Shooting good High Def video in the backcountry is much like backcountry skiing or snowboarding – you never really know what you’re going to get. It can be sunny, no wind, in the 30’s, and everywhere you point the camera you get a postcard kind of shot. Battery life is no issue, lens fogging, snow on the lens, cold fingers, setting up for shots is all easy. Or, it can be pure survival.
When the temps are substantially below zero it makes for great looking pictures. The snow lingers in the air like dust, everything looks silky, ski tracks fill up with as quickly as they’re tracked out with low moisture content snow. Cold smoke. The lens doesn’t even get wet because the snow is so dry it just blows off. But… when it’s -30 Farenheit, you simply can’t work without some type of gloves on – I know, I’ve tried. By the time I shot a handful of skiers I couldn’t even zip up my bag and my fingers are forever the worse for it. But the video was awesome!
I just finished a helicopter snowboarding trip last week and found myself many times riding with 3 cameras & 3 different HD formats.
A helmet cam – The ContourHD 1280 x 720 30fps. It records up 3 hrs. on a micro flash drive, it’s incredibly easy to use and it cost about $200. You can mount it to a helmet as I did, or on goggles, or even to a ski pole with great results. The lens has 135 degree field of view in HD. It’s the perfect width of lens in that it is wide enough to see everything but not so wide that you see yourself. The only down side is because the lens is so wide you literally have to be on top of the action for the best results.
The camera that I have had the most success with lately is the Canon Vixia. It is full 1920x1080 resolution recording on an internal 2 hr. memory. It’s small enough to wear around your neck yet it still has a 15 x 1 optical zoom…and it shoots in 24p. For the money - around $700 – it is an awesome camera. There’s one downside however. There is no viewfinder and the only option is to use the pop out small monitor. This would be fine in most environments except exceptionally bright snow. So I adapted it with a homemade monitor black box – there may be a Hoodman type of product on the horizon which accomplishes the same thing. The only other downside with this camera is that the only practical option for focus is to leave it in auto mode and some times there is a bit of lag before it finds its happy place.
And then finally for long shots – I rode all week with the SONY Z1 which shoots on HDV 1440 x 1080. And while there are newer cameras that shoot in 24p, it’s still a good looking camera with a great lens for those long tripod shots. I used a Sachler fluid head tripod (which I left in helicopter) and pulled it out a couple of times when I was dropped off across the valley on one peak as the group skied a peak in the distance. It made for the kind of brochure, money, ultra wide shot of a group of heliskiers – the kind of shot that makes you want to get your credit card out and book next year’s trip.
In this type of environment, there’s still something to be said for not dealing with media and being able to throw a shot tape in a back pack. I know that nowadays this is old school, and sooo 2007 but the fewer variables to deal with in a harsh environment like this the better, as far as I’m concerned.
For me, the only thing that suffers when I shoot video is the stills. I had yet a 4th camera, a point and shoot digital Canon still camera, with a big image (12.1 megapixels) but not much of a lens. But I have found that you can’t carry it all – and oh, and still have to negotiate back country terrain on a snowboard! But I’ll keep working on that. Stay tuned for a video very soon!
Frank Matson