I'm Having A Love/Hate Relationship With My New Toy.

Now I know at least two people who will read that title and immediately nose-dive into the gutter. CUT IT OUT GUYS…this is a family page!

I’m talking about my (sort of) new HeroPro . It’s one of those sport camera whatsis, with the waterproof case.

I have probably mentioned this before but part of my job as First Mate involves taking photos of the tour guests so they have a little memento of their trip. Granted, most people bring their cameras and take their own photos…but have you ever tried paddleboarding with a selfie-stick? EXACTLY!

Anyhow, I generally take photos for them while they play, or relax or man the helm or…whatever. To do this, I’ve been climbing around the boat with my cellphone. (I still do while under sail), however…now that we are going to the new and improved snorkel spot on Fantasea Beach, I wanted to be able to take pictures on the beach as well as in the water.

I should go back a bit and explain…when I first arrived in Costa Rica and started going on the tours with Chris, we had a group of young adults who were a real blast. Rachel , Andrea, Shane, Phil and Colby, posed for some really great photos that I still use on our page today…but they also brought along their GoPro. It had a waterproof dome and a floating selfie stick and they took some really great photos which they emailed to me afterwards.

It got me thinking how nice it would be Not to have to worry about the phone getting wet….AND to be able to just hook a camera to the bow of the boat to catch the whales and dolphins while we sail. (notice how I assume that they will all be kind enough to swim in front of the camera)

As with most of my ideas…they take a while to come to fruition. In this case, we found a HeroPro at Pricesmart (which is the Costa Rican version of Costco) a few months ago for a good price and picked it up. It came with various clips and attachments (but no stick) and of course, the waterproof case.

I felt equal parts fear and elation at the purchase. Sadly, since it was rainy season and business was slow…I didn’t have very much to take videos of and it sat collecting dust in the bedroom until last week.

Once I got a good look at the lovely little beach, I knew it was time to dig it out and put it to use.

Cue fear of technology.

I like technology, don’t get me wrong…it lets me video chat with family back home and find cool things on the internet.

It also drives me absolutely bat**** crazy quite often. I’m really not all that proficient at many parts of it…and video/photo editing falls in that category.

Still, its basically a camera right? How hard can it be? I dusted it off, charged it up and packed it in it’s little waterproof case. At this point I noticed the lack of handle. I found a few little straps in the case, but no way to attach them to the case…hmmm…

Chris dug through all the weird little mounting who-haws and came up with one that is meant to be stuck to a dashboard but also has a slot on both sides and he put the little strap threw it. We decided it would have to do.

The next day was our first tour to the new beach and I put the strap over my wrist, Chris tightened it up and over the side my new toy and I went.

There were several issues.

The first is that, the weird mounting thing with the slot for the strap is square and clunky so its not that comfy to wear and I have to loosen off the strap quite a bit so that I can get it into my hand properly when I want to take a photo. I definitely need to find a proper stick with a wrist strap.

Problem two…the screen is really hard to see when you are in the water on a sunny day. I shrugged that one off figuring I would just point and shoot and hope for the best.

I did a lot of pointing and shooting and to be fair, some of them turned out really nice. I couldn’t figure out if I could zoom, or how to zoom…so some of them needed to be zoomed and cropped after the fact but the pictures were fairly clear and the colours showed up well (above the water).

I tried a few underwater shots that came back with nothing but a hazy green. I decided that I might need something for the camera to focus on underwater before I could judge it. I headed back to the boat feeling fairly pleased with our new purchase.

Now all I have to do is upload the photos to my computer and see how they look…right?

No problema!

Okay…big problema.

Remember the whole ‘can’t see the screen in the sun’ thing? Turns out you can switch modes back and forth from photo to video on the fly. You can also take still shots WHILE the video mode is running. Both of these things are cool…if you know how to do it and/or are doing it on purpose.

I had accidentally switched back and forth several times and the HeroPro had taken some really long videos that included parts where I had the camera up and aimed at something (to take a picture) interspersed with a bunch of times when it was dangling from my wrist or in my hand but pointed at nothing in particular.

I also had video of parts of me that I had no interest in seeing up close. Still, I thought, if I could trim out those parts…I might actually have some useable video to send to the guests.

