Highball Blog - Outdoor Blog | Gear Giveaways - Gear Reviews | Video Editing Tips & Video Shooting Tutorials | Vector Designs for Mountain Bike T-shirts and Climbing Shirts
If you're serious about your climbing then perhaps you already have a piece of gear for your climbing training at home, be it fingerboard, campus board or any other setting that enables you to train your fingers, forearms and upper body.
If you don't have a hangboard then you should consider making one as this will make you keener to train, to learn more about training for climbing and eventually it will make you climb more and get obsessed with it - which is a good thing by the way.
Why a DIY Fingerboard is Better than a Commercial Hangboard
I encourage you to build your own fingerboard because it's fun and rewarding. I sincerely believe that consumerism is a subtle trap in which many of us can fall. The problem with most of today's people is that they don't know how to do stuff... So don't be powerless! Don't be soft! Build your own using materials that you can easily get from your local hardware store. Be creative and build something that's unique.
A home made hangboard is made for your home. What this means is you can adapt your board to your home setting. Perhaps you cannot mount it in a door way and you prefer to make a fold-able one on the ceiling (I almost did that but I moved to another studio apartment and I dropped the idea). When you make your own you can adjust each parameter - size, shape, weight - as to fit your home.
Most commercial hangboards are rather narrow - why not have one that's 1.5 meters wide?! My hangboard is pretty wide. A wide fingerboard allows you to exercise moves and pulls that are closer to real life climbing situations - long reaches in a traverse climb, distant lateral holds in overhangs, etc. Also doing dead hangs and pull ups on widely distanced holds will work your deltoids and back muscles better than working on close distanced holds. Let's face it - we all know that reachy and awkward moves are harder and thus better as a training method than cozy ladder-like moves - and doing dead hangs and pull ups on a narrow hangboard imitates the ladder style. Getting strong on cozy moves is not the smartest way to train for climbing. Push yourself doing hard stuff and regular stuff will seem easy.
You can use what you have. If you don't want to buy stuff (being cheap and resourceful is an underrated quality - however I hold great respect for those who go by this life philosophy) you can use whatever you have at home. It may be a broken table or desk, rods from an old chair - you name it. There's no rule to follow here - your finished product can be a piece of carved wood (with holds and shapes made with the chisel) or it can be a piece of plywood that's more like a mini indoor wall (with T nuts). I recommend the plywood and T nuts fingerboard because...
You can always readjust the holds placement on your board. If you get tired of having crimpers on the lowest line then you can easily change that. Having T nuts on your board allows you to make fast changes, add more holds, remove holds just as you wish right from the "front desk" - no need to work "behind the scenes" :-). I think this is the biggest advantage.
What holds to use? Any type: crimpers, slopers, jugs. What brand? Your own. Crimpers, medium ledges, jugs can all be home made out of timber or wood pieces. You can even make slopers by splitting a cylindrical piece of wood (a log segment) - you'll get a fine sloping hold that's skin friendly with your fingers (debark the log and finish it with rough sand paper).
And let's say you come up with a cool product. You can then sell your work - do freelance jobs for your fellow climbers. If they can't do it themselves they might hire you to build one for them. You can count this as a joke but who knows - it can carry some truth as well.
Feeling pumped? Download this design for your climbing T-shirt here.
My suggestion for printing your downhill bike T-shirt or hoodie
You should know that some T shirt printing services such as Spreadshirt accept only three colors designs for T shirt prints. This is especially true for certain printing techniques. I don't think this design qualifies - it has more than three colors - so if you want to have it printed on your T shirt by Spreadshirt you should edit it and change some colors. If you want to have it just as it is, then you can opt for digital transfer printing method (see videos below).
You can open and edit vector graphics with Inkscape. You will be able to modify each aspect of the design - shape, color, gradient, shadow - without loosing resolution quality. Vector drawings have "infinite resolution" that's why they are preferred in printing.
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.
Here's a short promo video that I made for my friends in CPNT - youth and sport club in Brasov. This clip shows two of their outdoor activities: trail running and mountain biking. They also engage into climbing, trekking and other mountain sports but this action video is supposed to be a digital brochure for their mountain running competition - Marathon 7500 in Bucegi mountains.
If you happen to know any company that you think might sponsor this event please shoot me an email so I can hook them up with CPNT. The more sponsors the event has, the better the prizes you'll get if you hit the podium!
The video was shot with GoPro® HD Video Camera, edited with Magix Edit Pro 11, and I used my DIY glidecam for smooth shooting and image stabilizing. My laptop couldn't export in HD this time - some memory error issue - and that's why the footage looks pixelized...
If you can't import or you can't edit your GoPro HD videos, try to convert the MP4 files to MOV or AVI with MPEG Streamclip.
