of the field of view that a professional-grade DSLR would, ceteris paribus. For any lens you buy, multiply the focal length by 1.5x to get what you can expect from the A6000’s cropped sensor (e.g. a 50mm on the APS-C will give you the same FOV as a 75mm on a full-frame DSLR). Whether the reduced light and FOV will bother you depends on how pro you want to get, particularly in low light.

How do you offset that disadvantage? I’m able to solve most low-light problems by removing the lens cap. Beyond that, be sure to pick the right lens for the job. I think the bundled master-of-no-trades lens greatly limits the A6000. Get the camera body alone, then pick a lens that suits your style.

The first lens I bought was Sony’s 55-210mm zoom. 210 x 1.5 = 315mm, which is a lot of zoom! You can capture faraway subjects, or dramatize your outdoor portraits by making the background look huge.

The second lens I bought is my walkabout - Sony's 35mm 1.8f fast prime. It’s not cheap, but it’s versatile and compact. Don't worry about the lack of adjustable zoom - with 24 megapixels, you have plenty of resolution to crop if you need to. I used this lens for most of my Washington vacation photos.

For portraits, I picked up a Sony 50mm 1.8f, another fast prime. If you can get space between you and your subject, this lens can save you big money over the 35mm. I haven't had a chance to use it a lot so far - "at home" pictures will have to do. Pets are always willing test subjects.

Albertine and I briefly compared the A6000 and her Canon Rebel T3i - a comparably priced but more traditional crop sensor DSLR.

For the Sony:

• Faster focusing and shooting
• Easier to carry and faster to whip out of a smaller bag
• Better video
• Blobbier bokeh
• Better dynamic range (more detail in extreme light/dark)

For the Canon:

• Cheaper and more readily available lenses
• Edgier bokeh
• Optical viewfinder
• Looks more legit

If you're doing action shots, there's no contest - Sony takes your cake. If you're doing more portrait-y stuff, it's not as clear. Here are some test shots with comparable lenses - the Sony had a 35mm f1.8 while the T3i was fitted with a 40mm f1.8. I threw in a couple shots with Albertine's new 6D (50mm f1.8) as well...though that shouldn't be a fair contest.

Most minute differences in color between the cameras could be ironed out in Lightroom. The T3i seems more ~dramatic~ in how color seems to bleed through the image. It shoots nostalgic photographs right out of the box. To get the same inspired effect, the Sony requires some Lightroom magickery. The 6D, being a full-frame DSLR, captures more light than the other two - but using the 50mm lens that was designed for crop sensors on it leads to some blur around the edges.

Of course there's more to image quality than that - you can find other websites if you want to zoom in on split hairs. Overall, I'd say the image quality of the Sony punches above its price point with accurate (if not dramatic) color and superb sharpness.

Of course there’s crap I don't like about it too.

First of all - E mount lenses are expensive. They're high quality, but it’s disappointing there aren’t more entry-level lenses that could get the job done.

Secondly - if you’re an aspiring semi-pro, nobody will take you seriously with a camera this small. This doesn’t bother me, but it’s something to consider if you’re trying to send a professional signal to clients.

Thirdly - as we alluded to earlier, the APS-C crop sensor means less light, all else equal. It's better than my old Micro Four-Thirds Lumix and worlds better than a typical point-and-shoot, but don't expect beautiful, creamy portraits at night. Left to its own devices, the little Sony will compensate by pumping up the ISO and/or exposure. You'll have to pick your poison between graininess or motion blur.

Fourthly - say you get hooked, and you want to purchase a full-frame body for better low-light/indoor performance. With a typical DSLR from Canon or Nikon, you can keep using your existing lenses and just upgrade the camera body (probably keeping the old body as a spare). Not so easy with E mount. While Sony's full-frame (A7) is physically compatible with E mount lenses, it needs fancier FE format lenses to leverage the enlarged sensor, and those cost big money over the E mount lenses you've already accumulated. You could just use the FE lenses on your A6000 to begin with, but they add cost and bulk over the standard E mount kits.

Finally - startup and memory card access speeds are not especially quick compared to all the other functions on the camera. They’re not terribly slow - just not as fast as I’d like for it to be the ultimate “holy-cow-it’s-a-whale” camera. ("holy-whale-it's-a-cow", maybe)

In summary: It's hard to find better image quality at this price point, let alone this portability factor. It's a fast, fun, willing companion that you can carry just about anywhere. Just be ready to pony up for the right lens, and steal your friend's full-frame DSLR when you need to work in low light.

Why are Motorcycles So Pollutive?

Let's start with a little-known fact: Motorcycles do not emit less than cars. There's a wealth of evidence to support this but if you want a snapshot, just look at the current EPA regulations -

This is how many grams of hydrocarbons + nitrogen oxides new road-legal motorcycles are allowed to emit per mile traveled, viewed alongside the comparable figures for large SUVs and cars. The California Air Resources Board estimates that even though motorcycles travel less than 1% of the miles covered by Californians, they account for about 13% of the smog - an astonishing figure.

This is surprising, because motorcycles are fantastically energy-efficient - both tank-to-wheel and well-to-wheel, to reuse terminology from my previous post. Even heavy Harleys and hardcore Hayabusas seldom get less than 35mpg. My own 2008 Yamaha WR250R gets an EPA-estimated 71mpg.

(as we can see, energy efficiency and air emissions are two distinct concepts of sustainability. In this post, I limit myself to discussing air emissions, to keep things in scope)

There's a sliver of good news for two-wheeled environerds, however: As CO2 emissions seem to scale proportionately with fuel consumption, motorcycles do emit 25-40% less carbon dioxide than comparable cars. As we know, CO2 is the chemical compound most commonly associated with global warming (both natural and anthropogenic).

