Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “A day at the beach — Top Shelf”.
I love going to the beach whether I’m on vacation or going local. I spent as much time there during the summer as I possibly can it’s a place for me to collect my thoughts and ponder my minuscule existence in the vastness. That is the universe. It’S also just a ton of fun.
I love playing in the water skateboarding on the boardwalk surfing, you name it for me, going to the beach is always a great time. The beach also kind of sucks it’s hot and there’s sand everywhere, which I find in my shoes and in my clothes days or even weeks after I go, and there are no power outlets which is fine for some people. But I don’t want to leave the beach with a dead phone, so if I’m gon na track all the way out to the beach we’re gon na have to solve some of these problems.
First, I’ve done some really crazy stuff, with action cameras for The Verge everything from riding skateboards to go-karts, to planes to Indy cars. So if there’s anything, that’s gon na get me into the water, it might be that so we reached out to Mikey to temple who’s a filmmaker and a pro surfer to see what he could do with GoPros newest camera. This is a guy, that’s shot all over the world with just about every kind of camera. You could imagine.
How did you get started in surfing and filmmaking? I had gone on a trip to the Maldives. We were sailing around from. I told it’s all like a dream trip and I was going man how do how do we not have someone shooting motion on this right now I got a friend in Florida who there’s a really great filmmaker. I was like hey. Let’S, let’s make a surf film, we’ll go travel around the world, we do like five or six trips. I have no clue what I was doing and that’s kind of what what started my filmmaking and from there I haven’t stopped.
Mikey took us out to one of the private beaches near his home in Montauk whoa, it’s a camera technology. You know. Were you able to use waterproof cameras? The first surf film. I did.
We actually did on all super 16, so a Bolex water housing. It’S like pretty much the biggest nightmare. There is so we got the newest GoPro, here’s the gopro hero4 session and i’m curious what you think something that’s this small and this waterproof out of the box does for a surfing expedition. If you want to bring this on a shoot that being that, it’s that much smaller is insane yeah, that’s the only problem with them. The bigger one! Is it’s a lot? It’S a big commitment when you take it in the water, if you’re shooting with it in your mouth or if you have a handle with it or something like that, you have to pay attention. Yeah you’ve got it.
You’Ve got this thing, but that could change things. Even more than the GoPro already has, this thing tops out around 1080p 1440p. It doesn’t have 4k. Is that something you worry about? As a filmmaker I mean everything has limitations, but as long as it’s shooting 60 at 1080, if that’s all, you really need.
Mikey was only out there for a few minutes, but he was still able to get some pretty amazing. Shots like this POV shot from his hand, which was using GoPros new hand mouth, but the waves weren’t large enough for him to do much more than that or for us to get out there ourselves. So we went to our backup plan so Mikey we brought along this underwater sea scooter thing yeah and you can just really just like take it.
It’S like you’re James Bond under there sounds like something I’m gon na need. I’Ve never surfed before the CDC. Scooter is more or less a toy that pulls you in the water at 3 miles an hour, it’s fun, but the choppy ocean gave us some trouble, especially for Sean every time I went out there with it.
It just felt like I was getting pushed around by the water and not being pulled around by the CD so yeah. It didn’t work that great at pulling us, but it did allow us to get some great underwater footage with the GoPro. We had somebody in the water shooting with a Canon 5d Mark 3 and we honestly, like the GoPro footage, better, it’s more dynamic and plus the cameras just so much smaller. It was small enough that we could forget about it and do what you’re supposed to do at the beach and that’s have a great time after Mikey took off Sean and I set up camp inland to check out some more Beach tech.
One of the big problems. I have was going to the beach is there’s sand everywhere. So one of the things I found is called the sand dousset towel. It’S got a special material on the bottom that not only repels sand. It also won’t let water pass through it. So, let’s test this, then to see actually if it works right so yeah that does a pretty good job of keeping the water out yeah. The nice thing about this towel is it’s not crazy, expensive and you can just find it online. It’S made in Australia! Well, ship it anywhere in the world.
One thing that I think is essential when you come to a beach is having a way to play music. As long as I’ve been going to the beach with friends or family, we would always stop and pick up a crappy $ 10 plug and speaker, and now we have Bluetooth speakers. This is Logitech’s UE roll, it’s waterproof, you could toss it around in the sand and the best part is. It actually sounds good. We have the JBL pulse here too, which is one of the better Bluetooth speakers, but it’s not waterproof. No, it’s not waterproof in we’ve. Been playing back and forth with these all day, I really think I like the sound to that thing, better right, a little bit cheaper too. So I’m always worried when I’m out here that my phone’s gon na die.
So what we brought here is a gold, zero solar panel charger. I really like the idea of this thing. It’S a little cumbersome, it’s kind of hard to set up, there’s a lot going on yeah the wires just kind of like hang out the back and everything like that. So if you’re gon na be outside all day – and you want constant power and you have a lot of sunlight – I think it’s a pretty good option, but it’s not perfect.
So my solution is just this little brick that I got off Amazon. It has a smaller footprint overall, but this thing is pretty cool yeah, but that thing you’re gon na be able to use indoors. That’S true, also yeah, alright Sean as someone who doesn’t often come to the beach. What do you think the coolest thing we looked at was the thing that’s probably gon na bring me to the beach more than anything else that we saw was the GoPro. I really like the idea of being able to get something out of your Trek to the beach. You know whether it’s some footage or some pictures something like that, but I think all of this stuff is actually like worth looking into. If you want to like make your beach experience a little bit better, not even so long ago, five years ago, the idea of coming to the beach with your phone with a good Bluetooth, speaker and being able to stay charged all day was expensive. And today it’s really simple to do.
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