Every Mistake I Made Filming Alone in the Wild

I get a lot of questions about how I make videos, both for my channel, Grim Granite, and for my second documentary channel, Gordon Crumb. So I figured I would show you a behind the scenes look at the gear I use and offer some tips along the way for shooting adventure videography. Ones that I've learned the hard way. So if you're a creator looking to level up your approach or you're just starting out, I hope you find this helpful in your journey in capturing adventure videos. So let's dive right in with the first mistake I learned the hard way. If you've followed the channel for a while, it's no surprise that I love cold weather camping. I live in Wisconsin, so cold weather is a feature in our lives for a good portion of the year. One thing I learned pretty quickly is that technology does not like the cold weather. Camera batteries are no exception. When the temps drop below freezing, battery life can drain quickly. But that's actually a myth, and here's why. Cold doesn't drain your battery. It just makes the battery too slow to hand over its power. Think of a battery like a jar of honey. When it's warm, the honey pours easily. When it's freezing, the honey gets thick and barely moves. Inside a camera battery, tiny charged particles have to flow back and forth to make electricity. In the cold, the liquid that they move through It turns thick like that honey, and they can't flow fast enough. Your camera needs a lot of power all at once, focusing, stabilizing, recording video, running the screen, and a cold battery can't keep up with those big demands. When it falls behind, the voltage dips and the camera reads the dip as the battery is dead and shuts off to protect itself. But the power is still in there. It's just stuck. That's also why the battery meter lies in the cold. The camera guesses how full the battery is by checking its voltage, and cold voltage looks low to the camera. When it says 5%, you really have 50%. If you stick that dead battery in your pocket for 10 minutes, it'll come back to life. You didn't charge it, you just happened to warm it up. Also, a pro tip, never charge a battery that is below freezing, because it can cause permanent damage inside the battery. Let it warm up first. I've also used a power bank like this one to run my camera in really cold environments because a larger battery holds on to heat longer and you can even throw a hand warmer inside a bag to keep everything warm while you shoot a long scene. Now my second trick is that I try to use multi-purpose gear. For instance, this power bank is also my favorite light. It's made by Claymore. This light has three different temperature settings so you can match the lighting for for your scene that you're working on, such as a... Campfire or Moonlight and you can easily rig it to a little tripod like this one or simply hang it from a tree using a hook. The next piece of gear that is absolutely critical for outdoor photo and video is that you need an ND filter, a really good one actually. Now before we get into that and what makes this particular one good, we need to take Let me take a moment to discuss cameras. We live in a time where you can have so many options for cameras that it can feel overwhelming. And the camera companies come out with new cameras so often it can make you feel like you're behind the curve after just one year of owning a camera. So personally, I use several different cameras to capture footage on my adventures, and it's important to remember that the story is so much more important than the camera you capture it with. If you have a cell phone, use that. Perhaps you have an old GoPro or one of these Insta360 cameras. These are all great options and will do a fine job outdoors. You should spend more time Way more time thinking about the story you're telling than the camera and the gear that you're using. That being said, there are advantages and disadvantages to using bigger cameras like the one I'm filming on right now. This is the Sony FX3. It's basically a very small cinema camera. And what that means is that it has a lot of options when it comes to the color and the dynamic range or how it handles really dark or really bright scenes. And it allows you to use nicer lenses, which give the videos a higher quality look to them with a nice separation from the background and the subject in your frame. So do you need this to make great YouTube videos? Absolutely not. It's merely a tool and one that I like to use personally because of my background in cinematography. The bottom line is this. Experiment with different cameras and find something that you love to use. The tool that gets you most excited about capturing stories. So back to the ND filter. An ND filter is basically sunglasses for your camera. It's a dark piece of glass that sits in front of your lens, and it cuts down the amount of light getting through without changing the colors, and that's all it does. So, why would you want less light? Because sometimes there's too much of it for the settings you want to use. Say you're shooting a video on a bright day and video looks most natural when your shutter speed is about double your frame rate, about 1 50th or 1 60th of a second. But at that slow shutter speed in full sun, your footage comes out blown out and white. Your only fix without a filter is to crank the shutter speed way up. And that gives you choppy, stuttery motion that doesn't look like real life. They slap on an ND filter and the light drops. And now you can get that slow