Another fatbike video overnighter

Early spring kayaking video

I wanted to see if I could put together a video of some sort from a paddling trip. Nothing fancy, just a short video with glimpses and impressions. Making videos is an interest of mine, but I haven't really found much time for it lately. Videos are a natural extension to photography, but still quite different and a lot more demanding if good results are to be achieved.

The Vigu Sea Kayaking Guide Course Pt. 2/6

It was time for the second part of the Sea Kayaking Guide course offered by the Wilderness and Nature Guide education of Axxell (Vigu) and held by Benjamin Donner from Aavameri

The Vigu Sea Kayaking Guide Pt. 1/6

The Wilderness and Nature Guide education of Axxell offers two long specializations (10 studying weeks), Winter Fells and Sea Kayaking, in addition to a number of shorter specializations. It had been a long wait, but finally the fifth Vigu Sea Kayaking Guide course started.

Archipelago Sea filming and paddling trip part 1

On Monday 26th July it was time for the week-long paddling and filming trip in the Archipelago Sea for the Lennart Media film, starting from the Gyltö bridge and arriving at Kökar six days later. The intention was to start filming and paddling fairly early, but a strong wind kept us on land until the evening. We also changed the starting point to Rumar because of the wind.

The Krampluk

What do you get when you cross a Salsa Mukluk with a Surly Krampus? You could get a Mukpus, but the established name seems to be Krampluk. I ordered a 29+ wheelset from my LBS and got it last week. The 50 mm wide Surly Rabbit Hole 29" rims combined with the 29x3" Surly Knard tires sounded very promising for summer use, when you don't need the floatation of fat tires.

A new camera and video

I made a radical gear move a few weeks ago. The m43 gear, which I had been very satisfied with for two and a half years, was switched to a Sony NEX-7 camera and a few lenses. The reason for this was that I wanted to simplify the gear, but above all get a single main camera for both still photography and videos. I had the excellent still photography camera Olympus EM-5 and the excellent Panasonic GH-2 for videos, but to do both still and video photography during an outing I would have needed both, which isn't really compatible with my gear philosophy or even the space and weight constraints when doing bikepacking in demanding terrain.

A Winter Video

I dusted off my Panasonic GH2 and made a little video about the current winter, or whatever you would choose to call it.


I used the GH2 and the Panasonic 14-42 lens, as well as the Panasonic Summilux 25/1.4 for a few clips. A short clip was also made with the waterproof Panasonic FT4. I tried a new hack on the GH2. The Cluster X Moon T7 in HBR 25p mode didn't work reliably with my Sandisk Extreme 45 MB/s cards, but the Cluster X SpitzZ T6 worked well. These hacks almost triple the bitrate of the video data in the camera, and I think the result is visible when you are editing the video. There is more detail to be pulled from the shadows, something not entirely unusable when filming in high contrast sunny weather and it also helps to maintain the excellent resolution of this particular camera. This resolution makes it possible to do small pans and zooms in post, something which was not possible to do well with the earlier Canon 60D I had.

Unfortunately, this non-winter hasn't provided much inspiration for doing video work. Last winter I managed to make four videos, but this time I probably won't make more than this one.

Olympus EM-5

Regular readers might remember that I switched out my Canon EOS system, a 60D and some lenses, to a much lighter m43 system in August 2011. I never looked back and I have since complemented the system a little. My latest purchase is the Olympus EM-5, which was interesting when I bought the Panasonic GH2 in the beginning of 2012. At that point it was not yet available, and I would probably have bought the GH2 anyway, because of its superior video capabilities and lower price. The Panasonic GH2 was a good camera, especially on the video side, but for some reason it never had the same fun factor as the Olympus PEN cameras for me. Meanwhile, the Olympus EM-5 was continuously praised, and a month ago I noticed that Rajala Camera sold them for a rather low price. The temptation was great, but I did give it a few days of thought and meanwhile sold a lens that almost never got used. Finally I came up with enough good reasons to buy it and can give some first impressions after having used it for a month.

The camera is small and light, but still big enough for my hands. It has a good EVF, a big point for me, since I think a viewfinder is much superior to the display on the back of the camera. With the kit zoom, which qualitywise is ok, the setup is weatherproof enough to be used in the rain. According to the tests, the image quality is excellent, slightly worse than the best APS-C cameras from Sony and Nikon, but better than the Canon APS-C cameras. It has an excellent built-in image stabilizer, meaning that all lenses will be stabilized. Hence, on paper it almost seems like the optimal outdoor camera for someone like, possibly with the exception of the video capabilities.

With a small lens, the system is quite small.

The kit zoom is rather big, probably because it is sealed. The aperture is ok at the wide end of 12 mm (24 mm equivalent), but poor at the tele end of 50 mm. I would rather have a weatherproofed prime lens with a large aperture with a suitable wide angle, but seemingly no manufacturer believes that it is possible to sell such a combination.

