Remember the posting about filming and fishing at the same time? Innovations are going so fast, I think we're (almost) here!Taking pictures of fishing trips is great fun. It helps you capture the fine moments together with a friend or just being out in the outdoors. However capturing some moments with a video camera can give that extra touch to the moment.
I too have been experimenting this area using a (relatively) cheap pocket video camera, the Creative Vado HD. This camera has been around for a few years and it's still a nice little camera. It's light, it captures HD (720p) at 30 fps (frames per second), it has a good wide angle lens and it is easy to use.
These days more and more pocket camera's are coming out with better specs (real 1080p HD) and 60 fps (only 720p) recording for even more fluid capture of fast movements and some models are even water proof.I have taken care of shaking as well as capturing myself when I'm on my own by using a tripod and it has been working out pretty well. But how about capturing the moment of a fish taking my dry fly off the surface or how the strike indicator moves ever so gently? This 'capturing the same view as I see myself' type of filming is something I haven't been able to solve.
The weird idea of hooking a small webcam-like camera on top of the hat as seen in my posting is obviously more of a joke rather than reality. Well, is it? Take a look at current offerings like the HD recording Contour or even smaller the GoPro.
These 'wearable' video camera's are really nifty, but they acquire a hard case helmet to mount the camera. Obviously that's no option when fly fishing. Way too hot! But then I ran into this little gadget: the Looxcie.This wearable video camera reminds me of the LED lamp I wrote about earlier. The Looxcie has no buttons. It just starts recording and when the storage is full it just replaces the earliest recordings. Storage capacity is supposed to be 5 hours of recording! The video resolution is 480 x 320, recoding at 15 fps. There is no HD version planned yet. It's also a Bluetooth head set for your cell phone. When a call comes in, the video stops recording.
Well, I'm sure this type of innovation will continue to evolve. This Looxcie is the closest video camera I've seen so far that fits my idea of 'film what you see'. In next couple of years I hope to see a Looxcie-sized video camera with 1080p HD, 60fps, wide angle lens with image stabilization, 9 hours battery life, 16Gb of storage and stereo sound. Can't be that much to ask?
Again, we've come a long way.
What I think should improve to become a serious contender as the fly fisherman's video camera are:
What I think should improve to become a serious contender as the fly fisherman's video camera are:
* Some form of image stabilization
* Better quality with lower light conditions
Update 18 june 2011:
Here's a nice article about the GoPro Hero HD camera from a fly fisherman's perspective.
This video and especially the conclusions by the owner are spot on. Although the captures are easily the best I've seen so far (without any form of image stabilization it's still a shaky view though) from a first person's view, it's still not what the owner (me too!) is looking for. Also the terrible user interface (in fact there is no user interface...) makes difficult to see what you're capturing.Update 7 aug 2011:
It looks like the GoPro is really catching on as the can-take-a-hit video camera for fly fishermen. Thanks to the head strap the GoPro can capture in a true first person view. Unfortunately the extreme wide angle lens can result in captures with weird effects like this screen shot shows of a rod bending in two different curves.
