Freestyle with Face

Quote: Ayecarumba

Yeowch! That really did come out of nowhere. The abrupt stop is probably why everything hurts. Your body absorbed all the energy of the impact, instead of your armor.

Armor? lol

It was definitely a new experience, wrecking while cruising. When you're tapped out, you're hyped to the max. Everything firing on all 8, ready for anything. Often after something like this, I can recall with striking clarity all the details. Remember instinctual thoughts I had even in mid air. With this, there was just one thought, "Too late". That was me telling myself not to stick my arm out to brace for the fall, as I had no time to set and likely would've broken it. I could only tuck it and hope. Worked pretty good, too. Bit of rash but not a single lasting ache (other than general ache from the ride). My leg (not the one shown in pic) took the brunt of it. Have no idea how or why but it's just today where it's gotten to the point that I don't notice pain in it.

Quote: Aye

I was watching a supersport road race this past weekend, and they had a camera mounted on the tail of the bike. Maybe it had a gimbal built in, or the video software corrected it on the fly, but the horizon would stay level while the rider scraped his knees back and forth.

Aye, they use gimbals in racing. It's usually as a lark, just to show the extreme cornering or banking. I've never seen coverage use it extensively. It's very disorienting (at least to me).

I do wish I knew what these other YouTube GoPro heroes do, though, to make their footage so perfect. When watching AMA, it's obvious that there's seven figures behind their production. But some of these YT vids (below) are using the same hardware as I. You'll see a first person shot that looks every bit as good as any Red Bull commercial, then a third person view of the same event and you see it's just your standard GoPro taking it all. I'm not looking for an Academy Award, I just wish I could make things a little prettier =p



You can see these folks have a cam stuck right to their helmet, no different than I. WHY ARE THEIRS SO MUCH BETTER? =(

Quote: Face

You can see these folks have a cam stuck right to their helmet, no different than I. WHY ARE THEIRS SO MUCH BETTER? =(

What you're not seeing are the ones they
have worse than yours. As a former photog,
if you want one good pic, you have to take
30 of the same thing. Wedding photogs
like my son in law take a couple thousand
pics these days, to get 40 they can use.

The videos you like are the result of hundreds
of hours you don't see that didn't turn out so
good. They cherry pic the best and toss the
rest. You want good videos, wear the helmet
everywhere. It ain't worth it. It's the same with
drone footage. My friend got a drone in May
and thinks his footage sucks. He's finally
realizing he has to fly 10 times more than he
is to get anything good.

Quote: Evenbob

As a former photog,
if you want one good pic, you have to take
30 of the same thing.

Oh, I get that. The "perfect shot" isn't something I'm looking for.

Maybe it's just a setting thing. When I see the skiers or snomobiles or motocross, their frame just seems so much better. I can see low enough to catch the front fender, yet the upper limit is the sky. The whole trail / arena is fully in view. When I do mine, going low enough to see right in front of the machine chops the trail right out.

Same for the shake. Their shake is totally noticeable, but I don't find it disorienting in the least. It doesn't detract from the video, it adds to it by showing the movement. Mine seems to be chaotic.

Guess I'll play with it to see if I can improve. Everyone I know is off on vacay so not only am I home alone, but I've nothing to do, no one to watch, and ain't no one gonna be bothering me for nothing. Camera's all charged; I'm gonna hop in and fiddle with settings, and then I'm loading up. Hopefully I keep 'er rubber side down. Ain't no one to carry me out if I don't =)

I sussed it out. I was using the "1080-30" setting, which I assumed was high def at 30 fps. I switched it to the next lowest (970?) and the shot got a hell of a lot wider. It came with the expected fish-eye, but there's a box you can check in editing that supposedly removes it. Just got it edited and currently u/l'ing to YT, I'll guess we'll see how much improvement there is in about 15min

Quote: Face

currently u/l'ing to YT,

Ouch, can you drive to the emergency room?

Not until they fix my bill =p

Didn't turn out too bad. Losing the fish-eye DID narrow the FOV a bit. Unedited, you can see my front bumper at all times, and all the way back to the handlebars when I'm sitting. I also never though it was "too low" as you could see the sky at all times. Now you can just see the bumper when I'm sitting, and a few times I thought the trail ahead was cut out. But compared to last, it's a definite improvement.

No big action, just 3 clips when I got a bit sporty, all mashed together. Stupid camera just informed me I only go about 60sec before I'm winded and need to rest. Can't say I needed that bit of info =p The only edits were for time and fish-eye, so this is pretty much raw video. Not so bad, considering how rough it is.

Much better than the last one. It's still
too claustrophobic, though. You have
your head down a lot watching for
the puddles. You need to tilt the camera
up more so we can see what's going
on overhead too. If you do that, we'll
get more of a sense of what it's like
to be there.

Quote: Evenbob

Much better than the last one. It's still
too claustrophobic, though. You have
your head down a lot watching for
the puddles. You need to tilt the camera
up more so we can see what's going
on overhead too. If you do that, we'll
get more of a sense of what it's like
to be there.

Thanks for the feedback.

