I’m excited about the 2019 kayak racing (and video) season. I’ve made some changes to my video production, and I think they’re going to be great.
- I bought two new GoPro Hero 7 Black cameras. I’m really excited about these, because the stabilization is amazing. Also, they shoot in 4K/60. In the past, I’ve sort of vacillated between shooting in 1080p at 60 frames per second and shooting in 4K at 30 frames per second. I love the extra detail in 4K (even though I don’t know how many of my loyal watchers actually watch in 4K, I do and I love it) but I also like how much better the action looks at 60 frames per second. Now I don’t have to choose. I was lucky that GoPro had a trade-in deal where you could trade in any digital video camera in any condition and get $100 off, so I took advantage of that to get rid of some old cameras that don’t work any more, my old Kodak Playsport and my broken Polaroid XS100. I was also able to sell my Hero 5 Black for $150. I’ve hung on to my Hero 5 Session, but I have a couple of ideas on how to use that that I’ll talk about down below.
- I also bought a new Final Cut Pro X plugin that will allow me to (hopefully) put labels on moving objects (ie other paddlers). I have some ideas on how to use that, I hope they look at good as I think they will.
- In order to get more battery life out of the Hero 7s, I’m going to be using two of the same combination waterproof case + sidecar battery that I’ve been using on my bow in 2018. I’m not looking forward to having that on my head as it’s 120 grams heavier than the former setup with the Hero 5 Session and the external battery. But those are the sacrifices I make for my art.
- Unfortunately the waterproof case means the cameras won’t pick up any of the sounds of the race. I’m going to miss having the dialog – one of the cool things about racing is the way people talk to each other in the middle of a race, and I always tried to capture that in my videos. I’ve been looking through various sites with Creative Commons licensed music and I’m thinking about going back to having music instead of the sounds of the race. Hope you all like Celtic music.
- Another possibility is to use my Hero 5 Session behind me facing backwards to provide a view behind me when people are riding my wake (which happens distressingly often) and also to pick up some sound.
- If I don’t do that, another thought I had was to use the Session to try to capture some of ambiance of the pre and post race activities. Maybe that’s just because last weekend was the Banff Mountain Film Festival at RIT, and I’m inspired by their story telling.
- Ok, now for the hard part. Obviously I’ve spent a bunch of money on my video equipment this year, and there are a few other things I would like, including a SSD (solid state drive) to make my video production faster. So this year, I’m going to try to put a link on every video where people can buy me a virtual coffee. Maybe if some of the people who tell me how much they love my videos put their money where their mouths are, I can get that SSD this year.
