GoPro Setting Breakdown How To Best Film Slyde Handboard Videos

Dalton Smith from NPI Productions talking to you about the GoPro and the settings.

Different frame rates, the field of vision and all these different options that you
have to get very different looks with your GoPro.

We're also gonna show you how you can mount it and use these different options to work in your benefit with your Slyde Handboards. First and foremost, the GoProis very user-friendly in the sense that it's mostly automatic as far as lighting adjustments, focus adjustments.

Once you have your, you know, base settings established, you don't have to worry about much. My job today is to explain to you how you can get the certain looks that we get from the slow motion or the really wide angle shots. You need to manipulate the camera in different ways to get these looks.

What we've done is we've broken everything down and made a nice graph so it's really easy for you to understand these settings.

All right so we've got it broken down into three sections here, we've got out frames per second, our field of vision and our resolution. These are three settings
that's going to completely shape the look of your shots.

Frames Pers Second on GoPro:

First let's go ahead and talk about frames per second. Frames per second is basically saying this is how many photos are being stitched together per second to create the video. The more frames per second, the smoother your slow motion will be.
So if we have a video that's shooting in 24 frames per second and we try to slow that down, it's stretching those frames out. If we shoot in 120 frames per second in comparison, it has, you know, we're talking 5, 6 times the amount of frames and it makes it so you can have these really smooth slow motion shots.

Field of Vision on GoPro:

Next is gonna be our field of vision. This is what we're seeing. Imagine an eye and if you could adjust the eye in how wide or narrow we could see, that's what this setting is going to be adjusting.

Narrow:

This is a very zoomed in shot. I would compare it to about that of a 35 millimeter lens on a Crop Sensor DSLR. It's very zoomed in and it can be beneficial if you're shooting something further away or if you just wanna get rid of that GoPro look, that fish eye, wide angle, you can change it to get this more zoomed in look.

Medium:

Next we have medium, and medium is medium, it's somewhere in the middle. It's not narrow, so it's not super zoomed in, but it's definitely not that GoPro wide angle that we're used to, but it's, you know, a sweet spot in between and you may find, you know, some use for it when you're doing different shots.

Wide:

Next is wide. This is your classic GoPro wide angle. If you've seen the commercials, if you've seen different people doing surfing, whatever, this is the setting that they are almost always using. 

Super View:

Lastly, this is honestly one of the settings I use the most with the Slyde Handboards is super view, and the reason I use it a lot with the Slyde Handboards is I'm filming myself and the boards are very close to my body.

It's very wide and very weird, but sometimes for selfie poles and things of that nature, I use it with my dummy mount in my mouth for point of view, it's really great to get that perspective of what you're seeing and experiencing.

Resolution on GoPro:

Resolution is basically your quality. When you change this resolution, different things can happen, but most importantly, the lower the resolution, the lower the quality. The higher resolution, the higher the quality. 

How frames per second, field of vision & resolution work together:

Now that we've broken down the three of these, it's important to understand how they all correlate together. For an example, let's say I wanna shoot a super slow motion shot, as slow as I can go. Well, my option would be 720 up to 240 frames per second. At 240 frames per second, it's just gonna be incredible slow motion.

For me, the best option for slow motion purposes is going to our 1080 at 120 frames per second. It's going to be a wide angle, it's going to be high resolution, it's 1080 HD, and it's 120 frames per second, which is awesome slow motion.

We'll show you guys a couple of examples. If you take a 24 frame per second video clip and slow it down, it looks very choppy. If you take a 240 frame per second clip, it looks just unbelievably smooth and nice and buttery like you want
it to.

I wanna talk about the correlation in between these two numbers right here, our frame rate and our resolution. And we're shooting in 4K, our maximum frame rate is only gonna be 30 frames per second, but if we back our quality down to 2K, then we can shoot up to 60 frames per second. And what that means is we're getting double the frames.

You can do a nice decent slow motion with 2K, but you can't really do that with that lower frames per second on the 4K.  Essentially, you're gonna have to shoot yourself in the foot at one point or another. You're gonna have to ask yourself
what's more important, quality as far as, you know, your visual resolution or frames per second, are you trying to shoot slow motion?

Slow Motion with GoPro:

If you're out and you're trying to shoot slow motion, you know, you're gonna have to maybe sacrifice that quality, but if you're shooting an interview or you're shooting something that doesn't need that super slow motion, I would say stay up with the higher quality.

