The Lens Cap on GoPro Max, what did it do to my footage? Join me in my in depth discussion about my GoPro warts n all activities
🎬 iServalan: Film & Frame — Podcast
📜 Transcript
Welcome to the new film school.
This podcast is directly linked to the film school. I'll tell you about that in a minute.
What we really want to know today is all about the lens cap for the GoPro. What it does, is it worth it? How do you use it? Etc., etc.
Um, many years ago, I bought my first GoPro to film bands. I had a club and I wanted to film kind of, you know, kind of bootleg rock videos. because that was what I had in mind. And you know, getting in amongst the band while they were performing, looking at the audience, looking up from the ground, you know, the crutch shots, you know, the thrusting guitars, look at the the arm of the guitar, look at the fingers from the shoulder, all these really interesting angles. Um, and I remember being told at that point or reading that it was really important to keep these lens caps on to protect the lens because the lens is the expensive thing in a GoPro. Um, and when you're doing 360, you don't always know what's happening behind you. Um, especially if you're wearing it on your head. Um, so you know, or or even if you've got it on a bit of a stick, you could bash into something.
You're not looking at the viewer, the viewfinder. You're, you know, you're literally sort of in the dark with all that stuff. And and you can imagine in a a club environment where people are jostling and you've got all that going on, you would definitely need these these sort of goldfish bowl looking covers and and they're they're like a sort of half circle globe shaped with a rubber surround and they just clip on over the back and front cameras. Um and they've been absolutely fine for me until more recently. Now, I was I was using my GoPro to teach music because I I'm a strings teacher. So, I was using them on my head. They're really good for piano, really good for cello, less good for viola because the the sound was you're picking up too much sound from the actual string and not the resonance, the the string and the bow. So, it wasn't working so well for that. But for strings, it was really good because you've got a reasonable picture. you film in 360 and you can zoom in to the music and you can zoom into my hands and zoom into, you know, whatever you want, you know, look outside while I'm playing or or whatever it was. Um, and it worked perfectly fine. Um, though I didn't really have any issues with clarity, although I I did notice that, you know, it wasn't particularly good at fine detail, especially um in bad light. So, you know, got got a pretty shoddy, grainy image.
Anyway, I more recently I've been out and about and I've been doing these 360 rushes and you can have access to all these rushes for free on on YouTube. You can look at them, tell me what you think, you know, give a critique if you want, if you must. I don't care. I mean, I literally just go out, I put it all on auto and I film. And that's what I'm doing at the moment because I'm much more of a post-edit person and I'm, you know, I'm exploring dance and um overlays and kind of um artistic composits rather than getting the artistic shot necessarily in the 360 environment. Um, so and because I know that I've got, you've got so much opportunity with 360 to get so many different exciting angles and it's actually, you know, you don't really need to do too much with it. Certainly for what I want to do anyway. Um, I don't know if you can hear that a child screaming. Apologies. Um, and a cat jumping on me. So, um, anyway, more recently, I've been looking at kind of close-up work. Uh, I go out once a week um to to video in 360 the environment around me, landscapes, closeup um views. I do this kid show, bug's eye view, and I wanted to be very close in amongst the sort of undergrowth in the in the forest and looking maybe up in the trees, etc., etc.
So, I did notice that my the clarity was really compromised when I zoomed in. Um I I had got some reasonable footage for sort of medium distance stuff. So I couldn't get a clear picture of the aisle of white for example when I'm standing on the you know on the Solent on the land side and the mainland side whereas my my brother who's a photographer was getting great shots of the aisle of white. Do you see what I mean? Um, so I I kind of assumed that perhaps GoPro wasn't so good at long distance and it wasn't so good at close-ups. Um, so imagine my surprise when I the last two times I've been out, the first time I went out, I took off the lens caps. Um, so that these are these protective lenses that are um, you know, really there to protect. And the advice is if you want to do something that's quite safe, take them off.
But I mean, if you're going to do, you know, skateboarding or or BMX, you know, stunts and what have you, I I really do think you should keep them on because they're there for a reason, you know, to protect. Anyway, I'd filmed um a rally, a car rally, a vintage car rally, and they're all on YouTube as well. And I'd take I'd removed the caps, right? And then last week I went out and I was filming just, you know, around near where I live, a marina. It's actually a derelict building I wanted to look at and it was quite exciting but when I got home I thought it's not so good. It's kind of a bit bleached out and and a little the clarity is not particularly good. It's you know and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. And it was only when I put them on YouTube and I I looked at all the thumbnails I thought, "Oh my god, I I forgot to take the caps off." Um, of course I did. And of course the difference now is so incredibly obvious that I feel completely, you know, dumbfounded by this this, you know, this realism that um the the reality of my error, I should say. Um it's just an incredible difference. And it it's only by doing these two sort of side by side shoots in very similar weather um conditions, both on auto, that that I've realized that the difference is just down to that lens. So you you you can really tell.