I know just what you mean. I find myself leaning back while watching trying to get the frame to pan up lol. I'm trying to find the sweet spot. I enjoy seeing the machine. What the tires are doing, what the rider's hands are doing, that sort of stuff. But, at least when wearing it way on top of my head, it cuts out the far ahead, which gives that nasty claustro feeling.

I must've just gotten lucky with the race car. The first time I tried it, I loved it straight away.

I'm thinking that lowering the mount would improve things dramatically. I'd at least get my machine view without cutting out the trail, I'd expect. And... man, there's just no impression of the terrain when it's mounted like this. About a minute in when I first get on it and rip down that fire road, that is one hell of a hill I'm climbing. It's so steep I don't even think Wiz and his marathon training could ride a bike up it without stopping. Yet in the video, there's not all that much signifying it. Only way I can tell (other than knowing the trail) is because I can hear the load on the motor. Also, every time you a blip, then a short silence followed by sudden loud decompression, is a pretty large bar that I've jumped. The blip is to level the wheeler, the silence is floating through air, and the loudness is when I hit. Yet visually, there's no clue, other than a bit of extra shake. You can't even see the bar coming.

Maybe I'll look into one of those chest mounts.

This is why country is the best =D

Down south at the PA border, the town of Limestone's VFD runs an ATV dice run every year. For those who've never been, it's basically like a 5k but for wheelers. You pay your fee ($25, goes to support the VFD), get signed in with machine details in case they have to identify your body, and then you're off to the races. A majority of the trails consist of old fire roads and current gas lines, and approx a dozen locals give permission to use their land as well. You take with you a raffle ticket and a card in a ziploc bag, and there's 4 or 5 checkpoints along the way. At every CP, you stop and visit the tent where they have a shaker with 6 dice (hence, "dice run"). You shake, your total is totted up, then you carry on to the other.

Both the ticket and the die rolling enables you to win prizes. Most are just trinkets, gathered by the VFD from local business as donations, but some aren't bad at all. New gloves, new helmets, there's certainly prizes there worth winning. The grand prize, because these are firemen, was SEVENTY EIGHT thirty packs of beer, or a thousand dollars cash. One of these days I'm going to meet a man who takes the 78 cases, and I'm going to find out what makes a person like that tick ;)

There's a number of other raffles, no different than any other thing of this sort. Most know how the VFD goes, this is the same. It's like a gun raffle but with wheelers. I dunno how many machines they gave away this year, but it was enough to at least start your own small dealership. But I didn't pay too much attention to all that; I was there to RIDE!

Limestone sits right on the border, so close in fact that if not for the line, I am sure it would be consolidated into Brandford, PA. It's the same Allegany landscape featured in pretty much all of my exploits. I did worry for a bit as it's rained but maybe 4 days all year and I feared a dust storm. Then of course we get pounded for an hour less than 24hrs before it started. But really, I don't think it would've mattered. After a thousand wheelers go through, it's gonna be mud any way you slice it. This day did not disappoint -_-

Other than the mud, which I am just not a fan of, it's such a cool event. There are a few areas that are a bit rutted and rough, and one hill descent that was downright deadly, but a majority of it is nicely groomed access trails, and some were legit dirt roads. Signs mark every fork and intersection and the people are top notch. Sure, there's always a few young dickbags that want to race and view you as "competition", smashing their way past, but they are very few and far between. Mostly it's nothing but good ol' boys and gals as far as the eye can see. I saw a few kids not over 5 riding with dad, plenty of riders who hadn't reached their teens, and not few folks a handful of years older than EB. Husbands and wives doubled up, couples riding together on separate machines, and sometimes entire extended families cruising in a 100yd long pack. And all along the way people pulled over where there's room and diving into the myriad coolers all the packs had. It's a VFD event, you know people are coming to get plastered ;)

The machines are as varied as the terrain. Most were typical utility 4x4's; 500's, 800's, even a few 1,000's peppered in. A huge uptick in side by sides since my last event, seemed one out of every 5 was one of those huge monsters. Dirt bikes had a good showing, obviously consisting entirely of kids under 30. But it's the weird that I always get a kick out of. I saw not less than 3 Honda 250R three wheelers, a blast from the 80's so potent I almost sprouted an instant mullet. No homemade jobs that I noticed (one guys years ago had a Quadzilla frame stuffed with a Honda 4 cylinder), but I did find one side by side that would've been more at home in the Cali dunes, or maybe the Mint 400. Not sure how he got it through the trails and I wished I would have followed him a bit.

But what I love the best of all is just the atmosphere. The town is literally overrun. Quads buzz up and down the main road just like any other vehicle. I passed a state trooper, oh, at least three times without a care in the world. And no matter where or what or who, someone is there looking to make your day better. Stall out? The very next guy down the trail is hopping off to give you a push. Break down? The very next guy down the trail is gonna tow you out. A little dry? The very next guy down the trail is gonna give you a beer. No one's doing donuts in the USPS yard, no one's drag racing down the public street, no one's going off the trail tearing up property owner's land. It is, at least through my eyes, pure utopia. My machine's not registered, not insured, and upon passing a trooper on the streets without my helmet, I was met with a downcast smirk and a tap to her head, which I returned with a roll of the eyes and nod like "C'mon....", to which she smiled and nodded and carried on past me. For a few hours every year, I have My Country =)