Ultimate Vlogging Setup | What Do I Use??

Welcome back to the garage. Now, what with it being winter, there's going to be a lot less riding going on. There's going to be some exciting build series coming back to the channel, but in the meantime, while I'm waiting for bits to arrive, I wanted to do a little bit of a video about all of my vlogging gear, my setup, how I get my audio from the helmet, where I mount my cameras on the helmet, how do I get the shots from the bike, these fantastic 360 shots. I'm going to cover all of my kit, how I mount stuff, how I achieve the video quality that I do. Not saying it's that good, but if that is of interest to you, get yourself a cuppa, get a little drinky, and I'll talk you through my full vlogging setup. So first of all, let's talk a little bit about cameras. I've got a lot of cameras. Here's a little overview of all of my cameras. I've got a fair few of them. I've started off with the original, I think the Hero 2, I used to use at the beginning when I started this six or seven years ago. Then I went up and got the Hero 4. Then I've tried all sorts of Chinese cameras or action cameras. All work pretty well from a video point of view, but they've always suffered with poor audio. So when you're connecting a camera to your helmet, you obviously need a mic inside your helmet. That's been let down. There's not been a way to connect an external microphone. So the GoPro Hero 4 has been my camera staple for the last probably four years. And that's the camera I've used on my helmet the whole time. And even today, it is the humble Hero 4, which I mount to my helmets. The reason I haven't upgraded to the six, seven, eight, or nine is really because of the audio. With the Hero 4, you can just plug in the small mic adapter, three and a half mil mic adapter, and you can then connect your mic in your helmet. So it's very simple. The cameras are also very robust. They very, very rarely fail. So you can go out and record something, come back and you've got audio and video at the end of the day. And there's nothing more annoying than going out recording a bike review and getting home to find you've got no audio. The image quality is only 1080p. These days, that's not really good enough. So I'm looking for alternatives to upgrade on the helmet. Also, there's no video stabilization with the Hero 4, which we'll come on to a little bit. But it's just a very, very reliable camera. I do have later Heroes. I've also got a seven. That's it. I've only got a seven. I only got the seven because of the stabilization, the hyper smooth stabilization which came in. You can run a helmet microphone through this camera, but you need a great big audio adapter, which literally, it's like a big block you have to then fix to your helmet. And then it's also problems with water ingress to that big setup. It's got the stabilization, but I'm not 100% sure I like stabilization on the helmet. I quite like a little... It gives it more of a realistic feel to the video without the stabilization. So obviously, your head is stabilized anyway. So unless I'm pulling up at a junction, looking left and right, which can induce quite a lot of movement, in which case I'll cut to a different camera on the bike. But as far as GoPros go, I mainly use just the Hero 4, the old classic reliable camera. The camera is only as good as the one which is working. Or is it the one you've got in your pocket? I can't remember. But for me, the helmet camera is the Hero 4. It's been my little hero for the last four years. When it comes to bike cameras, then there's a whole plethora of different cameras I tend to use. What I've been doing for the last year, as you've probably noticed, I'm one of these people that really uses a lot of 360 camera footage. So this is a camera footage you see where you can see the whole bike in frame as you're riding. Now you need to be very careful when you're using the 360 footage. A lot of people say they don't like the results of it. And I think that is because you have to frame these shots quite well. You have to frame it so it looks natural, so it's not too much of a curved look to the image, and the bike looks a bit distorted. The Insta360 ONE X was the first 360 camera which really revolutionized the way these 360 cameras work for me. Originally, when I thought of 360 cameras, I thought of being able to sort of move the picture around. So you say you're watching a YouTube video, you could touch the screen and look around where you wanted to look, which is, you know, it's a bit of a fun thing. But that didn't wasn't really something I wanted to include as part of my videos because the resolution was bad. And I wanted, you know, people would miss the whole point of what I was recording. So you can't edit your own videos by watching it yourself and know what you're meant to be looking at, know where the action is. But what the Insta360 cameras enabled you to do was actually reframe the shot afterwards. So go in and then choose where you want to look. So if you've got out riding and someone overtakes or something happens, you can make sure that's in shot when you come back in the edit. What that does mean is is a bit of extra workflow. So you've got to go through and reedit the image which comes off of this. So not like the GoPro, you record it, you got your footage, you put that into your video project. And that's that with the Insta360 cameras. When you're using them in this way, you then have to reframe it and choose where you want to look. So there's an additional workflow. But I think it's more than worth it for With the Insta360 cameras, you've got a lens at either side of the camera. So this is shooting front, this is shooting back, there's this space in the middle here. So basically what these cameras do because these cameras, each of these cameras shoot slightly more than 180 degrees, so they're cutting in, in the software, it actually takes out this piece it can't see. And it makes it look like the camera is floating in the air. So it gives a really good effect when it's on the bike that you can't see how this camera is actually mounted to the bike and it looks almost like you've got a little drone following you along. So the Insta360 cameras for me are fantastic. So I've actually got three, well I've actually got four Insta360 cameras, one of these fell off the bike at some point. So I've got the ONE X, I've got the ONE R, which is a modular 360 camera. So you can plug in a 360 module or you can plug in a standard action camera module. Or you can plug in a one inch sensor, which I don't have to do sort of high quality vlog. So this is sort of an all-in-one camera solution, it's very very good. Insta360 have now just brought out this puppy which is the ONE X2. Now I've used this on a few videos now, it's basically waterproof. The ONE X was never waterproof, it's always quite vulnerable if you're going to go out in the rain. The ONE X2 is waterproof, it's also got a better way it does the stitching effect. It's also got a much bigger battery, this battery is 50% bigger than the one in the ONE X. So the battery life on this is over an hour, about an hour and 15 minutes. It's about sort of 40 minutes with the ONE X. So the ONE X2, I've only just got this, I've done a few videos with it. Also it's got a proper preview screen, a proper colour preview screen, so it's much easier to use than the ONE X, which was just a very simple display, which is a very simple LCD display. It's quite hard to go through the settings, whereas the X2 has a full colour screen, much easier to use. The actual camera is slightly wider, it's slightly bigger, more or less the same from the front, but from the side it's slightly wider because of the extra battery life. And of course everything's behind closed doors on this because it's now waterproof. It feels a little bit heavier as well, it feels more solid, it feels a better quality unit. And the big thing about this, if you're using it on the bike, is it has very, very good audio now. With the ONE X there used to be a lot of wind noise, you know, I could only really use it with the camera on the helmet because without it you just get a lot of whistling, a lot of wind noise, you can no longer hear the bike. With the ONE X2 there's multiple microphones on this now and they've fixed that issue of the really bad wind noise, so you can actually get some decent bike audio just by using this camera. Definitely my favourite out of the three for what I want to use it for. Now how do I mount these cameras? That's a very good question. I use these RAM mounts. Now I've got two different sizes of these, I've got a big one and I've got a medium size one. And then I've got an Ultimate Add-On's ball adjuster, you can unscrew that, move it around, I then get these extendable bars and then different sort of fittings on the end, depending what camera I want to attach to these basically. The Insta360, there's an optional motorcycle mounting kit and that now comes with a RAM mount, so it's absolutely fantastic, they've now included a RAM mount as part of that motorcycle mounting kit. So if you get a 360 camera I'd recommend getting the mounting kit to go with it. You get a lot of these parts with it, you get a lot of these bars, you get all the GoPro sticky mounts, you get the different sorts of attachments, whether that be a regular camera mount or a GoPro mount. But these can really go anywhere and I've used these on the handlebars, I've used these just on the frame, you know on bikes where you can just bolt it onto a frame, it's really sturdy. So once these are screwed on, really they're not going anywhere, they're absolutely solid. So these are great for mounting to the actual bike, mounting the cameras to the helmet. I've got several different mounts, the best thing to go is a chin mount. On my X-Spirit 3 I've got a chin mount here. What you struggle with chin mounts, with the GoPro mounts, is you know they're flat and crash helmets tend to be curved. So with this one I'm using a custom-made mount just for the Shoei helmet. I don't know if I can zoom in so you can see that. You can see that the actual mount is made to fit directly onto the X-Spirit. There we go, so there's the mount. So that is a custom-made GoPro mount for this helmet made by a company called Fab Mounts. So these are handmade, there's a chap in Singapore who makes these. He does them for all different sorts of helmets but I really wanted, when I got this X-Spirit, I really wanted that rather than have it on the side here and have some sort of arm coming around, I wanted it mounted directly on the front. Fab Custom Mounts, they're quite expensive, I think it's about 40 quid just for this mount. It's like custom-made but it's a fantastic solution that it's absolutely solid and it looks factory fitted. So that's how I mount to the helmets. It's all very well having good video quality but you really want to get some decent audio quality. It's quite hard getting decent audio quality from a crash helmet. There's a lot of wind noise, obviously it's quite a restricted space so as you talk it can be a little bit boomy. If you've got quite a deep voice like me it's quite hard to get those levels perfect. I've played around for days trying to get the ideal mounting solution for your microphone and what I've found the best thing to do is actually mount the mic underneath the cheek