Last season I started ramping up my boating videos. The goal was to capture smooth video with good audio while at the same time maintain a horizon that was horizontal. In the past I used a hand-held cam but when things got more exciting, shall we say, one really needs both hands for the boat so the cam gets put away. Don’t want to loose it overboard or have an accident.
Taking steady video on a boat where the waves are constantly causing motion changes to the boat and the videographer on board isn’t conducive to smooth shooting with both hands. Or even one hand for that matter.
After analyzing various options I decided to join the action-cam crowd. The problem with the action cams is their video quality isn’t as good as the bigger cams and their controls and everything else is more limited. However, for real action the picture quality doesn’t need to be as perfect.
I already had a Sony AX53 with a gimbaled lens but it isn’t one that I wanted to expose to the salt spray as it isn’t weatherproof. Sony recently came out with the FDR-X3000 action cam that also has the gimbaled lens design and it has the weather sealed capability so I decided to try it out. At the end of last spring I set it up on my boat / mountain bike to see how it would work and after some setup tweaking the results were really good.
The best bike setup was with a separate mic to provide the audio. The mic is a Røde SVM that provides a stereo input and the wind screen was a Rycote Softie (that’s their marketing term). The setup doesn’t maintain a horizontal horizon but it is close and the biking videos look very good and the audio is excellent.
The next step was to rig something up on the boat. To maintain the horizontal horizon an electronic gimbal was added to the system. The initial test sails using the X3000, Røde mic, and gimbal mounted on the radar mast support were really good. Both the cam and the gimbal can be controlled (start, stop, zoom, and direction; both up, down, and horizontal) with an app on the iPhone, AND ... one can actually see the video being recorded on the iPhone. Really neat.
Unfortunately, right after getting everything sorted out the weather changed. Forest fires all along the Pacific coast caused unbearable smoke and this effectively ended our boating season for the year. By the time the smoke started to subside it was time to catch up on household maintenance for the little bit of outdoor season that was left. We really hope that this season will be different because we’re ready. Well, after doing a bottom job, anyway.
This season is going to be a GREAT season for boating videos.
Below is a picture of the bike-cam rig with the mic.