In good light, the differences between cameras are not that big. The dynamic range does have some relevance, though, and here the EM-5 is actually quite good. Configurable highlight/shadow warnings makes it easy to keep the exposure right and there is some room to fix things in Lightroom. E.g. this picture would have had pretty much either a silhuette or a totally overexposed sky with a lesser camera.

The real test of the camera was the Vigu Survival course. You can see more pictures under the actual blog post, but below is an example of what is possible with it. I often find myself in situations where a tripod is just not possible to use, since there is no time for photography. You then have to work fast, and the EM-5 image stabilizer combined with a good lens certainly enables pictures that otherwise would be impossible. The below picture was taken handheld at ISO 3200, f1.8, 20 mm and 1/10 s. (ISO 6400 is still usable and the image stabilizer works with longer exposure times, though the success rate declines.)

A 100 percent crop of the above image, unsharpened. (Remember, this is pixel peeping.)

There was of course no doubt about the image quality in the camera, after all the positive reviews. The smaller sensor size is a compromise, though, and while it does not affect the image quality much, it does mean that it is more difficult to get a shallow DOF (depth-of-field). With the proper lenses it is still possible, though.

The video capabilities are lacking in two ways: There are no PAL frame rates and the codec is known for its low bitrate and inability to deal with complex scenes. My expectations were therefore not very high, so I decided to do a little test.


In this example, the video quality is quite ok, though the Vimeo compression made the video slightly jerky. I'll have to look into that later.

Finally, the maybe most important thing is that the Olympus EM-5 does have a high fun factor. I think I will be very satisfied with this camera.

New camera and video

In the beginning of January I bought the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition, the flag ship of the GoPro series of action cameras featuring very impressive specifications. Seven months later I sold it. I'll explain the reasons below.

My main video camera is the Panasonic GH2, which with a suitable hack still is one of the very best hybrid cameras/videocameras available. It is a competent still image camera and the video quality is far superior to that of the Canon EOS 60D, which I've previously had. Being a m43 camera it is also small and light, which also goes for the optics. I'm very satisfied with it, but since it is not weatherproofed, I needed something to complement it with. Despite me being less than impressed with POV videos, I still decided to buy the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition when it came out, since it was so impressive on paper and all the pseudo reviews on the internet just said it was the best thing ever. The first promotional video also showed that it can yield truly excellent results.

Hence I came to buy the GoPro for the wrong reasons. I bought it as a weather proof video camera, in addition to some small POV usage needs. After seven months I can conclude that it is a great POV camera (though not without its faults) and a poor general video camera. My observations are the following:

• The resolution in 2.7K video mode is great, probably very close to that of the GH2 in 1080p mode.
• The fisheye lens is the worst part of the camera. The very wide field of view gives a good illusion of speed for POV purposes, even when there is none. The fisheye distorsions makes the lens fairly unusable for anything else, and even in 2.7K mode there is not that much resolution left after defishing the video in the editor.
• No shutter means that the GoPro uses far too fast shutter speeds in good light.
• I didn't like the lack of control over the exposure. The automatic exposure isn't always right.
• The excellent time lapse functionality is hampered by the lack of exposure control and the strong optical distortions.
• No viewfinder. The smart phone interface over WiFi is great, but does not replace a viewfinder.
• The battery life is poor.
• The form factor is good for one purpose, the chest harness, which is one of the best POV angles. For anything else, the form factor of the Contour or Sony action camera would be better.
• The colours didn't mix well with those of the Panasonic GH2.

The above observations might sound a bit negative, but keep in mind that I really bought it for the wrong reasons. A quick search on the internet should give plenty of positive reviews.

To replace the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition I wanted a weatherproof compact camera with good video quality. The weatherproof compact cameras generally don't have a great image quality, but after some googling and remembering the videos made by Joe, I settled for the Panasonic FT series. The FT series have a good video quality and support for the 25p frame rate of the PAL world, which is missing from many other alternatives. As it happened, the new Panasonic FT5 was about to be released, enabling me to find the FT4 for a very good price from a Finnish web shop. I ordered it and it arrived.

The first tests showed it to be pretty much what I expected. The still image quality is like that of a low end pocket camera, but the video quality is better. It has some sort of periscope optics with a maximum aperture of F3.3 in 28 mm equivalent focal length. There is only one other aperture alternative, F10, which I assume is an ND filter, since it would not make sense to have a true F10 in a camera this small. The diffraction would affect the sharpness too much. The time lapse mode is unfortunately mostly useless, with a fixed interval of one minute, but otherwise the camera seems to have everything needed in a camera of this kind.

I decided to do a video during an overnighter two weeks ago with this camera only, in order to test it thoroughly enough for my purposes. The Panasonic FT4 supports both MP4 and AVCHD video recording, with a little lower bitrates in AVCHD mode. I'm assuming that the video quality is the same in both modes, since the AVCHD can probably make do with a lower bitrate due to a better compression method. The maximum bitrate I encountered in MP4 mode during this test was 23 Mbit/s, which isn't too bad (the hacked GH2 does over 60 Mbit/s, though). The following video was the result of the test.

