Stationary camera

[allen-deckard]

Planning on (if I can make it work right) using my go-pro on my trip to do a time laps video. Just thought it might be different instead of just snap shots of lots of water.

Ok so heres the question.
Where to mount it?

• don't want it in the way
• Have to plug it in to keep electric cant just swap batteries all the time don't want to think about it
• obviously want a clear line of sight.

Have a couple thoughts. First is on the doghouse starboard side just off the pop top
I can face the camera forward BUT facing forward the sail is going to be in the way on one tack or another
I can face the camera aft but then your looking at where the boat has been and kind of looses the feel your on a sailboat but would give a clear line of sight of the water and sky at night.


I can mount the camera to one of the rails on the aft facing forward and would have a wider view and would be able to see more of the horizon on both tacks but looses a lot of view just because stuff is in the way.

Mounted to the bow would be rockin BUT just to much water up there and again have to run power to it.

My wife suggested mounting it to the mast facing forward thought about it cant decide it's that power cable that has me worried if it's raining or dew at night I don't think I can 100% seal it all from the elements. If I put it on the dog house facing aft it's under the Bimini at least partilally protected plus some creative waterproofing on my part.

SO throw it out there guys I've never done this not the best photographer what ya got for me I'm all ears. I'll see what I can use of them and what works the best when I'm trying it.

 

[Jackdaw]

We mount our primary GoPro on the aft pulpit of our boats looking forward. We have a secondary camera we use in other places, but aft rail looking forward gives the most consistently good shots. We have both stabilized and non-stabilized mounts. The stabilized is MUCH better for movies. We use a battery back for 2x the power/time, and shoot at 720px30, which gives the best combo of quality.mem usage and battery usage. To make time-lapse movies use 1MegPix images.

Leveled.

Non-leveled

PS - It's always good when your main-trimmer/tactician is looking BACK to check out the competition.

 

[Jacktar]

Looks like near transom on a rail or post is best for dramatic effect. But use mute button when the manure hits the propeller or posting it may be a problem. har har

 

[Daveinet]

I use a Sony POV camera with steady shot, which does incredibly well. I hang the camera on the backstay, which gives a pretty good shot of the whole boat. Even with the movement of the backstay, the steadyshot keeps it looking pretty good. Here is just some random video, so you can see the functionality of the location and camera. there is some loss of quality from the format conversion for Youtube, as the original looks much cleaner than the Youtube video.

 

[allen-deckard]

thanks for the ideas didn't think of the backstay. I'd have to do some creative thought to get either one to work with what I'm at least thinking of since it will be 2 weeks to a month that the camera will be running constantly I'm going to have to keep it dry since it will need constant power.

The whole thing may be a bust though never know gonna do some test shots before the trip though we'll see. I kind of like the backstay idea if I can get the power ran up there and waterproof the entire thing somehow.

 

[Daveinet]

i assume you already have the camera. My Sony is waterproof, which is nice. I like some of the shots I have of the camera just skimming the water. Haven't posted them on my channel yet, but they are kind of fun. My camera will go completely under water, we take it swimming. In the highest resolution, (60P) a 64 gig card will give you about 8 hours. If you turn off the WiFi, the battery will last much longer. I'd be inclined to swap the battery, rather than use external power. I just have a little L-bracket on the backstay. Using the plastic case, I can unsnap it and easily swap the battery without removing it from the mount.

 

[allen-deckard]

yah I own my gopro 4 black so that's not changing with the price of them hehe

Mine will go down several hundred feet I've put mine on a fishing line and lowered it down 300 feet just messing around since it has wifi you can watch it on my wifes iPhone while it's down quite a ways. Nothing exciting but was fun doing.

Anyway that's besides the point really but the way the gopro is waterproof it's because of the case not the camera and to run power to it I have to put it in my skeleton case, it's a case that has a hole in the side for pluging it in. In turn that ruins waterproof.

I could swap batteries but you only get about 2.5hrs per battery could get a battery backpack to double or more life BUT that again requires skeleton and again no waterproof might as well plug It in.

since I plan on time laps video for close to 20,000 mins 336 hours that's 150 times swaping batteries kind of a pain in the arse and if I forget will screw it all up OR if I move the camera angle even a little will mess up the video as well.

Somehow I'm going to figure it out cause I think it will be neat when done.

Main problem I have is what angle and where to put it to show the most and be interesting.

I like the backstay idea looks great for the angle.....Just don't know about the logistics but definitely will use it for future filming where I'm not filming so long and time lapse like this.

 

[Jackdaw]

The BLACK is the WORST for battery.... for semi-pro features and resolutions hacks don;t use, you get a faster CPU that drains the battery 50% faster than the SILVER does. I get over 4 hours of video with my silver+batpac. Images much longer.

You'll get tired of the shaking of a backstay mount. Been there done that.

External power is a PITA. And it makes stable-mounts impossible. FOURTEEN straight days of imaging? Even through the night? What is that about??