It has been stressed a lot all over the place that sportsmen should ingest carbohydrates on a regular basis in order to be able to do their stuff - cycling, trail running, climbing or whatever.
Here I propose a cool meal that you can easily prepare in less that 30 minutes. This meal consists of carbs from rice, protein from light white meat - tuna fish, fibers and vitamins from vegetables. It's a complete and healthy meal that can be part of your nutrition balanced diet.
List of ingredients for two portions of steamed rice and tuna fish (like I'm a chef or something...):
two rice bags - you can find those in the supermarket - punctured plastic bags/Chinese style rice
two tuna fish cans (in olive oil/in brine/in tomato sauce)
cucumber
tomatoes
lettuce
onion
green pepper
radish
How to prepare it? Fairly simple!
Add approximately two liters of water and some salt in a pot; put it on fire and add the rice bags when the water is boiling hot. Keep the rice boiling for 15 minutes while you're preparing the salad.
When the rice is boiled - the bags are almost popping - take the bags out of the water, hold them 30 seconds above the pot as to let the water drip out and put them on a plate.
Rip the bag and let the rice out - it's steaming and it's looking nice. Add some butter on it and also some soup base (Vegeta, Knorr or other mixture of spices and various vegetables). Open the tuna can, add it to the rice, add the salad and you're good to go!
This is a cheap meal but this doesn't mean you're not eating healthy. The carbohydrates will give you the power you need for your strenuous exertion. The protein in the tuna fish will build up and replace used muscle tissue. And the fibers and vitamins form the salad will keep you fresh and healthy. Nothing is cooked too much (apart from the rice being boiled) so you won't loose any nutritional value from this food.
The pictures below describe the process of preparing this sportsman's meal.
I recommend you use wing nuts for fast adjustments of your DIY glidecam. This is especiallyhelpful when you want to change the camera on the top of the system - the glidecam must be rebalanced with every camera. The wing nuts will allow you to add more weights (washers) and to loosen the bolts when you need to slide them in their channels. The balance of the rig can be fine tuned better by sliding the weights than adding additional weights.
Another thing you can do faster with the wing nut setting is to lower or raise the gravity center of the glidecam. I do this by changing the position of the bottom plate (first picture below) closer or further to/from the gimbal. I simply loosen the nuts and slide the plate on the threaded bar, then I fix it in place tightening the wing nuts against each other, holding the plate between them.
Wing-nut and bolt for fixing camera on upper plate
The bolt goes into the threaded hole - tripod mount of the camera
I guess you can easily tell which one of these two clips is better (mine is pretty lame). The above clip is my take on Calin Manescu's Honda S2000 drift teaser - the video below. I used the same music and tried to edit my climbing clip on music beats. My job would have been better with a more powerful computer and perhaps a better video editor - I used Magix Edit Pro 15. Those stills in the video were supposed to be moving images...
Calin is a professional cameraman, editor and photographer.
Why take the trouble to edit your videos on music tunes?
Editing your videos "on the beat" will make your clips watchable and memorable. Imagine how would music videos be without the synchronization between the scenes and the tune... Pretty dull I would say.
Dynamic videos work great as teasers, trailers for almost any type of events, competitions, tours etc. Rocking music, like the one in my video, work well for action clips: motor sports, mountain biking, free-ride skiing, climbing. I knew from the first few seconds that I wanted to watch the Honda teaser to the end. Having video scenes rolling out on the melody will simply keep your viewers watching by catching their attention in the very first few seconds.
How To Edit Videos "On The Beat"
Firstly, you must import your music track within the video editor. You may not have any idea about the outcome but listening to the music and viewing some footage that you shot may bring up good ideas. If you need or want to use more songs then choose each song according to scenes you want to render. For slow motion scenes use soft music, for dynamic and aggressive action use engaging up beats. You wanna have your viewers pumped!
Zoom in on the tracks. Video editors allow you to "zoom" on scenes - basically allow to expand the segment that represents a scene as to view it in smaller time increments (fractions of a second). This enables you to cut your footage right where you want it - you can analyze it frame by frame and find the spot where you need to cut or trim the scene. For example if you have a mountain bike rider flying through air and want to cut the clip just when the bikerreaches the ground then you zoom in on the imported clip and drag the cursor at that particular point. Only the zoom mode can show you the exact time at which a certain event takes place in the video. Editing at such detail gives you full control - fine tuning - over the video.
Look for pitch changes in the music track. Perhaps you've noticed by now that most video editors show you the pitch graph on the music/sound track. This graph shows you both when the music grows loud/silent and when the pitch of the tune goes high/low. Seeing where the pitch of the sound track changes is key for editing videos on music beats. Scroll the track, find the tune changes and those will be the points where you'll have consecutive scenes - see picture below. Now you don't have to add a new scene with every beat change but where the song has good rhythm it would be nice to have some scenes rolling accordingly. The beat changes can be identified in the graph as visible high and low spikes neighbored by smaller, insignificant spikes.
