Get your camera game right for black bike week.
Bike Week is all about the bikes, and riding but it’s also about having a good time and capturing lasting memories.
To capture those magic memories you need a Camera. But not just any camera the right Camera.
I learned everything I’m going to pass on to you from personal experience so let me share my story:
Year 1, I got a cheap little video camera for like $120 buck. My videos sucked.
Year 2, I got this super fancy $400 dollar camera. My videos looked good. Only problem i didn’t have a lot of them. Why? The battery life sucked!
Year 3, I got a simple point and shoot camera that does videos, and had a 3X zoom for like $189 that took regular batteries “the secret”. My shit was on fire. My videos looked a lil bit less quality then the super fancy 400$ camera, but because I could swap the batteries I got tons of footage. I’m talking around 20 hour of footage, I recorded every damn thing LOL!
Things to get in a Camera.
You don’t need a huge ass video camera with crazy zoom. Get a standard joint will do “with optical 3X-5X zoom”. You ain’t going to be zooming in 1 mile to see something. If your
zooming 1 mile to video some ass down the street, your probably missing all the ass 3 feet around you LOL. Keep it cheap and simple. Get a high quality point and shoot camera not a super large expensive camera.
Stay away from cameras with built in rechargeable batteries. They’re good for birthday parties, and baseball games and shit at home, but at bike week when you going charge the mother fucker?? You barely in the room any, and you will probably be too drunk at the end of the night to remember to plug it up LOL! The bike week when I had the fancy camera I was walking around with a big ass $400 video camera with a dead ass battery most of the time “snapping picture on my cell phone and shit LOL”. Plus we ended up hanging the room “missing the action”, trying charge the battery. The battery on a fancy camera will take like 4-5 hour to fully charge and only last for like 2 hours.
So get a camera that takes disposable battery, and buy a cheap case of 20 regular batteries, and keep 4 with you while you walk the strip. Also those energizer high power joints last a lot longer time then the cheap family dollar batteries. Also a lot of stores on the strip sell double A batteries.
Another tip:
If you got the point and click, choose a couple of smaller memory cards over 1 big one. I learned this the hard way. You will be sitting there waiting to transfer 16 gig of video off your camera “waiting……” so you can erase them to get more videos. See a 16 gig card can hold a lot of videos, but you have to copy it off the card to make way for more videos. So what I did was get 4 4 gig card “$7 buck each”. I would take two out. With like 4 extra batteries.
So get a point and shoot with 3X zoom. Get a 20 pack of double A batteries, and get some SD cards.
Video Tip 1:
To conserve batteries a lot of people, try to start recording as soon they see something hot “Make it bounce LOL”, only problem is, you end up waiting for the camera to start before the action starts. And your videos end up looking like the last credits of movie, the end LOL.
Video Tip 2:
Always be recording. You got a 4 gig card which at regular resolution holds like 4 hours, and you got like 3 sets of disposable batteries which last like 6 hour. Don’t turn the camera off. Just walk with it on always recording, and catch everything as it happens.
I don’t know how many videos I got with a fine girl who was just finish shaking it, or stoped showing something as soon as I started to record. So like I said, always be recording and once a set of batteries are used up, trash them, pop in some fresh ones, and keep it moving. Then when you get back to the room, drop the SD card, and grab a fresh one, grab 4 more batteries and keep it moving.
Picture Tip:
Forget trying to snap pictures, just record, and cut the picture later our of the videos.
Girl Tip:
Remember this line “MAKE IT BOUNCE!!!!!!!” works every time.
Here’s your List:
Regular point and shoot camera with video capability “average price $180″
2-4 4gig SD cards “8 each or $24″
Big 20 pack of batteries “15 bucks”
Total price: Less then $200 buck
Last year I had over 24 hours of footage “some unreleasable” LOL.
Now, the next problem is how to cut out all the good footage and add music in the back ground. Coming up next…..
Happy video taping.
See you on the beach.
