Breaking Clay & Geeking Out

A client of mine took me Skeet shooting in late 2014 and again this spring. I have to say I’ve really gotten into it.

There’s a really nice range no more than 10 minutes from my house so it’s pretty convenient to go down on the weekend to make some noise and break some clay (as they say).

I ended up getting my own shotgun and everything! Like any “hobby” there are many accessories you can get.  I’m slowly starting to get all the bits and pieces together & fit in with the regulars.  Still need a vest though…

Pro Tip: Wal-Mart has the BEST prices on Ammo!  25-50% cheaper than everywhere else.

If you know me you know I’m kind of a geek (true story).  When I bought my shotgun it came with a rebate.  It wasn’t a cash rebate it was a TECH rebate!  The rebate was a “TactaCam” that mounts on the barrel of the gun & lets you shoot HD video of your hunt (or skeet in my case).

IMG_0960

The Tactacam can also be setup to automatically takes pictures at a rate of 1-frame a second so it works perfectly as a time-lapse camera.  Here are a few videos from our first outing:

The camera had slipped to the side and we didn’t notice it for a while.  After this outing we determined we needed to change the mounting point as well as use the closed back to cut down on the noise of the firing mechanism.

The TactaCam has a 4x zoom that’s equivalent to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera.  That means what you see is what you get.  It’s not a wide (fisheye) view that you get with the GoPro and the picture quality is pretty amazing.

Pretty neat toy to play around with and we’re looking forward to finding other uses for the TactaCam.  Might be a good additional camera when we’re out shooting with the GoPro.

‘Supermoon’ Eclipse Videos

Sunday turned out to be overcast and as the day went on it looked like it wasn’t going to be any better for the Supermoon Eclipse that was supposed to start around 8pm.  Then around 7:30pm things started looking better and I decided to setup the GoPro on a tripod and see what I could do.

I’m still figuring out all the settings on this camera & as soon as I saw the results of the “NightLapse” I realized I had the camera set to medium vs narrow.  In all fairness the GoPro is designed for a much closer subject & if I had to do it all again I would have used the trusty Nikon D2x to shoot a series of stills and stitch them together afterwards.

Here are the results both cropped and right out of the camera.  I will say that the low-light performance of the GoPro is pretty impressive and I have a few ideas for some night shots in the near future.  The Moon is blown out for the first half.  I think I know what caused that.

 

Are You Ready For Some Futsal?

Went downtown with the boy on Saturday and stopped by Pan Am Plaza to check out some Futsal.  We’re both Soccer (MLS & EPL) fans but neither of us have ever heard of Futsal before!  This was titled the “Mayor’s International Futsal Cup 2015” & there was a pretty large turnout for the event.

In a nutshell this is 5 on 5 soccer played on a small, hard court using a smaller ball.  Unlike he full-sized game scoring is done quite frequently & it’s non-stop action.  We took some pictures and made a few court-side recordings with the GoPro (I’ll post those after I get a chance to edit the footage).

Once the rain stopped it was a great way to spend a few hours downtown!

GoPro Amazement – Part 1

Decided to bite the bullet and purchase a GoPro this past weekend. I keep seeing all of these cool videos with interesting angles and pumping soundtracks. I’m no extreme athlete but I think I can put together some quality material of things I’m involved in and activities around the city.  Hell, driving to work some days is like a scene from an action movie.  Why not put that action to music!

gopro-hero4-lrgAlways a lover of photography I’ve never really done any videography (except for that one time I had a camcorder and my kids were babies). One of the biggest problems I remember about  the camcorder era was all the tapes you had to purchase and keep track of. With everything now being digital it’s not as much of physical space you’re worried about it’s virtual (hard drive) space. Same problem, different decade I guess.

The GoPro series of cameras have evolved pretty steadily since 2005 with the introduction of the “GoPro HERO 35mm, All-Season Sports Camera”. An update was introduced just about every year with the release of the latest “Session” model in 2015.

I picked up the late 2014 model called the Hero4 Silver. It’s not bleeding edge but it’s got some pretty good specs when it comes to shooting video and taking stills. Some features to note are:

  • 2704×1520 at 30 frames a second (2.7k) video*
  • 1920×1080 at 60 frames a second (1080p) video
  • 1280×720 at 120 frames a second (720p) video**
  • 4000 x 3000 12MP photo with a 30/sec frame burst mode***
  • Time Lapse (0.5-60 second intervals)
  • Night Lapse (low light capability)

*The Hero 4 will do 4k video but only 15 frames a second so I don’t see it being that useful.
**This is what I’ll be shooting at while I learn. Gives a decent picture, smaller file size and Slow-Mo capabilities.
***Could be useful for close up fast action sports but there is a noticeable shutter lag

gopro-hero4-lrg backSo after charging the Hero4 and inserting the MicroSD card I took off to shoot some random videos. Filling about half of the memory card with a lot of miscellaneous shots I headed back to the IndyScan HQ to see what I had and what I could do with it.

Then it (finally) hit me. This is nothing like photography where you’re dealing with a single image capturing a fraction of a second of time. This is a living picture (for lack of a better term) that not only has (many) images but audio!

Time to use technology to solve a technological problem (I bet our parents never said that). I hit up the Google Machine and within a few seconds I had all the tutorials I could ask for. One in particular I want to give props too is Village Park Source who has a great 42-part series that walks you through Go Pro Studio. The videos are short and to the point. Easy to follow along and test yourself on what you learned afterwards too.

So what I thought was going to be something I could just pickup and run with turned out to be anything but that. It’s a great opportunity to learn something new and interesting. It’ll be a while before I get up to a jog from this walk.

Time to get back to the tutorials and see what I can learn over the next few nights. I have some activities this weekend I want to shoot both photos and videos of. Look for Part 2 in a few days.  Videos coming soon too I hope!

P.S. I’m trying the “new” (to me) writing style where you don’t put 2 spaces between your sentences. Anyone older than 35 probably does this instinctively but evidently it’s frowned upon in the professional writing community. Thoughts?  Post them in the comments section below.

Shocker – Netflix Needs Cash

After a summer of mistakes Netflix is finding itself short on customers and cash.  They are trying to raise $200 million through the sales of bonds.  I think that should cover the lost revenue from losing 1-million customers in a quarter.

Click image to read the story

I used to LOVE Netflix but a 60% membership hike and a dismal choice of streaming content made canceling my subscription very easy.