But how does it make sense that ultra-lightweight motorcycles, powered by essentially miniature versions of the engines found in cars, emit so much more nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, even though they get great gas mileage and emit substantially less CO2? The answer starts with catalytic converters.

Go stick your head under your car and look for one of these box thingys sitting somewhere along your rusted exhaust pipe. These little cans have been on every street-legal car in the US since 1975. Catalytic converters are useful because they chemically reduce smog-causing nitrogen oxides to relatively innocuous elements, nitrogen and oxygen. They also oxidize toxic carbon monoxide and oxygen into carbon dioxide, and they turn leftover hydrocarbons into more carbon dioxide and water vapor. Modern 3-way catalytic converters have drastically reduced the annual emission of nitrogen oxides from vehicle exhausts in the last couple of decades alone; this has had a tremendous impact in helping replenish the ozone layer and putting a lid on the severity of acid rain in the US. These little cans are great, but they're not magic - they convert harmful combustion byproducts (nitrogen oxides and unburnt hydrocarbons) into somewhat less harmful chemicals (principally, CO2). Despite this tradeoff, they do great net environmental good because the additional quantity of CO2 emitted as a result of their use is far less harmful than the nitrogen and unburnt hydrocarbons that would spew out of exhausts otherwise.

Catalytic converters aren't the only emissions control systems on your car. Other devices help too - like air injection systems (which help catalytic converters work more efficiently at lower temperatures) and evap canisters (which keep the noxious chemicals in your gasoline from evaporating out of your tank into the atmosphere). These have been a success story in cars for years; why don't they work on motorcycles?

It turns out these gadgets - in particular, catalytic converters - are pretty fidgety. Catalytic converters alone have to contain precious metals like gold and titanium to function properly and this makes them quite expensive - typically adding $1,000 or more to the price of a new car. They're also heavy, bulky, and some only work above a certain operating temperature (that's why some cars idle really fast on startup - to warm up the emissions equipment quickly).

All of these characteristics of emissions controls - bulky, heavy, expensive, temperamental - have been made to work in the context of cars that weigh 4,000lbs and cost $20,000, but they are antithetical to everything motorcycle. They don't scale well in applications smaller than a car; a good catalytic converter, along with a host of other emissions-regulating components, might only add 5-15% to the weight and cost of a car, but the same system on a motorcycle could possibly double the MSRP, choking the small engine and burdening the lightweight chassis with a lot of proportionate extra mass.

In addition, motorcycles models in America are typically sold in far fewer quantities than car models, so bike manufacturers lack the incentive to invest substantial fixed costs into refining their engines to reduce emissions. Gas bikes have to scrimp on their emissions equipment, and they pollute the air accordingly.

It gets worse when you consider how often motorcycle exhausts are gutted or replaced after leaving the factory. There exists an entire subculture of humans who live for opportunities to bolt more shiny things to their shiny rides.

I have not been able to locate a number for exactly how many two-wheelers run completely derestricted exhausts, but my anecdotal observations suggest that a large proportion of riders do it - every time you hear a motorcycle roar past at more than ~84 decibels, it's likely running an aftermarket can (the maximum sound law varies by state, but manufacturers usually just produce one model that is 50-state legal). This market for aftermarket exhaust systems is composed of well over 200 companies - each one shinier, louder and more pollutive than the last.

These systems, labeled for "show" or "closed-course use only", are frequently sold to street users with a wink and a tacit agreement not to inform the authorities. Modifying your vehicle's emissions equipment is illegal in the US (even for non-road engines) and aftermarket pipes are seldom equipped with even the pathetic catalytic converters found in stock motorcycle exhaust pipes.

While sometimes these exhausts are installed for purely cosmetic reasons (the vanity of the typical chromed-out hot-rodder cannot be overstated), sometimes riders have no choice but to rip out the anti-emissions components and replace them with derestricted substitutes. This is because some motorcycles - mostly offroad-biased competition bikes - are too "choked up" by their anti-emissions gear to even run properly. For example: The KTM EXC enduro machines, street legal since 2007, are infamous for being practically unrideable from the dealership. The evap canisters cause the bikes to stall at intersections, while the excessively lean air-fuel mixture causes erratic engine performance and overheating. Of course, the first thing a rider does after buying such a bike is rip off all the emissions "junk", rejet the carburetor so it burns more fuel and replace or derestrict the exhaust.

This is a lose-lose-lose scenario - manufacturers are forced to charge more for emissions components that riders consistently scrap, so these bikes are still dumping loads of noxious chemicals into the air and nobody's happy.

So, in answer to our title question: It's not just that gas motorcycles are inherently pollutive - it's a complete failure for our laws to correspond with either the goals of sustainability or the interests of riders. The status quo is not merely unsustainable; it's nonsensical.

It's true that there have been some technological gains in recent years that limit the insanity - most notably, the gradual replacement of mechanical carburetors with electronic fuel injectors for fuel delivery has allowed for very precise control of the quantity of atomized gasoline that enters the cylinder during the combustion cycle. Done well, this reduces emissions without burning up the engine or ruining its performance.

There's still a long way to go before gas-powered motorcycles can earn their reputation for environmental friendliness and efficiency. The question that remains is: Can motorcycle emissions control technology move faster than the politics of sustainability, or is the gas-powered two-wheeler soon to go the way of the banished two-stroke?