shutter speed and get smooth cinematic motion. The same idea is for photos. When you want a blurry, silky waterfall look, you need a shutter that's open for a second or more. But in daylight, that's impossible. It's way too bright. The ND filter fixes that. And if you want a soft, blurry background with your lens wide open on a sunny day, the ND filter fixes that too. So they come in different strengths, usually labeled by how many stops of light that they block. A variable ND like this one lets you twist a ring on the dial and dial the darkness up or down, which is handy for video when that light keeps changing. The short version is this, an ND filter lets you shoot in bright light with the settings that you'd normally only get away with in dim light. This one is sort of expensive and is made by PolarPro, the Peter McKinnon Signature Series. It's nice because it has a rubber cap that comes with it, and this is invaluable because it protects against rocks and debris when you set your camera down in the outdoors. If you use a DSLR style camera, I highly recommend this exact ND filter. I've used cheaper ones, but they often shift the colors to a weird bluish-green tint, and they're heavily vignetted or darker around the edges. The next mistake that I learned the hard way was camera support. For years, I used a tripod like this one here. The problem is it's heavy and the leg locks, they break easily because they're made out of plastic and the tripod head doesn't hold well and the camera plate knob is too small and I would frequently drop my camera right off of it because it wasn't locked in. But I've recently found a great... tripod that I love to use when backpacking and for adventure videography because it's lightweight and it's easy to use. I asked K&F Concepts to send me one of these and they're also the sponsor of this video. So this thing weighs 2 pounds. So how does it hold 13 pounds? The answer is carbon fiber. The same stuff that's used in a racing bike frame. It's light, it's stiff, and it doesn't flex when the wind picks up. It has five section legs with twist locks that go from 16 inches folded up to 5 feet tall in about 10 seconds. You pull the center column and you've got 60 inches of height, like this. Up top is a ball head with an Arca Swiss plate, so your camera clicks on and off in just a second. The base spins on a 360 degree axis, so you can get panoramas really easily. And there's a notch that drops your camera sideways for vertical video. And there's a bubble level, so you can set the horizon and it stays straight. The legs, they lock at three different angles, so you can get really low off of the dirt to get super low shots. And there's a hook under the column here that you can use to hang your bag from, and then the whole thing gets steadier and heavier. It's two pounds, it folds up to the length of your forearm, and it holds a full-frame camera and lens. That's why it rides in my pack from now on, and it's easy to use. And I trust it with my multi-thousand dollar camera rig. The best part is the price, because right now it's selling for $129.99 at kfconcept.com. And for beginners going on long trips, you can also check out this basic tripod, the TA-02, their newly released model. I've included both links below. Thanks to K&F Concept for sponsoring this video and for making a great tripod. Now, let's talk about focal length. Focal length is just how zoomed in your lens is. A small number like 16 millimeters sees really wide. Lots of the scene fits in the frame. A big number like 200 millimeters sees very narrow. You're looking at a very small slice of the world, far away but pulled in close. Compression is the side effect people notice most. And it's really about where you're standing, not the lens itself. And it's a great trick to make your video look more expensive. Here's the idea. You put a person in front of a mountain with a wide lens and you have to stand close to the person to fill the frame with them. Up close, the person looks big and the mountain behind them looks tiny and far off. Their face also stretches a bit. Big nose, small ears. Now back up and zoom in with a long lens until the person is the same size in the frame. Now the mountain looks huge and right behind them. The background has been squeezed forward. The person's face looks flatter and more flattering because you're far enough away that their nose and ears are nearly the same distance from you. So wide lens up close exaggerates distance and long lens far away shrinks it. The same subject, small size in the frame, but a totally different feel. And here's some quick rules of thumb. 24 millimeters or wider for landscapes, vlogging, cramped rooms, things feel open and dramatic. 50 millimeters is close to how your eye actually sees. It's very natural focal length. 