 

[Meriachee]

Allen,
You'll likely find that the time lapse function delivers less than you're hoping for on the boat, only because the view from the camera is moving in too many dimensions at the same time, you've got to keep x y or z stable or it'll likely look like crap. You might be better off to do chunks of video, and mix them up with stills.
A couple of my tools are the GoPro "chip clip" attachment, which has a 10" arm so you can grab almost anything solid and twist the camera to the level you want. This is the handiest attachment they make in my opinion, there are just so many places that you can hang this off.

The other is a Tarot 2 axis gimbal, for which I made a mount to use with the chip clip, and to hang a battery off. It uses an 11v lipo battery that will power the motors all day and there no setup involved. If you start it up with the camera close to horizon level, it will keep it there. You can easily clip it to the dingy, set the dingy free and do a sail past, quickly getting video that you'd need a chase boat to get.

Between the two mounts, you get perspective from the "crew view" where the horizon is always level and the "boat view" where the boat is always level.

I won't start up (no pun intended) the 6 motor video option. A small drone these days is pretty cheap, and can give you a perspective that nothing else can, but they tend to get people wound up, and the last time that topic came up here there was nasty talk of firearms.

 

[Meriachee]

Jackdaw,
I may have to load up the toys and come visit you.

 

[Meriachee]

Here's the arm on the clip:

 

[Jackdaw]

Jackdaw,
I may have to load up the toys and come visit you.

Come any time.

Just not next week. We're off to Greece tonight!

 

[Daveinet]

You'll get tired of the shaking of a backstay mount. Been there done that...

So I assume the GoPro doesn't have any kind of Steady Shot? Not sure how the Sony does it, but happens during the recording process. It limits the 170 degree angle lens to 120 degree angle, but as far as imagine stabilization, it works better than anything I have ever seen - particularly better than post production processes. In the video above, my backstay was completely loose, so it was moving around quite a bit, but you really don't see much evidence in the video.

 

[Meriachee]

The GoPro software has correction algorithms to get rid of the "curved horizon where the water never runs off the edge", and oddly enough, one of the fastest ways to get image correction is to take the chunk of footage and upload it as 1080 to uTube and let it fix it.
I use FinalCutProX and while it's better at both of those things, it's still painfully slow. Just like video from the drone, you get miles of footage, and only a small part of it winds up being any good.

 

[Daveinet]

I was just read the Sony has a built in gyro, so maybe that has something to do with it.

There are time when I wish it was easy to shut off. On my snowmobiling videos, there are places where I know I was coming a good ways off the ground, but you don't really get much of a sense of it, because the Steady Shot masks it. You can see the nose of the sled move in and out of the frame a whole bunch, but the shot stays steady.

 

[Jackdaw]

So I assume the GoPro doesn't have any kind of Steady Shot? Not sure how the Sony does it, but happens during the recording process. It limits the 170 degree angle lens to 120 degree angle, but as far as imagine stabilization, it works better than anything I have ever seen - particularly better than post production processes. In the video above, my backstay was completely loose, so it was moving around quite a bit, but you really don't see much evidence in the video.

Thats part of it. It takes the outer 20% of the image, and uses that as buffer as SW 'plays' with rotation and bounce between frames. The 20% has to be lost because any tilt of the frame amounts to a non-square final image. Its all software; NO gyro. Software stabilization is never as good as hardware, but it's getting better.

 

[Meriachee]

That's part of the whole issue though. Sometimes you want the frames to look a certain way and the only way around it is to segment the entire shot into tiny little chunks and work on those individually. My Sony A6000 on the big drone adds another whole dimension with 190-something points of focus. Put the thing 100 feet up, and sometimes it has a hard time with the horizon. That can't be fixed in software.

 

[Bill19233]

I've got a Drift Ghost, it's waterproof to about 10' I think and works off of a remote or a cell phone app. The latest mount I used is on a cheap stabilizer gimbaled on a piece of conduit sticking out about 3 feet from the rail. I can reach it to change the battery, but it still gets most of the boat and crew in the shot, and the stabilizer keeps it pretty steady through tacks and jibes. $40 for the stabilizer on Amazon. Right now I'm working on a floating platform for the camera to leave in the water and sail around it to get stills and video of the boat.
The video in the link below has the camera up the mast, on the rail, and on the arch:

You can see different ways the camera was mounted in photos of the boat that are in the video.

 

[allen-deckard]

WOW. That was a ton of really great information I couldn't have begged for a better response.

Although now i'm really bummed that I'm never gonna get what I wanted in my video but life happens I guess. I think I'll give up on it and just take some photos along the way.

I cant see myself buying all the stuff you suggested I'm not all that super into photography and honestly don't take all that many pictures. I just thought a condensed time laps video of about 10 mins of the entire trip would be neat BUT I see what your saying and now I just don't see it happening.

So pictures it is sorry to anyone that was expecting a cool video from me your out of luck hehe

Oh well still gonna be a great trip.

 

[Meriachee]

For what it's worth, the chip clip is selling for about 60 Cdn, that's about 87 cents US these days.