Moors Vlog

So many others are doing this kind of thing better than me, however I have the tools and thought I'd try a Vlog style video using several cameras.

Doing a quick edit was not as difficult as anticipated - making it more polished is another matter.

Hunters Sty long exposure

It's mid-December and light level is dire practically all day as a rule, but this actually suits long exposure.
This was with the Sony RX100 and inbuilt ND turned on.
The camera was literally at water level on a flat stone, which made adjacent stones look like dramatic boulders.
Quite pleased to get a different take on this much photographed bridge.

Bransdale and another new camera

The move to Sony is complete with GoPro updated to Sony FDR-X3000
I think the Ghost 4K is better on the helmet at this stage but will likely try it on there at some point.
The GoPro adds insult to injury with unexplained and hard to detect crashes, and abysmal battery life. After persevering for a couple of years I simply don't like it, but might use it as dashcam for a while yet.

The Sony has a rock solid combined remote and monitor, it also has pretty good optical stabilisation which almost matches the new Hero7. Sound is very good too with inbuilt mic and there's a standard mic input with none of the idiotic £50 adapter you need for GoPro.

This is mostly from Drift 4K which I'm trying with (digital) stabiliser on again, the camera angle was a little too low with that on, as the FOV is reduced.
However light was nice and enjoyed the ride out.

I changed the name of my bike camera channel and am already seeing some positive effect from the branding idea.
Not that I'm bothered, I mainly like to watch these videos myself especially on smart TV.
But it's nice if others are watching and enjoying them too.

When youtube used to pay small channels however modestly there was more incentive to build your channel following, realistically the great majority can't now monetise.
If I had kept all my channels in a rather confusing single account it would have easily been monetisable - but there are at least four different ones with varying popularity.

Whitby Goth-ness

This was at the end of October, I went down with the pickup and walked along East Side which was so crowded it was hard to take many photos or video.
Last year I walked along West Side which was busy but not packed even on Sunday.

Sony A7iii

Another recent update has been a Sony A7iii.
Again this particularly shines in low light - both photo and video.
The autofocus ability is remarkable at times.

 I do have a Canon 5D SLR but it seems rather dinosaur-like compared to this.
Although the 5Dii can do video it's very un-user-friendly with no autofocus and only 1080p.
The Canon lenses can be used on the Sony with an adapter - which I haven't got yet.

It came with a 24-105 which has mostly been all I need so far. I would like to be able to use the Canon 70-200mm and the sigma 50mm with F1.4 for low light

Pickering War Weekend October 2018

The video from it is excellent but I had the mic volume too high and wind spoiled audio.
I knew it needed to be lower but didn't realise each time I changed mode (for photos) it went back to default - or rather the level you had locked in for the video preset which I hadn't modified.

Mavic 2 Pro

Had this a few weeks now and have been much impressed by both photo and video from it.
A particular area of improvement is low light performance, which was weak on the Phantom 3 and Mavic original.

Walls and Trees

Sony RX100V
21st July 2018

McHale Fusion

Had this in yesterday to bale three fields which wouldn't go in the pit.
Next week will be all proper hay as weather looks perfect for it.
Have to do some wrapped as hay needs to be kept undercover and don't have enough shed space for all of it.



This is with the RX100 which while *potentially* very good at video is rather demanding to use.
After playing with EOSHD I've decided I don't like it and am using the PP6 profile with my own modifications.
It looks a little flat and unsaturated but is nice to work with.

What I missed doing in this video is setting White Balance manually and locking exposure. 
The WB presets can be used, but a custom setting on the day will likely be best.
The crucial thing is to stop it shifting during recording on Auto - which is difficult to address when editing.
If the preset or custom is a bit out at least it will be fairly simple to tweak later.

My PP6 mods:

Black Level -1
Gamma: Cine2
Black Gamma: Range = Middle, Level = -2
Knee Manual with Point = 95% and Slope = +2
Color Mode: Cinema
Saturation -1 (the camera tends to saturate a bit too much)
Color Phase +1
Color Depth: R= +1, G= -1, B= +1, C= -1, M= -1, Y= -1
Detail 0

Wrap and Roll

Hardings at Grange Farm
Sony RX100V

Farndale and the Quakers

Evening bike run to check out the pretty spot near Lowna.
I did some photos of bluebells, garlic and waterfalls but nothing very exciting - it was getting rather too late really.



However liked this pic of the fog swirling around upper Farndale on the way down there.
At home it had been vile most of the day.

Fryup Heads

This is always a fascinating place but not as easy as you might hope to photograph effectively.
The low evening sunlight helped and it's a drone shot - but could probably have almost got the same by walking further down from the road.
The video reveals at least three significant ponds but they may not be always full.

The confusing hillocks in various sizes are practically all the result of a long series of landslides dating back to the last ice age.
At that time the Esk Valley including Fryup was for a while a substantial lake due to the North Sea being filled with an immense ice sheet.

Water got away to the south through NewtonDale and probably to the north past Comondale and West House at different periods.

Markenfield Hall

I saw a couple of shots of this place near Ripon on Flickr - but there aren't many as it only opens on a few days mainly in the spring.
- So decided to go over there on the bike last Friday.
It took a little over an hour going by the more scenic route through Thirsk rather than A168.

The building is rather lovely with encircling moat and neat garden.

Inside you can visit a few principal rooms - the Hall and Chapel mainly

You enter by the undercroft which would have been storage and Kitchen - still perhaps the most interesting room.

The house history is quite turbulent and violent, more info on their website.
It is still more or less a grand farmhouse but the tenant farmer lives in a converted range down one side of the yard.

April

April started very chilly with rain, sleet and snow, but briefly turned hot soon after mid-month.

The daffodils were delayed but then were starting to go over after a very few days.

With lambing and trying to catch up with work not done through the wintery March, not managed to use cameras as much as I'd like but managed these.

Stokesley

Not the most exciting shot but with lovely light the RX100 captured lovely detail in this.
Initially I was struggling to read the RAW files from this camera, but an update to Lightroom Classic resolved it

More drone archaeology

This is an Iron Age enclosure on the moor above Great Ayton.

Also rather nice another visit to our local Hill Fort from same period.

Ruswarp Sheep run

Some of my lambs made top price in their class, but as usual recently there weren't that many in.
This is the gopro Hero4 which I only recently discovered has a 'linear mode' at 2.7K - more or less no fish-eye. (this was added in a firmware update a few months after I got it).

In good light results are now quite pleasing but it is sad to say it has taken well over a year to get to grips with it.

With external mic sound is decent too but I have to do a little tweaking in Adobe Premiere to make it easy to hear.

Sony RX100

At the end of 2017 I bought a lightly used Sony RX100V from ebay and have been impressed so far. They are expensive new but this was about half price so easier to justify. Stills are very good, but I somehow prefer Canon colours(!) With a little tweak or two things still look great despite low light levels in mid-winter. Speaking of which low light is where it really shines - much better than the previous Canon S100 or indeed my rarely used 5d SLR. Best of all the video from it is spectacularly good. It can record 4K but at 1080p it has rather better stabilisation and results are still outstanding. There is a confusing range of options for video and photo styles but as a base point, more or less standard looks fine.