my gopro and i at the rails to trails savannah

I’ve gone running with my gopro camera strapped to my forehead twice now. The first run was 14.62 miles. The second run was 5.6 miles. I gotta tell ya, I love the camera but my forehead does not! Running with the gopro for five and a half miles was fine. Running with it on for fourteen and a half, not so fine. At fourteen miles, my head felt like it was in a vice-grip and super heavy. I felt like one of those wobbly head statuettes you see of baseball players. I’ve been told that a chest harness might be the way to go for long runs with a gopro. I’m not so sure of that. I’ve seen footage of people running with a chest harness and their hands are always in the video making them look like they’re a robot with swinging arms.

Having the camera strapped to your head makes more sense to me because wherever I look the camera looks. And, it is high enough that you get a better perspective of the trail without the distraction of robot looking hands stepping into the footage. That, of course, is a preference of mine. You may very well like seeing your hands in the footage but I do not. I do have to learn how to better adjust the camera so that when I look down at my feet or at my gps watch I can actually see my feet and watch. The last two runs, when I look down the camera is not seeing what I’m actually focusing on at that moment (my watch or feet). So, the footage looks a bit bizarre because it looks like I’m just looking at the blank ground momentarily. I plan to run with the camera again this afternoon. So, I’ll play around with adjusting it and hopefully, achieve the view I’m looking for.

As you know, the camera comes with a hefty price tag of roughly $300.00. That’s a lot of money but, you get a good camera for that amount…as you should. The camera doesn’t have a view finder or any way of seeing what your footage looks like until you upload the footage and pics to your computer. That’s definitely a downer for me as I’m big into the composition of a shot. Then again, when you’re running with the camera strapped to your head you cannot really expect to see how your shots are composed. That’s why the camera comes with a 170 degree field of view. So, pretty much what you’re looking at as you run, the camera will pick up, pretty much. Where my slight annoyance comes in is when I’m taking hand-held pictures. I like to know what I’m framing in my shot and you just cannot do that with a gopro since it has no view finder. And, after I take a picture I always like to see what it looks like – you know, to see if the shot is what I was striving for or, if it’s in focus or not. Unfortunately, that’s not an option with the gopro. The gopro is made to capture footage of the event you are partaking of as you’re doing it, specifically, a sport you are actively involved in. When you build a camera to fulfill that need then, the gopro is perfect. The one thing you do not want to do or worry about doing is to take away from your sport of say, running, biking, surfing, climbing or what-have-you in order to get a picture or video, right?  Well,  I don’t. That’s where this camera comes in…it captures the footage for you while you’re doing it. That’s a very cool thing. And, if you want a quick picture while running or climbing or biking you can just press the easy to get to button on top of the camera and voila! you’ve got your picture with an infinity focus! So, with the gopro you get to do your sport, capture video and pictures as you do it with minimal distraction from the sport you love doing. And then later, you get to share that footage and the pictures with your friends and family on facebook or the social media you prefer, if any.

The gopro comes with several accessories that I have yet to figure out what to do with. It comes with a head strap as I’ve mentioned, which is very handy if not a little annoying when running over 14 miles with it on. Then again, wearing anything during a fourteen-plus mile run would probably be annoying, I believe.
It also comes with a “vented helmet strap”. I haven’t found a use for that yet but I would imagine it would go well when strapped to a bike helmet while riding. I would like to be able to strap the camera to my handle bars, though, while running but, that’s just a preference. I’ll take the vented helmet strap. It’ll come in handy one day I’m sure. Perhaps, during the upcoming zombie apocalypse since I’ll want to protect my brains at all costs and still get great footage of me bashing zombie skulls. Just saying…

at peace with gopro

The camera also comes with 2 curved plus 2 flat surface adhesive mounts. At this point, I have no idea what to do with these. Please share with me what you would use them for! I mean it!
It also comes with a 3-way pivot arm. Now, I’m sure I will eventually find something useful to use that for but the opportunity has not presented itself as of yet.

Oh, I cannot forget to mention that the gopro comes with a very nifty waterproof camera housing! I totally dig that but I will admit that I’ve been afraid to test the gopro under water so far. You see, I have a bad record of ruining electronic devices with water, even when equipped in waterproof casings. It’ll take awhile for me to build up my confidence to submerge the gopro under water even though, the camera housing that comes with the gopro is waterproof up to 197 feet/60 meters. That’s pretty bold!

my dog, Mr. Gyspy, via gopro

Okay, what else?

The gopro camera does not come with a view finder but we’ve determined that is okay because the camera’s purpose is to capture you doing your sport as your doing it without distracting you from it. So, not having a view finder for the gopro is golden.
We’ve also covered that it comes with a mix-bag of accessories that may be useful some time in the near future specifically, during a zombie apocalypse.

Now, what does the gopro not come with but would be nice if it did so?
It does not come with an SD card. Personally, that’s fine with me. I went ahead and spent an extra $30.00 and bought an Extreme SanDisk 32gb SD card. That should more than handle any amount of footage I take during one of my weekend warrior adventurous excursions.

Now, the one thing that the gopro does not come with but I truly believe that it should is a tripod mount. It would be wonderful if the gopro came with a tripod mount but it doesn’t. So, I forked over $8.00 at my local Target and bought a gopro tripod mount. While I was at Target I also bought a small adjustable 5 inch tripod that has come in very handy. A tripod mount may not be important to most gopro enthusiast but it is for me since photography is a very big hobby of mine. Being able to mount my gopro onto the 5 inch tripod and setting off the video as I stand in front of the camera is good especially, as I’m trying to juggle frozen chickens for the world to see. Juggling frozen chickens is a new sport in the South that is bound to surely catch on with the rest of the nation.
Seriously, a tripod mount mixed in with the other goodies included with the purchase of a gopro would be nice.

coming to the end of the rtt

So far, I am very, very pleased with my purchase of a gopro. It’s an awesome accessory to have with me while I’m out and about exploring and playing in this wonderful place we call earth.

Okay, gotta run.

Thanks for stopping by.

peace to you and yours,

dh

10/13/2012

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