Use dynamic scenes if your video shows action. For instance, the climbers in my clip are moving, leaping, swinging, jumping, falling. All this adds up to the urgency of the video. If you have rather static scenes you can also edit on the beat - just be aware of what it is that you want to convey with your video.
Use short scenes. This time we're talking less than a second scenes. Short scenes will enable you to do two things: keep your movie short (internet surfers have a short attention span) and cover all your footage (a few short scenes from each shooting session will tell the whole story, showing images that were taken in a long time span - a few hours or a few days).
Have shots from various angles mixed in the video. A sequence of various angle shots will keep your audience curious to see more whereas shots taken from the same perspective will bore the viewers. Keep it interesting.
I hope this helps. I stress the fact that I'm not a professional - I'm just a serious amateur. Feel free to add your own suggestions on video editing in the comments. Critique is eulogized here! :-)
If you're into serious winter mountaineering you may have swam through heaps of snow once in a while. Now, in my opinion, the best way to roam the mountains in wintertime is on cross country skis. However, if you plan to climb walls (mixed - ice and rock) and you don't want to return on the same route then I see snowshoes as the best option for the approach trek. They are lighter and less bulky than skis and can be strapped on your backpack without being inconvenient while climbing.
If you want to change the theme of your Blogger blog, now it's easier than ever! Blogger in Draft is a service from Blogger that allows users to test upcoming features of this free blogging platform. You can log in to Blogger in Draft using your Google or Blogger account and benefit from all the new cool stuff that's being prepared.
Even though the tested features are only available there, the changes you make to the blog's design apply permanently to your Blogspot blog. So before you make any changes, save your current layout if you'd like to switch back to your old template later.
With the new template designer you can:
create new columns for your blog (two columns or three columns blog)
create new columns in the blog's footer (split footer column, add extra fields)
adjust the width of any column by sliding a marker (see the changes take effect in real time)
add a background image to your blog (choose from lots of quality pictures and patterns hosted on iStockphoto.com - nature, sports, travel, science and other categories)
15 new, highly-customizable templates from our design team, split into four families: Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc, and Watermark
One-, two-, and three-column layouts for each template, with complete control over the size and arrangement of the columns
Hundreds of background images and patterns from iStockphoto, the leading microstock image marketplace
Try it Now Go to http://draft.blogger.com/ to log in to Blogger in Draft. (If you’ve never been there before, Blogger in Draft is just like regular Blogger, except with new, in-development features like this one.) Click on your blog’s “Layout” link to go to the Layout tab. The link to the Template Designer is at the end of the row of sub-tabs.
With these new design options, Blogger gives you more control over the look of your blog - just like WordPress premium themes. I still wonder whether a blogging platform, given the same content, can make a difference in a blog's traffic... What do you think?
A glidecam or steadicam is a device that stabilizes the video camera for a smooth footage even when the operator is moving on uneven terrain. As the subject being filmed is moving, the cameraman may follow the subject and the video capture will convey a gliding effect.
Before the steadicam, a director had two choices for moving (or "tracking") shots:
* The camera can be mounted on a "dolly", a wheeled mount that rolls on tracks or leveled boards. However, this is time consuming to set up and impractical in many situations.
* The camera operator can hold the camera in his hands. This allows greater speed and flexibility, but even the most skilled camera operator cannot prevent the image from shaking, if only minutely. Hand-held footage has therefore traditionally been considered suitable mostly for documentaries, news, reportage work, live action, unrehearsable footage, or as a special effect to evoke an atmosphere of authentic immediacy or "cinéma vérité" during dramatic sequences.
A steadicam essentially combines the stabilised steady footage of a conventional tripod mount with the fluid motion of a dolly shot and the flexibility of hand-held camera work. While smoothly following the operator's broad movements, the steadicam's armature absorbs any jerks, bumps, and shakes.
The steadicam was introduced to the industry in 1976 by inventor and cameraman Garrett Brown, who originally named the invention the "Brown Stabilizer". After completing the first working prototype, Brown shot a 10-minute demo reel of the revolutionary moves this new device could produce. This reel was seen by numerous directors, including Stanley Kubrick and John Avildsen. The Steadicam was first used in the biopic Bound for Glory, but its breakthrough movies are considered to be Avildsen's Rocky in 1976, and Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining.
When building a glidecam you must think of two concepts: inertia and center of gravity. Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change its state of motion. The center of gravity (center of mass) is the point at which the system's whole mass can be considered to be concentrated.
