Tips To Take Videos Doing Extreme Sports
Taking extreme sports videos on an action camera such as a GoPro can be challenging sometimes, the first time you take videos of extreme sports they might not look as good as how you expected them to be. Action cameras are famous for recording extreme sports but most cheap sports cams won’t produce good results such as GoPro cameras.
Most cameras have multiple settings to mess with which help videographers get great-looking videos, action cameras don’t have many settings and some settings are better left on automatic, GoPro does have Protune which gets you access to extra settings and gives you a bit better quality.
The latest GoPro model can record videos up to 5K resolution, older GoPro’s can take videos up to 4K. GoPro’s produce the best quality videos of any other sports cam, natural colors, good contrast, and amazing stabilization make them the best cams from shooting extreme sports footage.
The best way to create a good video is to have a general idea of what you want to capture, before you start you can look for inspiration from your favorite athletes, or on YouTube.
Video Modes
Video mode is the default mode for video, it allows us to take a single video. With Looping mode, you can take continuous video capture. While taking pictures you can change different settings to achieve different results.
With the shutter button, you can take a single picture by pressing it once or take multiple pictures by holding down the shutter button to shoot up to 30 photos.
Framerate
Another important tip to remember when shooting sports is to record with a high framerate so you can record everything smoothly and be able to playback in slow motion.
There are many different options to select for your framerate, the minimum you should use should be 60FPS, if you want to get incredibly smooth slow-motion clips you can go up to 240FPS by lowering the resolution a bit.
Batteries
Another useful tip when going somewhere with a GoPro is to carry extra batteries so you can quickly exchange the first battery for a fully charged one. You will also need a good SD card to store all your pictures and have enough space.
If you want to get an extra battery we recommend getting the originally produced battery from the brand, as they are the ones that perform the best and last the longest, even though the white brand’s ones might cost a little less.
Light and Time
The best time to take sports videos is when the weather is clear and there is a lot of light from the sun so you can clearly see the action. Check the lighting in the place you want to record before you start.
Golden hour is another time to get great-looking videos, which is the time when the sunrise or sunset is happening, and the last hours of light of the day.
Accessories
You can find endless accessories for your action camera, to enjoy the experience from different angles and better footage.
If you just bought a GoPro or a different brand action camera, but you haven’t made the most of it when you go skating or snowboarding with your friends, you may not know many of the possibilities that accessories can give you.
Use LUTs to Stand Out
LUTs are a great addition to your videos, easy and fast to use, and will give you great-looking results. For a videographer, LUTs are a great way to get your videos on another level and stand out from everyone.
Every LUT pack is different and every picture will look differently because of lighting and white balance settings, dominant colors, etc. If your video doesn’t look perfect, you may need to make small adjustments to the LUT. Check out our LUTs here!
Protune Settings
Understanding the protune settings.
Shutter
The Shutter controls the time during which light arrives inside the camera. The shutter options are Auto, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000.
White Balance
The White Balance controls the temperature of your photos and videos. Lower values such as 3000K will give your photos much warmer tones and higher values like 6500K produce cooler tones.
Sharpness
The Sharpness consists of increasing the apparent sharpness of the image, using software or the firmware of the camera itself, the details will appear more clear, GoPro comes with 3 settings: Low, Medium, and High, I suggest not using High since it will look too sharp and not too good, the best settings are Medium for those who don’t want to do any post-production and Low if you want to sharpen the image later in post.
EV Comp
EV Comp is the exposure or brightness of the photo, with GoPro you can adjust up to from -2.0 to +2.0, I find that 0 to -0.5 give the best results.
ISO
The ISO setting sets the GoPro sensor sensitivity to light. On the GoPro, the ISO ranges from 100 to 6400, the higher the ISO setting the more grain/noise it will produce in the image so it should only be used for low-light such as night setting even though I still don’t recommend going at the max.
Color
GoPro comes with 2 Color configurations, Flat and GoPro color, GoPro color gives great results for those who don’t want to do any post-production and the Flat profile is great to work with on post-production.
Choosing the Best Settings
To access GoPro’s settings you need to enable Protune. Protune is an advanced configuration that allows the camera to save much more information, thanks to Protune we have more advanced tools and can obtain better results of color, sharpness, exposure, or ISO. If you’re more familiar with photography the Protune on GoPro cameras would be the equivalent of RAW mode on SLR cameras.
An advantage that GoPro has over most other cameras is that it’s very easy to carry anywhere and use in situations where you cant use another camera. There are many accessories you could use for extreme sports photography we recommend checking out this 50 in 1 accessory kit by clicking here.
- FOV depends on what you’re going for, we recommend using Wide or SuperView for good-looking videos which will give a nice effect.
- Shutter on Auto
- Stabilization on Auto
- EV Comp 0 or -0.5
- White Balance Auto
- ISO Min 100
- ISO Max 400
- Sharpness Low
- Color Flat or GoPro
- RAW Audio Off
- Mics Stereo
We hope this blog has been useful and provided the answers you were looking for, if you liked this blog check out our tips on how to get better GoPro pictures (Click Here).
