GoProCamera

[MermaidNerenia]

Got a friend of mine to lend me his gopro, going to try and hit the pool next week sometime so I can get some video of me swimming!!! Any advice on them or video in general?

[Blondie]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my GoPro!!!

It's tiny and with the right mounts, it can do anything. You'll need an SD card to buy along with it. The hardest part about the camera is getting used to the interface. There is no screen in the back so you have to navigate on a small pixel screen. It takes a few tries to get used to it, but it's not impossible. Underwater it's FANTASTIC. I filmed a polar plunge with it so far and the footage was wonderful.

The camera has a fish eye lens. It's unnoticeable underwater though. The clarity underwater is just superb. I HIGHLY recommend these cameras to all Mers.

[MerEmma]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my GoPro!!!

It's tiny and with the right mounts, it can do anything. You'll need an SD card to buy along with it. The hardest part about the camera is getting used to the interface. There is no screen in the back so you have to navigate on a small pixel screen. It takes a few tries to get used to it, but it's not impossible. Underwater it's FANTASTIC. I filmed a polar plunge with it so far and the footage was wonderful.

The camera has a fish eye lens. It's unnoticeable underwater though. The clarity underwater is just superb. I HIGHLY recommend these cameras to all Mers.

Do you find that the lacking-of-a-screen is hard to get used to? I used a disposable at Discovery Cove last year and my finger got in every single shot, almost. I don't know if I could use a camera w/out a screen. xD

[Winged Mermaid]

Which model? I recently got a GoPro 3 (black edition). You can download the manuals online for any of them I believe, which I highly suggest you do so you know how to work it. Otherwise you'll be lost :P It has 1 small display on the front and you navigate through the menus with the power and shutter buttons.

Few tips (beware, wall of text is coming.. lol)
Be sure to charge it fully before you go out, of course! If you can, spray the camera and casing with canned air before you put the camera in and seal up the housing. If nothing else be sure to get the o-ring (the rubber ring that makes the housing closure watertight) really well to be sure the seal isn't compromised at all by dust or hairs. Be sure the wifi is off so it doesn't eat up battery. I'd advise against the ProTune option if you have it for underwater use based on experience thus far. I'd advise to record at 1080p, and on wide so you can get as much in the shot as you can. Be sure to check the settings- my first runs I thought it was on 1080 but it was on 1440 (lower quality). The 2k and 4k I've heard are awesome of you want to extract stills from the footage. However you have to have one beefed up computer to handle video rendering at that quality, and if you plan to post it to YouTube they don't go above 1080p so it would be a waste for long clips IMO. You could play around with it for short clips though! Be warned the files, even for 1080p, are HUGE. I ate up 100 gigs from one shoot easy.

If you have the wifi remote or app, the wifi does not work once the camera is in an inch of water, so don't bother with that frustration! (I call false advertising, but whatever.) Get in the best light you can. It works well with low light, but the more light the better especially underwater. If you have any weight bags or something to act as weight bags, bring those. I usually have those that I situate the flat mounting underneath to keep the camera from moving around. When you swim the water moves, so it will move if you don't weight it down enough! The easy thing to do is to put it on the bottom facing up, or put it on some steps. You can also get creative, but I will tell you tying it to a pool noodle with hair bands for surface-down shots does NOT work as you think it would, lol. It drifts, and you drift right out of your probably-awesome now off-lens shot XP

Get the free GoPro software, CineForm Studio (http://gopro.com/3d-cineform-studio-software-download/). If nothing else, this makes importing videos soooo much easier, event though the conversion takes forever. The footage WILL look gerky before you convert it, just fyi. You can do minor limited editing in CineForm. When you're rendering it in a program it may look gerky just because of the high frame rate (even if you set the playback in program to half or quarter playback quality) but it will smooth out once you export it out. Pretty much any program will cut down the frame rate from 46-60fps to 25-30fps *shrug* Even if you manage to export it at the same frame rate YouTube automatically knocks it down to 30fps for uploading. Just FYI becuase I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get it to export to 60fps instead of 30 when it didn't even matter :P


For stills you can either pull them from higher quality video, or take some actual stills with the camera. Be sure to set it to the highest megapixel (mp) setting the camera has. The black one I believe is 12mp. Due to low light and not being able to adjust shutter speed or have a flash, know that if you're moving at all it will blur. You can try and counteract this by having it take a photo burst instead of one photo. I haven't tried that yet but I will next time! What I do is set it so it takes a photo every 10 seconds. It has the count down on the screen, then a red light on the camera flashes when it takes the photo, then it starts over until you tell it to stop. Get the rhythm in your head and keep a count so you can know when to go under and pose or swim by or what have you. If you get out of sync just go over to the camera and look at the timer or look for the read light and start the count in your head again. If you're close enough to the camera (and your eyes aren't completely shot from the chlorine) you can see the red flash when it goes off. I can get a few shots of the same pose just by staying under for 20-30 seconds or more and those tend to turn out really well. I advise doing stills last, becuase you can edit out chlorine red eye, damage to the tail from swimming, and so on when you can't do that with video.

This (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=447327435338810&set=a.377424768995744.86147.375567172514837&type=1&relevant_count=1) and this (http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=446592272078993&set=a.377424768995744.86147.375567172514837&type=1&relevant_count=1) are some good stills I got :)

This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUcV4UWC-4) and this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsOE8alJEBU) are both 1440, but the 1st one was exported out as 1080p to keep some quality, and the 2nd one was made into.. god knows what.. something low quality, by iMovie. So what what programs you use to edit can make all the difference.

I've rambled on and on- I hope that this is at least useful to you :) Good luck and have fun with it!!

[Winged Mermaid]

Do you find that the lacking-of-a-screen is hard to get used to? I used a disposable at Discovery Cove last year and my finger got in every single shot, almost. I don't know if I could use a camera w/out a screen. xD

You can buy a screen for it- the LCD display backpak is $70 last I checked. It drains the battery more though. I may get one for when I actually have a camera man (right now I just leave the video rolling and edit the empty/ bad parts out or use a timer for stills) or am shooting someone else. GoPros are meant to be point of view cameras- as in strapped to one's head, helmet, car/bike/surboard,ect- not point and shoot cameras. But if you set it to wide shot, the shot is so wide that pretty much whatever you are looking at or pointing it at will be in the shot. You just have to be aware of the camera position :)

[MerEmma]

Wow, thanks for the huge block of text, lol. Helped a lot even for someone who's still considering which camera to buy! :b