Wow, fun day riding the bike park at Snow Summit with Josh!
[WARNING -- NERD-TALK BELOW]
Ok, so I tried this camera one more time just to see if I could find a way to get proper footage with it. But nope. The GoPro HERO6 Black is just not good for a visor cam angle. The extra weight of the camera is making my helmet swing just a little bit more and it makes the footage too shaky. And that is despite my rigid visor and tight fit helmet with no-MIPS. In the end, my HERO5 Session is still the best setup.
The EIS stabilization on the HERO6 would almost be usable. But two things make it a no-go for this angle:
First, it crops the vertical FOV too much to keep both the handlebar and the trail ahead in the shot. I'm already at the FOV limit when using the full height of the sensor in 4:3 mode, so cropping an extra 5-10% is too zoomed-in. It looks fine on Red Bull TV for DH racing, but that's a special case where the course is so steep that the trail ahead is actually down below and it fits in the cropped frame. That or I need longer arms.
Second, EIS looks unnatural when the algorithm has to snap back to center. Those digital glitches look robotic and they happen a lot while mountain biking; at least at every turn. This removes what we want to see in first-person: the natural motion of the rider so that we feel immersed as if we were in the helmet. So it's still better to turn off EIS, have slightly more noise and keep the authentic motion.
That’s why the lightweight HERO5 Session is still the best camera choice for an immersive visor cam. It shakes a lot less, especially with the right settings and a rider keeping his eyes pinned on the line far ahead.
The best setting I use with the Session is 1440p60 with dynamic scaling to 16:9 done in post. The camera can do the scaling itself for a small hit in resolution by using 1080p60 SuperView. Btw the frame rate is important. If someone ever tells you 30fps is the bomb, they might be more into capturing pretty clouds & mountains than sports.
The HERO6 video here was shot at 2.7K 4:3 60fps; That's a sweet mode with 2028 lines of vertical resolution; almost the same as the 2160 lines of the 4K resolution. The missing horizontal resolution is on the side edges and it doesn't matter once stretched and riding at speed; the shot actually looks better the more motion blur we get on the edges. But anyway, more resolution on a bad shaky shot isn't worth it. So I'm really bummed with the HERO6. It's either too shaky or with bad EIS.
With the GoPro HERO7 Black just announced, I'm cautiously not holding my breath either. It can do 2.7k 4:3 60fps with the new HyperSmooth stabilization algorithm. Which sounds awesome! However, since the camera has the same optic as the HERO6, the vertical FOV will be the same and we'll still have to sacrifice some of it for stabilization. Hopefully, if the use of accelerometer allows less cropping, this camera could be a winner.
GoPro call the HyperSmooth stabilization a gimbal-killer. That sounds more like marketing fluff to me. Both technologies serve a distinct purpose. Although I hope it works well enough for more people to start recording good first-person POV at the proper eye-level. Because, personally, I've never been a fan of the chest-mount angle. It's such a compromised alternative. Because going that route is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Instead of cleaning up the noise on the motion, the gimbal obliterates the motion. While it can look amazing when used in a short edit, it ends up looking very unnatural for a first-person POV. That's why it's not a good fit for the type of immersive uncut top-to-bottom videos that I make.
My 5 pillars for making a good immersive POV are, in order:
1. Camera position: Centered near eye-level
2. Tall FOV: Handlebar and trail ahead are framed in the shot
3. High frame rate and bitrate: Minimum 60 fps at 60Mbps for H.264
4. Steady head: no unnecessary movement from the head, helmet or mount
5. Natural looking vibration filter
The order is important. We cannot compromise a higher one on the list. That's why I'll avoid EIS if it affects FOV too much. Also, selecting a resolution always comes last after checking all of the above. This always knocks out the new flashy high resolution advertised in the marketing material. However, for mountain biking videos, bitrate is way more important than resolution.
Anyway, I went on a mini brain dump tangent here in the description of a bad example video. But I hope it gives you at least an insight into my process for perfecting the capture of this sport in the most authentic way possible. For nearly two decades I have worked in the entertainment industry including live TV, Hollywood movies, and first-person shooter video games. Getting the animation right on each frame is my work. So that's where I'm coming from.
The highest mountain I’ve ever been on was Mount Patterson and that was 11,673 ft, but I drove the jeep up there. The tallest mountains I’ve hiked was snow summit in big bear, 8,164ft during a Spartan race and the other was Mount Pinos at 8,848ft.
We back and better than ever! The season got off to a slow start, but the park set up at bear is now FIRING! Shoutout to Park Crew we love you guys 🖤👊😎 stay tuned for more episodes very soon!
Music by:
Yung Benefit @yungbenefit
Og Maco @ogmaco
Riders in order of appearance:
Jake Reed @jake_r33d
Tommer Wallace @tommerwallace
Chavo Cisneros @duhh_chavocado
Ray Pinkerton @rayp1nk_
Gavin Gestring @smokeyg_5
Ren Flicker @ren_flicker
Brandon Weijland @brandon.weijland
Chase Senteno @chase_a53
Julius Starr @jstarr666
Big Bear Lake is a great 4 season town and right now it’s winter! Now is a great time to enjoy all the fun winter activities. The best part? It’s only a couple of hours away! Here are 10 ways to enjoy winter in Big Bear:
