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      Guides — GoPro

      Velobeing - Vlog

      Velobeing - Vlog

      By Jacques Horn

      For some, cycling is a very rewarding and entertaining past time activity, for others it provides a mean of transport. For me as a professional cyclist it offers the opportunity to look at my life from a very different angle than what the typical 23 year old student would. This is my first vlog post and I am planning on taking each viewer through my daily life from cycling training, commuting on my single speed - which I built myself – and the everyday life events as experienced by ME. I absolutely love my GoPro and take it everywhere I go because you never know what could be around the next corner or over that little hill in front of you. In this video I take you through my daily commute to my student job – I teach spinning classes at local gyms – as well a typical training ride with some of my fellow cyclist friends that live in the Pretoria area. We have fun whenever we go for rides and I hope that watching this vlog will provide you with the same amount of pleasure that I got from making it! 

      Keep your eyes open for my next vlog! Until then…keep the rubber side down!

       

      How To Create Epic Time Lapses With Your GoPro

      How To Create Epic Time Lapses With Your GoPro

      Timelapse photography is, put simply, a number of photos of the same scene, spread over a period of time, and squeezed into a video. The video is played back in a shorter amount of time, enabling others to see changes in a landscape over the natural progression of time while not having to wait through the actual length of it.

      Whether it’s bustling streets in the city or clouds gliding and twisting over a landscape, timelapse photography tells a much greater story about a place than any single image could.

      Thanks to the GoPro’s built-in functionality, timelapses are incredibly easy to shoot and simple to edit using GoPro Studio, which you can download on your computer for free here.

       4 steps to creating epic time lapses with your GoPro:

      (First things first, make sure your GoPro is fully charged and that you have a lot of free space on your SD card.)

      1. Choosing the right interval

      Your interval depends on what you’re shooting. GoPro allows you to choose from a 0,5 second interval to a 60 second interval which you can change in the settings. You have to see how fast or slow your subject is moving to choose the best interval for the situation. For example, a sunrise happens quite slowly so a 10 second interval would work better than a 2 second interval as there is no major visible change in the sky in that period of time. Your shorter intervals would be used for shooting a busy street or crowds of people at rush hour.

      TIP: Keep in mind that the smaller the interval, the smoother your time lapse will turn out and the longer the duration.

      2. Setting up the shot

      Your GoPro's role when creating timelapses is very different to when it's mounted on your surfboard, capturing you pumping at full speed through Pipeline-sized barrels (or so you wish!). For your timelapse to be effective, your GoPro must be firmly mounted perfectly still for a duration of time.

      It’s important to use the right GoPro accessories to keep your camera as stable as possible. You don’t want your timelapse to be ruined because your camera wasn’t in a fixed position or a gust of wind knocked it over. Some great accessories are the GoPro 3 Way mount, the JOBY Action Tripod mount and, if you’re looking for something more affordable, the WOH Tri-Arm XL.

      In the video below, I had my GoPro mounted on an extendable pole which I stuck in the sand. You’ll notice that the camera moves slightly because it wasn’t stable enough. Using a stronger tripod would have given perfectly smooth results.

      Early Morning at Cave Rock from Natalie dos Santos on Vimeo.

      Tripods are small, light and easy to set up wherever you want to do your timelapse. They’ll allow you to get new vantage points as you can set them up on just about any surface.If you’re lucky enough to have a GoPro 4 with an LCD screen on the back, setting up your timelapse is a whole lot easier. If not, the GoPro smartphone App allows you to control your GoPro from your smartphone using WiFi. This makes it easier to frame your shot.

      (TIP: Turn off your GoPro’s WiFi once you start shooting to save its battery.)

      The framing of your shot is the most important part of any timelapse. Try capture some sort of movement like people walking, trees swaying in the breeze, or my personal favourite; clouds moving at sunrise or sunset.

      3. Shoot.

      Now that you’ve selected an interval and attached your GoPro to your tripod, you can click the shutter button, sit back and relax. A red light will flash on your GoPro at every time interval you selected. Don’t move your camera at all while it’s shooting and wait until the sun has risen completely or rush hour is over until you turn it off.

      4. Editing

      Connect your GoPro to your computer and you should find a couple hundred images depending on how long you were shooting for.