This means that a steadicam must have somewhat a significant mass and the whole system must be perfectly balanced. The mass of the rig is given by the mass of the camera but it's not entirely dependent of that. In order to achieve the right balance for a given camera one can do one of the following:
add weights
slide weights on the the rig
lower or raise the center of gravity of the rig (with telescopic tubes instead of fixed bar)
The most of important piece of the glidecam is the gimbal. It's basically the part of the glidecam which allows you to move around with the camera without shaking it. Thus you'll get a movie-like effect in your video.
Upright position of the whole rig is granted if the center of gravity is slightly lower than the gimbal. This means that if you tilt the glidecam (threaded bar axis) it will come back to being vertical. As a measure of the perfect balance, the glidecam must restore it's vertical axis in 1 or 1,5 seconds. You basically set the system somewhere between a stable equilibrium and a neutral equilibrium.
Materials and tools needed for the PVC gimbal and threaded bar glidecam design:
a threaded bar, approx. 50 cm long, 10mm diameter
a small ball bearing (a skate bearing will do fine)
three PVC pipe rings of three different diameters
6 mm diameter long and short bolts (I used long bolts which I cut)
10 mm diameter bolts
self locking nuts for both the ∅6 mm and ∅10 mm bolts (ones that have a piece of plastic at one end - along the inner thread)
regular nuts
lots of washers (used as weights)
a few pieces of laminate flooring (any other type of plates will work as well)
a drill
a jigsaw
a hacksaw
a vise
wrenches
pliers
Prepare the bearing
Most of the times the bearing won't fit perfectly into the small PVC ring. If the bearing is too small then you can add a few layers of duct tape. If the bearing is too big for the plastic pipe then you can heat the pipe, and fit it on the bearing while it's warm/hot and malleable.
In my case the bearing was smaller than the diameter of the inner ring and I used duct tape. I ensured the bearing remained firm inside the ring by piercing the ring and the duct tape all the way through - until it reached the bearing - with a hot thin nail in about six points on the lateral side of the ring - just a low tech solution for rivets. I also added super glue inside the ring before sliding the bearing into its place.
Duct tape was used on the threaded bar as well in order to accommodate the bearing better. The bearing was slid onto the bar and fixed in place with two nuts which were tightened against each other - the outer diameter of the nuts was no bigger than the inner diameter of the bearing. This allowed the bearing to spin freely.
Make the gimbal - the core of the system
Use three rings of PVC pipe to make your gimbal. The rings must be drilled sideways and each set of two holes must be diametrically opposed. The smallest ring will have two holes, the middle ring four holes and the third ring (outer) will have either two holes or four holes (if you want to add a handle to the gimbal).
In the end you'll have a set of three concentric rings, each spinning on an axis that is perpendicular to the axis of the next bigger ring. Use self locking nuts or add super glue to the thread of the bolts - this will keep the nuts in place and will hold the gimbal. Leave some leeway between the nuts so the plastic rings can spin easily - if the nuts are too close there will be drag in the system which will prevent it from working smoothly.
You can make the holes using a hot nail that you can push through the plastic rings or you can simply drill them.
Cut the weight plates and the camera support plate
Use any type of plates - aluminum, hard plastic, wood, etc. I used 8 mm thick pieces of laminate flooring and a jigsaw.
Cut an upper plate (camera holder) with a sliding channel and a set of holes for mounting the camera using it's tripod threaded hole. An "Y" shaped plate is needed for additional weights below the camera - opt for slide channels again as to adjust the balance faster by sliding weights closer or further to/from the main axis of the system. The third plate will be used for the bottom weights (below the gimbal).
If you use heavy material, the plates themselves will act as weights and you may not need so many washers for balancing the rig.
Assemble your camera stabilizer
Put all parts together on the main axis using nuts and washers and then balance the system adding weights. Place the camera on the upper plate and adjust the steadicam accordingly. Look for an upright position of the threaded bar and make sure the camera stays horizontal.
Balancing the glidecam can be tedious but it's important to get it right if you want it to function properly.
Please note that you can also do the Merlin design - which is simpler than the PVC gimbal system. It consists of an arch and a gimbal made either of a ball joint or of a double joint (universal joint) and a bearing. Some say the ball joint creates too much friction and thus is inefficient. A double joint and a bearing seem to work better for this type of steadicam.
The only type of a double joint I was able to find was the one in a spark plug wrench. I guess I'm gonna buy one and use it in my next project...
How to Balance Your Glidecam - Demonstration Videos
DIY Merlin Steadicam Video
DIY Glidecam - Gimbal with Handle
DIY 11$ Glidecam
My Glidecam Test Video
Notice my home made fingerboard - training for climbing - in the steadicam test footage.
Special thanks to Kornel Cseri - a Facebook friend who suggested the slide channel feature for my glidecam! For further inspiration, he pointed out the above how to videos as well. Cheers man!
Have you built a glidecam? Share your outdoor videos, glidecam tips and video advice with the community.
