Models look great once assembled, but the magic happens during the action of building them. Most of what I’ve learned so far has been from watching assembly videos on YouTube, so I wanted to do the same.
Selecting a model
I found that most of the model builders shared their gear info either directly in the video or in the description. GoPro was the brand of choice, so off I went to Amazon!
A common model is the GoPro HERO5, which as of this writing is $199. That was a steep entry fee into this new arena. There was a cheaper model (HERO Session) for $139 — still a bit pricey. The more traditional cameras (e.g., Sony Handycam) were also over $200 new, so that door was closed as well. After some searching on Amazon for GoPro alternatives, I was shown some models by Campark.
I’m sure it’s not nearly as fancy or maybe even well-designed, but considering I’m using it for model building and not mountain biking or snorkeling (at least not yet anyway), the Campark ACT74 seemed to be a good fit for about a fourth of the price at $53…
One YouTube channel I follow does the spray booth camera work using a head mount, so I purchased one by TEKCAM ($7).
Per the Q&A section on the product page, it was recommended I pick up a 32 GB SD card as well ($12) as there’s no memory included in the camera kit.
For camera work that doesn’t need the first-person view from the head mount, I needed some way to mount the camera at various places. AmazonBasics had a 50″ tripod with carrying case for $17…
What’s in the box?
I was a bit surprised to see all the goodies that came with the camera, given how relatively inexpensive it was. (Check out the full product description on Amazon, as there are way too many things/features that aren’t relevant to modeling, but may be useful to you if you’re considering getting the camera for other reasons.)
Most of that gear is to accommodate all the various ways you’d mount it (helmet, handlebars, wrist, tripod, etc.).
Here’s the camera unit and the water-resistant case…
One side has a few ports and a slot for the SD card (pictured as already inserted)…
It comes with two batteries as well. Each has a plastic pull-tab so you can easily remove it from the camera…
What can it do?
Mode #1: Still pictures…
Mode #2: 1080p (30 frames per second) video…
Mode #3: 720p (90 frames per second) video…
Mode #4: Preview and playback (yes there’s a small speaker in the camera as well)…
Mode #5: Device setup…
Mounting
Now that camera seems to be working, I need somewhere to place it.
The camera fits inside the water-resistant clamshell housing (upper left); the clip (upper right) attaches to the housing using the screw (lower right), which eventually clips into the tripod mount (lower left)…
The next part wasn’t intuitive, but after some brute force and awkwardness, I confirmed that these parts do indeed go together…
Next, I removed the mount component with the threaded screw from the tripod and attached it to the camera-with-mount assembly…
The head mount worked in a similar fashion, but with less fuss…
Testing it out
For another project earlier this year, Gillie and I borrowed a friend’s GoPro with a similar water-resistant housing. We were instructed to open the back of the case when recording, otherwise the audio would be muffled.
That was the case here as well. I pressed “record” and walked around the room a bit while talking. I was pleased at how well it picked up my voice while I was on the other end of the room facing away from the unit. (I don’t plan on doing any voice work for this build, but I was curious).
Getting to the files
I think this model comes with a means to connect to some service via Wi-Fi, but that’s overkill for my needs. Worst case, the SD card came with an adapter for my laptop (or you can buy a USB model that reads all the flavors of memory cards).
I went for an even simpler approach: connect the USB cable right into the laptop…
Pretty straightforward for what I wanted — get the files or charge the battery. The USB Mode option just mounted a new drive. No frills, and easy to figure out what’s where…
What’s next
So far I’m pleased I was able to get all the video gear for less than $100. 😀
One more technical hurdle to leap given that I want to start including videos in the posts as soon as I get parts out of the model kit is to learn some simple video editing for the clips the camera is now set up to record.
“But why?”, I hear you ask. A few goals…
- To keep delivering frequent posts, I don’t want all the raw video to pile up while I build the model, and then spend days/weeks getting the clips together. I’m thinking small-batch here: film, edit, blog.
- I want it to look slightly more professional than Windows MovieMaker.
- Other people’s videos taught me some techniques I’d like to learn, such as freeze-framing on things and speeding up playback during the boring/repetitive stuff.
- Voiceovers are out-of-scope for this build, so I plan to add titling and other descriptive text (which is I believe a bit more complex than MovieMaker can do).
- I have the opportunity to learn a new application I know nothing about: Adobe Premiere Elements. Who knows; it could come in useful for other projects!
Time to go learn some things about video editing. I look forward to sharing some of my practice clips in the next post!