pad of the helmet. I don't know if you can just see there but my microphone is just tucked under the cheek pad and make sure you use a decent dead cat to reduce the wind noise and it also really helps if you've got a helmet with some sort of chin mount that also cuts down the wind noise. So that would be my tips here, mount it quite close to your mouth underneath the cheek pad, make sure you use a dead cat or you'll get a lot of wind noise and just you know breath noise, breathing sounds especially if you're doing an off-road video you can't help that you'll get that anyway and then if you can use some sort of chin mount on your helmet to reduce further the wind noise and that is how that is my tips to get decent audio from the helmet So you've got your helmet camera setup working, you've got your bike camera setup working, another thing I've been doing is getting good audio from the bike itself. How do I get some like the h2 video I did the other week I wanted to really pick up the sound and the fantastic pops and bangs and whistles that that machine makes so getting it what you're getting through the helmet is very limited you know the exhaust at the back of the bike all the pops and bangs are going from the back of the bike how do you pick that up? Well what I use is this, this bit of kit is a Zoom H2R audio recorder with a great big wind sock on the top basically a dead cat to reduce again that wind noise. On a bike it's all about getting rid of the wind noise to get good audio and this is what I use so I put this in my backpack now again it depends what your kit you've got but when one of my bits of kit which doubles up and makes a fantastic addition to vlogging is my vest I must get so every video I get a comment to say what is that vest and and for me the vest is fantastic not only let me get it for you this is my vest you see in all my videos it's got pockets everywhere you look like you're a bit like you're something out the SAS but it's the downside with it but you've got multiple pockets for all of your batteries and everything like that but also on the back of this it's got rear pockets and this is where I place my Zoom microphone turn it on press record there's a hold option on here so if you press buttons it doesn't stop it recording because that can be quite annoying you get home and it's stopped recording but put it on hold so the button presses don't stop it recording and I just tuck that upside down in the back of my backpack this backpack also has some holes in the bottom so it lets a bit of the sound into this and that picks up all the bike audio so if you've got a if you've got a standard bike with a standard exhaust forget it you won't pick up much you've got a noisy beast like the h2 you get all the pops the bangs the whistles it's fantastic so that is how I get the decent bike audio another little trick and another question people ask is how do I get those shots sort of behind the bike you know I've got a pole sticking up and there's an inch to 360 camera on the top and you get a great big aerial sort of view of the surrounding countryside makes quite a nice shot if you're riding a bike which is you know an adventure bike something like that there's a bit of decent scenery when I took that setup all around Greece on my Greece tour videos you know it's coming link at the top there I almost don't have to say anything on this tour it's just let the scenery do the talking and the 360 camera do the talking it's just fantastic shots people ask me how do I mount that to my back again it's with this jacket best even within one of the the rear pockets on here not that side and within here there is a a little area whereby you can insert this which is the insta360 selfie stick that slides into the pocket the toolkit pocket designed to put a screwdriver holds in there really firmly you can then extend that up and down and you've got a perfect solution for mounting your 360 camera up your back brilliant that jacket just does everything I need it to do I very rarely go out without that jacket on because I've got all my stuff in it you can actually carry the same amount of gear in that as what I can with a 25 litre backpack and because that jacket has got you carrying stuff front and back it spreads that load so you can carry a lot of gear and it doesn't feel like you've got that weight all on your back pulling your back it's all spread on the front it's spread on the back it's got all those little accessories where I can mount my 360 camera I can mount my audio recorder it's brilliant it is an ogio flight vest link in description other cameras I use is of course my vlogging camera the camera I'm recording this on right now let me switch to my other camera to show you this camera so this is the sony zv1 which is quite a new camera it came out middle of last year sony were claiming it was the ultimate camera for vloggers because it had stabilization you know it had 4k 25 video quality lots of things with it but the problems I it's a good camera I tend to find what can happen though let's switch back to it again is it's quite close it's got quite a the lens is not very wide angle so when you're vlogging it's quite a zoomed in picture so you get quite a lot of your face in the image so what I've been using is so I can get away from the camera a little bit and still get good audio I can come right back here my audio is still good that is because I'm using the rode wireless microphone which is another add-in you can see the little lapel adapter for it so this is a wireless microphone so I can go as far away from the camera as I like they're connected wirelessly there's a there's a module like a sender module and a receiving