Video camera

[Paul Arden]

They obviously think size is more important than battery life. Like FAR MORE important

Fucking cold here in Hungary at the moment. 13C. Mid-summer. Unbelievable. Looking forward to catching up in Romania!

Cheers, Paul

[Paul Arden]

Incidentally I'm going to fish Romanja on the Mon and Tue. Then through Hungary to fish Gacka for two days. Then off to UK from Zagreb. If you have some free days Lasse, then come fishing!

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

Wish I could, it's going in Thursday leaving Tuesday, next time give me fair warning dude

It should be about 30 degrees in Romania, nice change, here it's 10 and raining....

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

I invited you in another thread about 3 weeks ago Days will be warm hopefully! Nights can be chilly in the mountains so bring socks.

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

Dude, I booked my flights alot longer than three weeks ago

And yes, bringing swimsuit and a skisuit

Cheers
Lasse

[Walter]

Returning to the subject of video cameras, what about these?

Go Pro Hero cams

Waterproof to 40m, slo mo up to 240 fps and it seems like people mount them just about anywhere. You can even tell people it was named after you...

[Paul Arden]

I have a go pro. It's good for some things but only short clips for me.

[Walter]

Looks like 64Mb max. Not going to film any feature length movies with that...

[WJC]

Hi Walter,
You’re off a bit on the GoPro capacity. They, at least the new ones, will accept the fastest 64 GB SD cards made – fingernail size like Simm cards That’s 64,000 megabytes not 64 megabytes. But you might need to hook up to a golf cart battery bank and hold the camera with welding gloves to fill it up in one session.

I bought the new GoPro Hero4 black because they finally fixed it to where it will work for analysing casts and taking much better videos than earlier models.

I spent hours searching for a waterproof video camera with optical zoom and 240 fps slow motion. WayWayWay out of my budget.

The three things that make it worthwhile now to me are that it takes video at 240 frames/second; you can select a narrow field of view to eliminate that horrible fish eye distortion; and an aftermarket remote control is available for $59-$79 US, so you can see what you will be taking without needing to buy an expensive smart phone or ipad to spy on yourself and friends in real time. It will also change camera setting and start and stop the camera recording or power it off up to 200’away. The remote (Removu) is light, can be worn on the wrist like a watch and is actually bigger than the camera itself. There is a waterproof version for $20 more.

The other plus is that their simple editing software is very easy to use and free. Frame by frame buttons allow for photo's to be grabbed from the raw footage and saved in 4 millisecond increments of the cast. There is also an option when editing called "protunes" that automatically increases the contrast of the video so that the fly line shows up better even if the background is way less than optimal. Another option called “fusion” smoothes out slow playbacks.
At a one tenth playback speed, you are viewing 24 frames per second, not far off from the standard 29 frames/second used for standard video. So it is very nearly as smooth as regular video - but at 1/10th real time – even without using the “fusion” option which smooths it out more.

The Hero 4 Black lists everywhere for $499. The Removu R1 remote viewer/camera controller can be had for $59. A waterproof model for $99. There are hundreds of various accessories, some of which are definitely worthwhile and not that expensive.

A buddy of mine who comes down tarpon fishing every spring for a week in May and another in June gave me his Hero 3 Silver which also works with the same remote. He never used it and, in fact, doesn't even have a computer or an ipad or a phone smart enough to look at the videos. So I will be able to shoot both closeups of the actual casting strokes as well as the results at the same time. Someone with the "Hudle" program could then synchronise the two videos on the same screen. That is a technique a friend of mine who’s a casting instructor in North Carolina demonstrated to me when he came down tarpon fishing for a week.

I think the combination of GoPro’s (or similar) and Huddle will be the new wave of fly casting instruction, just as it has become for professional and college sports in the US. My buddy took a video of a cast out in the field with his ipad and called me over. By the time I’d walked over there, he had the cast I’d just taken on half the screen and that of another friend’s on the other half of the screen. Both our casts were synchronized to show the different casting angles used by each of us with both RPS’s occurring at the same instant. He quickly drew lines at both our fore and aft RSP’s. Took him maybe 10 seconds at most.

I took quick video a few days ago as a test which I'd intended on using to demonstrate to a friend how a weight, age and strength challenged old man chokes up on the handle to cast heavy rigs a fair distance for long periods blind casting. Nearly all my final casts are backcasts from the stern. My guests get the casting platform and the preferred wind direction, and I don't cast through the boat.

So I use a palm forward grip and choke up on the handle, hooking my index finger around and under the blank. This places the fighting butt in the muscle under the forearm that's relaxed during the backcast 2.75 " from the point of the elbow. It doesn't slip off even a sweaty, greasy forearm. That almost completely takes the wrist tendons and muscles out of the backcast. It has increased the leverage from the roughly 4 inch span of my palm to nearly 13 inches and shortened the rod by several inches as well. The rod butt just pops off the forearm at the final "power snap'.

The clip also shows the sin of all sins, a dip in the tip path occuring during the fastest accelerating segment of the haul.. It occurs when the angle between the rod butt and the rod leg of line is 37 degrees or about 10:15 on a clock face. The dip lasts for 52 milliseconds and covers about 4 feet of tip travel.

A frame by frame look at the raw footage shows that a 15-25 milisecond delay in the haul combined with the same lengthening of the casting angle would have likely eliminated it.

I don’t know if it was enough to cause a tail or not because I was controlling the shooting line to keep it in view of the camera and not watching the result of the cast. I was using an old sailfish line that I dyed black for one foot every other foot. So each time a green dash goes through my line hand equals 2 feet of shooting line.

But a second camera would have captured the unrolling loop, and shown exactly the effect of that much of a dip and subsequent rise of the rod tip had on the loop form. Most of the video’s I’ve seen have been taken of casts well within the competence level of the caster and relatively short casts where drag does not have nearly the same effect. I’d like to see more at outer boundaries of competence where timing mis-matches are measured in milliseconds and even minor casting flaws become more obvious.

Since I’ve lost two old computers I need for work, I bought one I could upgrade to render large video files quickly. Without a modern computer, editing and rendering the raw video can take forever. So I figured it was worth the money to go all out and get the top of the line GoPro to play with.

You'd think I was a salesman - but they have finally made the camera worthwhile owning for some uses in my opinion.
Cheers,
Jim

[Tom Benson]

Heck... do you suggest, that my Canon 6D & 7D are redundant ?
Tom