I spent an extra hour finding and installing some free video editing software and then uploaded all the video into it.

Four (yes four) hours later I had clipped out all the really bad parts. Now, you have to understand that video editing is a brand new skill for me (insert applause here) and I’m REALLY bad at it, so the end product was still pretty rough. I certainly won’t be mistaken for someone who knows what they are doing.

I went to bed feeling rather frustrated with the whole thing…

And woke up feeling like an idiot. YouTube! There has to be some sort of tutorial on YouTube…right?!?

Of course there was and I learned how to toggle between video and photo, listened to recommendations about which setting to use (though nothing about why to use those settings) and decided that I would start simple on the next tour. I would forget about video, make sure the camera is on photo mode, and avoid the mode button so I don’t have the same issue. Of course the power button and the mode button are one and the same…but that’s okay, right? I assumed that if you hold it down til the screen goes dark then it’s just a power thing, not a mode thing.

The next tour rolled around and I strapped my new toy back on my wrist feeling much more confident. I set it to camera mode before I got in the water. Then I hit the power mode, swam away from the boat so I could get a nice photo OF the boat and held up the screen to do so…

…and…

…why am I looking at an upside down sail???

I looked at the camera, it’s right side up, I looked at the screen, the image is upside down. WTH?? How the heck did I do that? More importantly, how do I fix it??? The sun is shining and I can’t see the display well at all. I’m treading water and frantically clicking through what I hope are settings.

Billi, one of our guests from South Africa calls over to see if I need help. (she has a lovely GoPro on a nice stand and looks like she knows exactly what she is doing) I explained what I had done and that I was trying to fix it. She took a look at my screen, commented on how dim and hard to read it is….and showed me her screen. Hers is easily readable in the sun… I guess that’s why the GoPros are so much more expensive.

She pointed out that I can flip all the photos in the editing program afterwards, which made sense, so I gave up fighting with it and we swam off towards the snorkelling spot.

The entire family seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot , so I treaded water for a good hour and a half, snapping upside down photos the whole while and hoping that I was aiming them properly and that they would all turn out.

When I got home I hooked the HeroPro up to my computer and copied all the photos over to it. Flipping the photos over was relatively straightforward and I soon had a file of goodies to send off to Billi and her family. I was actually feeling pretty pleased with myself, to be honest.

I was about to delete the photos from the HeroPro when I noticed that there was also a file labelled VIDEO. I figured it would be empty, but decided to check just in case…

Guess what I did???

YUP.

I accidentally took a whole bunch of video AGAIN… and this time it was all UPSIDE DOWN.

I spent the next two hours on the couch fighting with my wonderful new editing program. It wasn’t that hard to flip each segment of video back over, thankfully, but it did take quite a while for each part to process. Once I had it all pasted together and right side up, I started the process of clipping out all the underwater nothing bits, the boob and belly close-ups (yikes) and the sideways, crooked and absolutely useless bits.

I was left with about 3 minutes of absolute garbage.

I decided it wasn’t good enough to bother sending them…so it was a complete waste of time.

Looking back, I think that you don’t even use the power button while in the water, the camera must go into a sleep mode after a while and then wakes up again when you touch the shutter…so every time I thought I was turning the camera off to save my battery between pics, I was switching it to video mode.

Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Chris has pointed out to me that I am wasting a lot of time on the computer fighting with photos (cuz I hadn’t noticed on my own).

I’m trying to look at it as a learning experience. So far I have learned that I have to get close to my subject. I can’t touch the stupid mode button, and I need to make sure the sun is at my back so my subject is well lit.

I also learned that a water droplet in the wrong place can completely ruin a potentially great photo…but I’m not sure how to prevent that yet. Maybe that’s why Colby (or was it Shane?) had the cool dome thingy. I definitely need to invest in some form of handle with a wrist strap.

Billi said that visibility was nice and clear once she was underwater, so if I want to get some underwater pics, one of us (hopefully Chris) will have to put on some gear and get down lower. I also watched a quick YouTuve video on that…

Live and learn, right? So far technology is winning…but the battle is not over yet!

Toodles for now and Pura Vida!

Ps, here is my upside down boat photo…right side up…