Now, the other thing about the lenses is that my lenses are uh the lens covers, sorry, is that there's a scratch on one of them, which gives this really annoying uh patch of sort of opaqueness in the middle of the front view shot. So, I knew when I was looking at them, I thought, "Oh, bloody hell. I've forgotten to take the cap off." I knew immediately um once I got home and I thought, "What's that?" You know, I thought it was on my computer screen, but no, it's on every single forward- facing shot. I tried to take some footage of a a very close-up cobweb, and I just didn't get any of it. So, you can actually see in some instances the reflection of the lens, the actual lens on the cover, almost like a sort of double exposure. not quite that obvious, but you can see these kind of shadows and this kind of, you know, these little light problems refle reflecting, you know. Um, so what do we do as, you know, if we're an act, if we're looking for action shot with a with a 360 GoPro, um, what, you know, we I guess you have to assess the danger really. Now, I just saw on Teimu, I've just bought this camera on Temu because it's a it's good for snorkeling. So, we're going to go snorkeling. Um, so that'll be here.
All my snorkeling videos will be here. I've got to get a wet suit and everything. I'm probably too late to do it this year, but I will definitely start next next late spring. Not not quite summer. I'll probably tolerate late spring. Um, but that um I wanted a waterproof camera and I wanted something that I could stick on a rod that would go really really high up into trees and I bought this camera on Teimu and so the the camera comes it's it's sort of a longish shape.
I don't imagine the battery length is is particularly long but that doesn't matter for what I want to do because I make art essentially and for me it's all about creative film making. So it's much less about you know making the blockbuster. Um I'm quite in fact I'm quite drawn drawn to the creative short. Um I quite like that as a medium. Um I'm looking to explore that as a as a you know professional artist and to sell you know that the kind of moving image painting as it were um that people can watch over and over and over again if they bought one um and they can display it on a digital screen in their home etc. um or at events and what have you. These just very short um pieces. So, I don't need cameras that have really long battery. And even actually the GoPro only, you know, if you've got it on solid solidly, I think about an hour and a half. I might be right. Um I don't have it on solidly. I I'm stopping and starting a lot. The other thing I did the other day, so I mean nothing's ever wasted as far as I'm concerned.
I might make m I make mistakes, but there I'm always going to get something useful out of a session of of filming outdoors. I mean, it's quite challenging because you don't have the um the luxury of sitting comfortably in front of a a computer say or or whatever and and making slow decisions. you have everything sort of on on the hoof um decision with happy accidents happening all over the place and then adapting to each individual sort of frame really as as you approach your subject matter. I I started having a a kind of guide in my head about what I want to what I want to achieve each each week.
So sometimes it might be texture, sometimes it may be high, sometimes it might be low, sometimes it might be long distance, close up. Um, sometimes it may be color. The seasons are quite important as well because you know the the what what darling? what the seasons, you know, change the colors and and change the the type of environmental um imagery that you're going to get because obviously you've got autumn with all the reds and yellows. And then you've got, you know, winter with sparse trees. You could you've got more access to um high views, the sky, distance views, maybe more buildings, um etc., etc. you you've got all these different kind of things to think about when you're doing on plan air as I call it um photography or or film making. So, um, I'm, you know, these this stuff with the lens cap on, I will say that it looks a bit dreamy, a little bit dreamy. And actually, that might be quite useful.
Not particularly for this derelict building. I don't think it's necessarily useful, but I I'm never one to throw rushes away. So, what we're doing with the film school is is uploading all the rushes to YouTube for free viewing in 360. You can move your camera around or wherever they are headset. Um, and if you join the film school for the upper tier, then you can use my rushes. You I will send you know you can access the files and download them. There are a few restrictions.
They're for personal use or for your own creative use. So, if you do something with them, you know, change them so that it's not recognizably my staff anymore. Um, you know, that I'd be cool with that actually. Um, but there are a few regulations, but pretty much they're for for you know, pe other creative filmmakers to sort of um, you know, springboard your own creative journey really and and make your own stuff. So, I think that's really exciting and so definitely for students. I mean, that that's a godsend, isn't it, for students. So, and academic studies and research etc. Um there's a you know as because I go out every week these archives will just grow and grow and grow and um making a 360 history of of any area is an exciting thing to be part of and an exciting thing to do and and you know making that 360 view accessible to anybody around the world with who has access to YouTube I think is also really really exciting because you can you know the the viewer now becomes the director and directs the the shot and goes wherever the director wants to go, you know, it's out of my hands.
All I did was hold a camera. Yeah. Um, so yes. Anyway, I've bought this um almost disposable camera from Teu. It was about 20 quid and it comes with a a casing, a waterproof casing, so you can snorkel with it. I've really bought it because I want to go out in all weathers and um because I want to stick it places. It might be that you know, you don't know what if you're sticking a a rod because I've bought a 3 m rod and apparently it's very wobbly on 3 m, but it's quite sturdy on two. That's six feet.
So, a camera and it's a rotating camera. So, it's not uh it's not 360 exactly, but it rotates. Um so, it'll be two-dimensional in the edit, but I I kind of like the idea. It just appealed to me really that it can rotate. So, it won't be fully immersive and interactive in the VR sense of the word, but it'll certainly be very interesting from a a viewing point of view, you know, to Wow, look at that. You know, even if you you use that in a creative way to sort of make circles and things um you know, any time of day or night, um I'll get a light for it. And I just think this is, you know, artists love to use um any sort of camera equipment and bad quality isn't isn't always a problem for us. And I always remember there was a Fisher Price camera that lots of um artists were using and it was highly sought after. They only had it out for about a year. It was a kids toy. Um if I could get my hands on one of those. Anyway, don't forget to sign up. So pop along to tailtellerclub.com and you'll see the film school there, guys. So check check you]