paddling with a camera

Towing and Paddling
Sea Wind
December 2005

Since all my local lakes remained frozen I used to drive to the South Platte River near Greeley and paddled upstream and then back downstream. The river at Kersey was flowing between 400 and 500 cfs, lower than usual. In my upstream paddling I had to used a ski pole to push my Sea Wind over some shallow spots.

Each time I was finishing my workout well after sunset. During my trip on December 30th hundreds of geese were trying to land on my head just above Kersey.

I also started to train for the big portage by towing my canoe along bike trails in Fort Collins. It was still before I switched to inline skates.

The short video clip illustrates my towing and paddling training during that winter. It was shot with Pentax Optio WP. I believe it was the first time when I used a suction cup camera mount from Sticky Pod.

Related posts:

• Kayak and Canoe Paddling Video Clips, Movies and Animations
• Random Thoughts and Shots from the 2006 Ultimate Florida Challeng. Part 1... Part 2... Part 3... Part 4...
• 40 Mile Portage During Ultimate Florida Challenge

I made my first paddling video clip when I got my first digital camera, Canon PowerShot S40 with a waterproof case. It was August of 2002 on the Boyd Lake in Colorado with my CLC Patuxent kayak.

Since then, I have been using different cameras for my paddling movies: Canon Optura Xi as a camcorder and as a recorder for a bullet cam, and then Pentax Optio WP and W10. I have been experimenting with different way to mount my cameras on a kayak or canoe including mini tripods, clamp tripods, foam and duct tape mounts, joby gorrillapods, and recently different mutations of the sticky pod.

At the beginning it was a lot of fun just to shoot something in motion ... More sophisticated editing and scripts came later.

You can find my older movies (up to early 2005) on the Mountain Wayfarer site. Newer ones appear in different video posts on Paddling with a Camera and Fitness Paddling blogs. I have a few movies posted on YouTube.com and Gather.com. They may be faster to download there than directly from my server, but a quality will be lower.

This post is my attempt to prepare a central catalog of my movies. I am starting with the current year and will go backward in time in subsequent updates. All recent movies are prepared in the wmv format for Windows Media Player.

10 Miles in 60 Seconds

camera: Pentax Optio W10 mounted on a front deck with the 3 suction cup mount from Sticky Pod, interval model - picture every 30s
10Mb, wmv, download

Thunderbolt on the North Platte River

camera: Pentax Optio W10 mounted on a kayak deck with the single suction cup mount from Sticky Pod
17.2 Mb, wmv, download

First Four Finishers in 2006 Colorado River Race

8.2 Mb, wmv, download

Thunderbolt Kayak on Horsetooth

camera: Pentax Optio W10 mounted on the stern kayak deck with the single suction cup from Sticky Pod + some "diving" footage
12.1 Mb, wmv, download

Thunderbolt and Ice

camera: Pentax Optio W10 mounted on a front/stern deck and with the single suction cup sticky pod, no extensions
1 minute, 5 Mb, wmv, download

• Sticky Pod Review - A Suction Cup Camera Mount for Kayak Photography
• Searching for New Angles in Kayak Photography and Video
• How to Make a Simple Camera Mount for a Kayak Deck - Video Mast
• Paddling Video Clips - Movies from a Digital Photo Camera

10 miles
in 60 seconds
Colorado River Race
in Glenwood Canyon

Suction Cup
Camera Mounts
from Sticky Pod

I was rather busy paddling my Thunderbolt kayak during the recent Colorado River Race in Glenwood Canyon. Nevertheless, I shot 180 pictures with Pentax Optio W10 camera and, now, you can follow the 10 mile race in just 60 seconds.

1. The camera was mounted on a deck of the Thunderbolt kayak. I used a camera mount based on three suction cups from the Sticky Pod together with a short extension and two knuckles.

2. The camera was set in an interval mode: a picture every 30 seconds up to 180 pictures. I did not have time to test this setup before the race. I started a frame sequence a minute or two before the start. I paddled 10 miles in 1 hour and 8 minutes, so I had several shots left when cooling down at the finish and carrying the kayak to the shore.

3. The frames were assembled into a video clip without any adjustments. I only removed some repeating frames from the finish. Most pictures came OK, only a couple were blurry, a few were affected by direct sun despite that fact that the race was in the morning and we paddled west. I need to use something to protect lens against the sun.

4. I was getting a lot of splashes in rapids. You can see some water drops after the first rapid, but, generally, I didn't have problems with water on the lens. The camera was shifted a little bit in high standing waves of the second rapid.

5. The river looks pretty empty in my animation. However, I run five rapids and passed 7 boats. There was a staggered start with slower canoes going first and the three fast kayaks starting as last ones.

6. I should shoot pictures every 10 seconds instead of 30s. 10 seconds is the lower limit in the interval model. My speed during the race was close to 9 mph, so, in average, I traveled about 360 feet between shots. I am sure that my speed was much higher in all river drops where the action was more interesting. I had enough memory - I can store about 800 full resolution pictures (2816x2112) in 2 Gb memory card. On the other hand, I could store only about 30 minutes of video, not enough to cover the race.

7. You can compare my animated video clip to the short movie I shot in Glenwood Canyon in September of 2006 around the second rapid. The animated sequence of frames provides a good overview of the entire 10 mile race course. Of course, the higher sampling frequency would allow us to better see the rapids.

Related posts:

• 2007 Canoe Colorado Race in Glenwood Canyon - More Rapids with Opened Shoshone Dam
• Sticky Pod Review - A Suction Cup Camera Mount for Kayak Photography
• Thunderbolt-X Kayak on the North Platte River, Wyoming - Video Clip
• Pentax Optio W10 as Kayak Cam on Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon
• Fun with Pentax Optio W10 Waterproof Camera in Auto (Interval) Mode

Technorati tags: Colorado River race kayak video movie Pentax Optio waterproof camera sticky pod camera mount suction cup