85mm and up are great for portraits, wildlife, cinematic backgrounds. Things feel intimate and flattened, but they do feel very expensive because you can get that nice background separation between your subject and the background. Next is audio, and this is the area I think most creators struggle with the most when it comes to capturing high quality video. I used to do a lot of audio engineering in studios and in live concerts, so I have a unique perspective on this and that I hope you'll find useful. I currently use these devices for capturing audio outdoors. Let's start with on-camera microphones. So this is the Sony ECM-B1M camera mount. Digital Shotgun Microphone. It's a very long name for a very small microphone. But it's the very best on-camera mic I've ever used and it has lots of important features like digital noise correction that actually sounds good, different polar patterns like Omni for picking up all around you. Cardioid for a more directional scene, like with two people talking, or super cardioid, which is very narrow and it rejects noise from either side of the source. The downside, though, is the price. I mean, this thing is nearly $400, and it's not the most rugged thing. But I've had this one for about three years with no issues, in the rain and in the snow, and even dropping the camera a few times. So, because I am a little paranoid about breaking it, I also carry this as a backup on most longer trips. Longer trips. This is the Rode VideoMic Pro, VideoMic Pro. and it's also fantastic, albeit simpler, in its feature set, In its feature set. but its audio quality is great, but a little bit darker than the Sony. So I usually need to bring up the highs when I edit using an EQ. It's major downside is that you actually have to remember to switch it on and off, which can result in recording with no audio when you forget to do it, which is super annoying, but it's a great backup. I also love to use lav microphones when I'm out recording. This is the Hollyland. Lark system, and it's just these little guys here with the magnet on the back. You can clip it to your clothes They're kind of inexpensive, but they sound pretty good And they're great for when you need to be farther away from the camera and where a shotgun mic would not pick you up So there are better and more expensive options out there for lav mics, but these hit that sweet spot for price and quality for me. I've also used these Tascam DR-10L hard disk recorders. They record right to this little pack and allow you to use any compatible wired microphone with them, which allows you to have truly great sounding audio if you're willing to sync up the audio in editing. That can be a hassle too, so I typically don't use these on every shoot, but they're fairly inexpensive and they come with a great sounding lav right from the get-go. The biggest thing to worry about in recording audio outdoors is wind noise. So many lav mics these days come with noise cancellation built in, but I've found that those usually sound absolutely gross, and typically I'll turn it off, or I'll typically use what we call a dead cat, which is a little furry thing that you clip onto the microphone to cut the wind noise from getting to the actual microphone. You can also stick a wired lav... To your skin, using Rycote stickies. These prevent the clothing from rustling and ruining the audio. The most important aspect may actually be the editing of the audio, using EQ, compression, mixing, and limiting. But that's for another video. And if you want to know my approach with that, leave a comment below, and I may make a video just about that. All right, let's talk about drones. One of the mistakes I made was trying to bring a drone with me while backpacking. It was heavy, and such a pain to use that I would not even break it out that often. But now we have options. These are two drones that I use now and I absolutely love them. The first is the DJI Mini 4K. This one is small enough to take backpacking and it captures images that look great. It's not the newest version by far, which makes it cheaper and less remorseful if you wreck it on a tree or fly it into the water. I also really love the... Hover air drones. These are self-flying and will follow you around, making them great for hiking or kayaking. They are really super lightweight and have different flying modes to capture scenes in creative ways. It's not always legal to fly drones in certain areas, so be sure to check the restrictions before you go. Next is waterproof cameras. I love to use my Insta360 to capture immersive shots that look like a drone flying low, but using just a handheld A tripod like this that extends. So you can just stick this up in the air and it looks like a drone is following you. It also makes more sense to use something like this while boating because of its waterproofing. The nice thing is is that you can steer the footage in editing and point it at whatever direction you want because it's capturing everything around you at once. So you don't even have to think about it when you're actually filming. It's a great tool and again, you don't have to have the newest, latest, greatest version. Another thing I learned the hard way was how to film in the rain with my big camera. I've tried everything under the sun and what I found works the best is a simple two-fold method. If it's raining hard, I use a Ziploc bag with a hole in it and then I clamp a little umbrella to the top of the tripod to cover the camera. And that system is just super simple, lightweight, and cheap. It's hard to beat it. A discussion about camera gear in the outdoors would be incomplete without mentioning the all-important Peak Design camera mount. I've used this for like six years now and had zero issues with it. I love it because it just clips right onto your backpack straps and you can just clip your camera into it and walk around with no worries. I also really like the sternum strap bags for backpacking. Creators like Eric Hansen have found them to be really handy not only for the quick access but to protect the camera from heavy rain. Well, that's all I have for today. I hope you found something in there that was helpful. Drop a comment below and tell me what you like to use in the great outdoors for filming. And we'll see you later.