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Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Jul 16, 2013 6:31 am
by trogman
BenS wrote:Any updates or videos to share with the setup?


I used it for first time in Rusty's Cave this past weekend. Still working on getting vids uploaded, though. That 1080 res eats up some serious memory, even after I run it through my video processor program. It took most of the day to upload a 12 min. video the other day. I will post a link in a day or two, but my preliminary review is that it looks pretty good. I just have to learn to keep my head still for a few moments when looking at items of interest (formations, people, animals, etc.). Aside from that, the lighting was fairly good. But then, Rusty's Cave is a far cry from Surprise Pit. :big grin:

Trogman :helmet:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Jul 17, 2013 5:41 pm
by trogman
Here is my first in-cave use of the new light with the GoPro. As I said, I need to keep my head still more often and allow the camera to focus on things and people.
Part of having a bright light is that nobody wants to look at you! :yikes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLn9pfxs_Ss

Trogman :helmet:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Jul 19, 2013 1:12 am
by BenS
Not bad for a cheap light. It's a cooler color than I would ideally want, but it would be good enough for me.

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Mar 21, 2014 10:12 am
by ohiocaver
Two of us here just got GoPro Hero Blacks 3+ cameras. I've used mine skiing with great results....any other tips for use underground shooting? Stay in relatively narrow passages? Spotlight in the 4300K range? Any other tips?
Do you mount your camera on your lid? I'd be afraid I'd bump my head and break the mount off. And I'd suppose the velcro wristband gets muddy and clogged fast? This weekend, I'll probably just use it as a handheld and travel with it in my pack. :cave softly:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Mar 21, 2014 12:44 pm
by trogman
ohiocaver wrote:Two of us here just got GoPro Hero Blacks 3+ cameras. I've used mine skiing with great results....any other tips for use underground shooting? Stay in relatively narrow passages? Spotlight in the 4300K range? Any other tips?
Do you mount your camera on your lid? I'd be afraid I'd bump my head and break the mount off. And I'd suppose the velcro wristband gets muddy and clogged fast? This weekend, I'll probably just use it as a handheld and travel with it in my pack. :cave softly:


I have been mounting on my helmet, but it does get run into ceilings and walls a lot. Hasn't broke it, but it did scratch the lens cover. Other than that, I just carry it in my pack and use it as a handheld when I want to record. But good lighting is definitely a major requirement for this camera-it's hard to have too much.

Trogman :helmet:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Apr 15, 2014 1:50 pm
by ohiocaver
GoPro sound: I discovered this weekend while shooting some practice video of the bigger falls in Norman Cave (a very noisy environment in a narrow passage with 15-foot falls thundering down) that anything the photographer says while shooting is picked up very clearly by the GoPro. This despite my failed effort to make myself heard by my model. She was just 8-10 feet away but could not make out my words. So any narration can be done in a normal voice despite the noise in the passage. This was with the silver GoPro3+ housed inside its case. The sound on that camera is awesome and better than the black models. :woohoo:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Apr 15, 2014 3:28 pm
by trogman
ohiocaver wrote:GoPro sound: I discovered this weekend while shooting some practice video of the bigger falls in Norman Cave (a very noisy environment in a narrow passage with 15-foot falls thundering down) that anything the photographer says while shooting is picked up very clearly by the GoPro. This despite my failed effort to make myself heard by my model. She was just 8-10 feet away but could not make out my words. So any narration can be done in a normal voice despite the noise in the passage. This was with the silver GoPro3+ housed inside its case. The sound on that camera is awesome and better than the black models. :woohoo:


I actually have had the opposite experience- when using the sealed housing, you can't hear a thing. I ended up using the vented housing and putting some duct tape over the vents. This still picks up most sounds, but gives it some protection against the elements. In a really wet cave or other wet environment, I would switch to the sealed housing.
So do you think the Silver model has better audio pickup than the Black?

Trogman :helmet:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Apr 26, 2014 8:06 pm
by ohiocaver
Actually, I'd say the Black has better sound than the silver. In this case, I was about 12' from noisy falls. However, I was using the camera as a handheld so it was very close to my face (maybe 2' away, at arm's length). You can hear me - sounds like I'm screaming. But you can't hear my subject - who also was yelling over the noise. It might have something to do with directionality of the sound coming to the mic? In other cases, however, like outdoors on a ski slope, the Black way outperformed the Silver in sound pickup when both were in their Lexan cases.

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Jun 14, 2014 9:34 pm
by ohiocaver
Vaguely relevant to GoPro: The company is going to sell stock and is making an IPO in a couple of weeks. Ticker will be GPRO. Expected price of the offering is in the $20-24 range. If you like the camera and the technology maybe you can retire on the stock and spend the rest of your life underground shooting GoPro video?!?! :shrug:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 4, 2014 5:13 pm
by Despelunking
The GoPro is quite pathetic in low light, so you need quite a bit of power if you want to film larger chambers with it.

I bought two 700 lumen illuminators from these guys: http://www.mastrel.it/index.php

They are great, since they project light at 180 degrees and the intensity is completely homogenous throughout. They can also take quite a beating.
Still, even with these two 700 lumen lamps my GoPro Hero 3+ can only film small to medium size passages in full HD with no grain, but as soon as chambers get larger I get a lot of grain in the video. (DISCLAIMER: Caves in my country are very wet and muddy so the light gets sucked away by the dark walls. I did some filming in a fossil section with very white walls and the image quality was much improved).

In any event, in less than a month I'll be getting their 2.500 lumen model and as soon as I test it in-cave I'll post some footage.

Meanwhile, here is some footage I shot with the two 700 lumen lights: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Og1Nipv5dpU?list=UUEECVwrdJTcgC-Mvvjvh66Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 5, 2014 8:59 am
by rlboyce
Thanks for sharing. I love to see the different ways in which people take video underground.

Here is Despelunking's video:

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 5, 2014 10:04 am
by Despelunking
Thanks for fixing the link. Still figuring out how to use the forum.

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 5, 2014 10:48 am
by BrianFrank
I don't speak spanish, can someone tell me what the green rock is at 7:30 min?

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 5, 2014 2:48 pm
by rlboyce
I could be wrong, but I think that's just a natural skylight @7:30.

Re: GoPro needs better lighting

PostPosted: Oct 5, 2014 4:29 pm
by caver.adam
I highly recommend checking out the candlepowerforums. They have a bunch of reviews on different lights. Great resource.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/content.php