For me, I find 1080 to be the most used because I like the higher frame rates, but if I'm out shooting and I know for a fact I'm not gonna slow down, I shoot in 4K. And I prefer to shoot in 4K at 24 frames per second. It has 24 and 30 frames per second. Are you gonna see much of a difference between those two? Not really. It's gonna be a little jumpier, but almost in a good way, it gives it a very cinematic feel when you shoot at 24 frames per second.

Lightening with GoPro:

As we move down the list, we're gonna lower our quality, but we're
going to raise our frame rate. So that is kinda the correlation that you can play out in your head. Lighting is key for not only your quality, but your frame rate. If you want to shot a high frame rate, like 120 or 240 frames per second, you absolutely need good lighting. 

Next we're gonna jump back over to the field of vision. This is where things get a little bit trickier. Basically, what happens is when you change from narrow, to medium, to wide, to super view, you are either adding or removing possibilities for frame rates. What I mean by that is if you want to shoot 120 frames per second in 1080, you can.

You can shoot 1080 at 120 frames per second in a wide field of vision. However, if you change your field of vision to 1080 at super view, you cannot shoot 120 frames anymore, it only limits you to 80 frames per second. So you're losing 40
frames per second, which is substantial, it's a lot of, you know, frames and potential slow motion you're losing.

Playing with these settings:

First, I would set your resolution. Ask yourself, What am I doing today?\I'm going to go ride my Slyde Handboard. I want to shoot in the highest quality possible no matter what.

You're gonna shoot in 4K. Next, you're gonna ask yourself, what field of vision is gonna be the most beneficial? I would say wide angle or super view. If it was me, I'd say super view because it's gonna make it look really wide and get the entire wave and my entire body. 

We've now decided we want to shoot at 4K at super view. Our only options in 4K at super view is 24 frames per second. That's it. You can't shoot 30 frames per second, 60, you only have 24 frames per second.

Lets say you're like, Ah man, you know, I really want to shoot the super view, but I really want some extra frames per second for slow motion, you can bring your resolution from 4K down to 1080 and you can shoot 1080 in super view at 80 frames per second.

Last GoPro Tips:

One last thing I wanted to note is that these settings are for the GoPro HERO4 Black. If you're shooting with a GoProHERO4 Silver or white or a 3+ Black or a 2 or a 1, your options are not going to look the same. For example, the HERO3, I wanna say its maximum was 120 frames per second, it didn't even do the 240. I may stand corrected on that, but it definitely wasn't the same frame rates at the same resolution. So if you have a different camera, don't worry, this all still applies to you, but it's going to be different numbers.

So the last thing I'm gonna do is to show you how to make these adjustments in the camera. We've got our GoPro HERO4 Black. Unfortunately, we've crushed the front display screen so we have the LCD backpack on and we're gonna just go through and show you how you can change your frame rate, your field of vision and your resolution.

GoPro HERO4 Black camera:

Okay, so here we have our GoPro HERO4 Black camera. And as I mentioned, we have the LCD screen attached in the back. So it's gonna be a little bit different if you're using the front screen, but the settings are all gonna be the same. So we're gonna swipe down, unlock the camera and then we're gonna swipe up and then now we have all our options for our GoPro. As you can see, we've got resolution, frames per second and field of view, the three things that we just went over.

First, we're gonna do the resolution. We're gonna click on here and it's gonna give us all our options. So we're gonna go ahead and click on this is our highest resolution. Then we're gonna go to our frames per second. And as you can see, all we've got is 24 and 30, so we'll go ahead and stick with 30. 

Next, we're gonna go down and we're gonna go to our field of view. We only have wide as an option, so we're gonna go back and say, You know what? I wanna shoot a different field of vision. We're gonna go back for our resolution and we're gonna click on, lets do 1080 at super view.

Now we're shooting that super wide angle shot and we have the ability to go into our frames per second and move it all the way up to 80. So now we're shooting 1080 at HD, we're shooting super view so it's nice and wide and we're shooting at 80 frames per second, so its gonna be great for slow motion. So that's how you change those three settings and we'll show you one more. 

We'll go ahead and go into 1080. We'll go all the way down to 720 and then now we're gonna have that awesome option of 240 frames per second. So that's how we change our different settings. Like I said, sometimes you're limited. Example, we only have narrow as an option here, so you will have to play with your settings and look at the
different things that you have available for your camera and the frame rates and the different resolutions.

Okay, so that's pretty much a wrap talking about the different settings for the GoPro. Remember these three things whenever you're deciding what shot you want and you'll be able to come up with the best shot for each situation every single
time. 

I hope you guys found this super informative.

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