module the receiving module sits in the hot shoe attachment on the camera and you can hear me nice and clear so I can go back a bit tight on the image you don't want to see my face filling the whole screen so I get back a bit without the road wireless mic and there's me to do that good audio fantastic so that is my vlogging setup with the road mic and the sony zv1 camera what else do I use this you can see this to get fully immersed in this whole vlogging setup I must have thousands and thousands of pounds worth of kit now which I've accumulated over the years I've been doing this so I've got a lot of kit now I've got a really good setup I'm still adding stuff to it all the time and another camera I would have been using recently when this first came out I wasn't very impressed with it and that is this which is the dji osmo pocket as you can see this is a stabilized gimbal camera see how the actual camera on top is staying steady it's like something out of all the worlds doesn't it but that stays steady so you can get really steady shots you can walk with this you can talk into it I got this really as a as a vlogging setup again so you little button press and it'll spin around and look at me hello so this is uh let's put it let's record why not record there we go yes this is the osmo pocket so stabilized so I can move this up and down I can tilt it left and right as you can see and the image on this camera remains relatively level this is great this is what I use this for I've been using this in the slow motion mode so I can press a button then it'll flip around there's me uh there's me uh there's my sony press it again flip around again so if you want to talk to the camera you can hello I'm talking to the camera look at this press the button it points at what you want to look at so it's really good the main disadvantages with it is you know that it's so small the window to see what you're recording and when it first came out the auto focus wasn't very good so you'd put it in shot and it wouldn't really recognize it was your face and the focus would be all over the place there was a few updates to the firmware on this camera and I spent I had this bought this middle last year maybe a year before when these first came out I used it a few times and never used it again as well as cameras that you buy anything that's not great gets put on the back shelf never gets used then I saw some review videos people saying there's a new firmware update with this which fixes all of the issues now the auto focus is fantastic it picks up your face really good face pickup recognition it's also brilliant for doing slow motion stuff so on a lot of the fly by videos I've been doing with Greg react I'm actually using this to record sort of some slow motion stuff and it'll only record slow motion in 1080p so unfortunately not 4k but it will do four times slow motion and you can get some really nice because you've got the gimbal some really nice panning slow motion shots this is really what I use this for now but it's turned into something I'm using more and more because it's so small so you can take it literally anywhere because it's got such a small form factor that's the dji osmo pocket and there is now an osmo pocket 2 came out about two months ago which is even better so I did think about selling this and getting the pocket 2 but it's fine for what I need it for bye bye mr pocket getting back in your pocket so there we go I hope that was useful depending on what level you want to get into this you know if you're just interested in slapping a camera onto your bike and where best place to mount it I hope that's been useful the insta360 cameras are brilliant for picking up bike video and now the new x2 has decent one x2 has decent audio to go with that even better and it's waterproof and the battery's hour and a half on it almost you know it's fantastic if you want to mount to your helmet I hope I've given you some idea of where to mount to pick up decent audio from within your helmet if you want to get into this whole motor vlogging thing that's useful so there we go hope that was of interest I'll probably do some more garage videos maybe I'll cover my riding gear in a future video if you're interested but we will be starting soon the build series on the new bike yes the smcr I have bought it it's now mine I finally own another supermoto I've got the hyper I keep forgetting I've even got the hyper motor and I'm awaiting the cylinders back so I can get that as soon as I get the cylinders back we'll crack on and we'll get the hyper motor back together the target will be perhaps a four or five bike a four or five episode build series of the smcr I've got some really decent kit coming for that it's going to be incredible and then we'll finish off the hyper motor with however many episodes of videos it takes for me to put that bike back together again I mean it's been six months or since I took it apart it's going to be a nightmare now to remember how that bike goes back together so I'll probably have to re-watch my own videos to remind myself how it came apart it's a good job I did it wasn't it I'm going to need to watch those now to get it back together but thanks for watching guys really appreciate it have a brilliant Christmas I'm sure I'll speak to you again before Christmas but if I don't have a brilliant Christmas have a good one stay safe ride safe and I'll see you in the new year if not before see you later guys this is power level one which is full power I could do that all day what have you done here I told you I was scared back there I've never dropped a bike before in my life that's it give me 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