      Open GoPro Studio and import all of the images, selecting them all at once. Convert them and proceed to step two to edit your video. I like to add music to my timelapses and adjust the speed of the timelapse to go wth the music. Add a song, play the timelapse and split it into clips to change the speed. Keeping the timelapse at its normal speed looks pretty good too.

      Now you can export your timelapse and marvel at your creation!

      Same old Rock, different day. from Natalie dos Santos on Vimeo.

      Ocean Art

      Ocean Art

      I was on the beach early one morning when I noticed the waves crashing onto the rocks and spraying up into all different kinds of unusual shapes. With the sun rising in the background, it was quite a beautiful sight. I really wanted to capture the moment on my GoPro Hero 3+ Silver but the rocks were way too far out to reach, and GoPro's don't have a zoom function.
       
      I soon found a big piece of rubble on the beach and lagged it to the shore. Much to my delight, when a wave came crashing onto the shore it would hit the rock and go shooting up, warping into these walls of foam.
                
      How the shots were captured: After placing the rock on the shore, I set my GoPro on 10/1 burst mode and got really low behind the rock to capture the foam splashing over. Yes, I got soaked and yes, the water was freezing but it was all worth it for the shot! I didn't have my WOH Lang Arm at that stage but if I did I could have easily extended the pole, stood back and have waited for a wave to come.
                
      To see more of my GoPro photos, check out my Instagram

      Water And Light

      Water And Light

      My favourite time to go out and shoot is early mornings and evenings. As the sun begins to set it creates this beautiful, emerald lighting which reflects off the ocean's surface.
       
      I swam out with my GoPro Hero 3+ Silver and my flippers one late afternoon at Ansteys beach, Durban. There were a few surfers in the water and I knew the lighting at this time would make for some epic shots.
       
      The sea was so breathtakingly beautiful yet, completely unforgiving. 
       
      By the time I had swum out to backline, one of my flippers broke in half and was nowhere to be found. The other was cracked and hanging off my foot. 
       
      I still managed to enjoy every minute of being in the sea after laughing it off and silently dreading the long swim back in. 
       
       
      I absolutely love being in the ocean and watching the waves break from underwater. It is truly a spectacular and humbling sight. My GoPro allows me to capture these moments of beautiful chaos and share them with others.
       
      How the shots were taken: I set my GoPro Hero 3+ Silver on timelapse mode with 0,5 second intervals. I often use this mode so that I can just point my camera and shoot without missing a moment. I then look through all the photos and select the best ones afterwards.
       
      I used my WOH Lang Arm extendable pole to get my GoPro close to the waves to get the shot without getting sucked in myself. The Lang Arm is great as it can extend to almost a metre and is strong enough to withstand the rough waves. 
       
      My GoPro is always attached to this extendable pole when I am not using my surfboard mount in the sea. The tether, which is attached to the pole, is secured around your wrist and prevents your GoPro from getting lost in the sea if you accidentally let go of it.
       
      I also had my floaty back door on my GoPro in case all else failed!
       
      To see more of my GoPro photos, check out my Instagram page: @natsdossantos

      Sunrise Surfing In Durban

      Sunrise Surfing In Durban

      Nothing beats a good surf and a beautiful sunrise.

      I paddled into the water at New Pier early when it was still pretty dark with no one else out.

      The waves were small, but fun and it wasn’t long till a few more surfers paddled out to enjoy the morning on the ocean. The thin strip of pink light just above the horizon faded away and the clouds lit up a pale orange tint.

      Within minutes, the sun came up as a bright pink ball, creating its pink-yellow pathway across the surface of the water to my surfboard.

      It was magnificent.

      I stopped surfing and paddled far out to sit there, on the calm sea, staring at it.

      Not one to miss an opportunity like this, my GoPro Hero 3+ Silver Edition with me to capture the moment.

       

      How the shots were captured: I used my surfboard mount and set my GoPro on timelapse mode with 0.5 second intervals. By setting the GoPro to take so many photographs in sequence, I am able to choose the best photos out of the selection. I also used a floaty backdoor for extra safety - a must-have when using your GoPro in the ocean!

      To see more of my GoPro photos, check out my Instagram account: @natsdossantos

      You can also check out my GoPro videos here