I'm actually quite satisfied with the result. The camera is quick and easy to use and the video quality is quite ok. The actual resolution is lower than that of the GH2, which might (barely) be visible on Vimeo, but I would still estimate that it is better than that of the Canon EOS 60D. The dynamic range is lower than on the GH2, but the colors seem quite similar, so there should be no problem mixing the footage of the two. The automatic exposure in video seems good, choosing suitable shutter times. I dialed in exposure compensation based on the on-screen histogram, but otherwise I let the camera do its thing. Some handheld shots also showed that the image stabilization worked fine.

The first bikepacking overnighter

It was time for the first bikepacking overnighter for Tor, who turned eight in March. Though the boys haven't ridden that much singletrack yet, it seems like they are getting the hang of it this year. Still, it takes some practice, since the singletrack here around Turku contains lots of technical sections, which can be quite difficult for kids and beginners. In addition, bikes for kids are usually also quite heavy, probably mostly due to the price point. The boys have Kona Hula 24" bikes, which are fairly ok, but they still weigh as much as my XL sized fatbike (with the summer wheelset).

Anyway, this week I went out for a short overnighter pretty close to home with Tor. We started from our backyard and rode a short bit on the multiuse exercise trail...

... before entering the singletrack.

Stairs like these are more difficult for kids with their relatively heavy bikes.

Easy singletrack went well.

Going a bit off-trail...

... to erect the tent.

The dry pine forest doesn't contain that many colorful flowers. Most are small and dull, but there are some exceptions, like Melampyrum sylvaticum (couldn't find a name in English).

I wanted a hot brew and needed some twigs for the wood stove.

Tor then escaped the mosquitoes into the tent...

... while I had fairly bugproof clothing and had my hot beverage.

Some evening reading...

before going to sleep.

The night was pretty warm at 12°C. Tor had a new down summer sleeping bag, which he had half open, while I tried my new 600 g Enlightened Prodigy X quilt. At this temperature it was much more comfortable than my equally light, but warmer, summer sleeping bag.

The morning was nice and clear and the mosquitoes mostly gone.

Breakfast consisted of coffee and hot chocolate as well as Digestive bisquits.

I mostly recorded video during this outing and most pictures are just stills from the video stream, which is visible in the slightly lower quality. (The two really poor picture are stills from the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition.)

Finding something to do while daddy takes down the tent.

And then we started riding again.

A little mishap.

Continuing home without problems.

A successful little outing again, according to the participants.

And finally, a little video from the trip:

The Last Ride of the Winter...

... I think, at least of you don't count commuting. The excellent winter weather of March continued into April, and at the time of writing, the ten day weather forecast shows no sign of spring. Still, the sun inevitably brings an end to the winter soon.

The open mires a bit north of Turku have a good network of prepared classic style ski tracks. While we didn't get crust strong enough for riding on this winter, which is a bit surprising considering the unusually cold March weather, I've had my eyes on these ski tracks now for a couple of weeks. It would be possible to ride on them with a fatbike without causing any damage by keeping to the narrow hard area next to the ski tracks where the ski poles hit the snow. I've refrained from it since there is the possibility that some skiers would dislike seeing tire tracks there, which would be a totally unnecessary conflict. Also, I wouldn't want to contribute to the steadily decreasing respect for the ski tracks in Finland. I finally thought it would be ok to go after the Easter holiday, when the likelyhood of anyone skiing there would be close to zero. The ski tracks on the open mires were still quite ok, but in the forest they were totally unusable.

On Monday evening 1st April I started riding around 17:30. With daylight saving time finally in place, the sun would go down 20:15, so I had enough time to ride 40 km to the Vajosuo mire.

Leaving the city...

.. riding through the countryside...

.. before finally closing in on the target area. At this point I noted that the water in my downtube bottle was partly frozen, so the temperature was decreasing again.

The crust on the mire was in some places strong enough to ride on, but the packed ski track trail was better.

I continued over the mire...

... until I set up my tent just outside the National Park border. Tents are unfortunately not allowed inside the National Park.

I had brought full winter gear, but had to sleep with the sleeping bag partly open in order not to overheat. Otherwise I slept well. The night was silent, but when it got lighter in the morning I finally heard the characteristic spring mire sound of the Black Grouse.

I got up a little before sunrise at 6:45 and set up a camera for some time lapse photography, though I think I used a too long interval between the pictures to get a usable result. The temperature was now -11C.

Back in the tent, I had coffee and  a half flapjack for breakfast and then went out for some more photography.

At eight in the morning I had packed down my gear and started riding again.

A short forest section showed that the ski tracks were no longer in particularly good shape.

Nice riding on the Kurjenrahka mire.

Signs of spring.

An outdoor paradise on the mire.

The tire tracks are barely visible.

A second breakfast after two hours of riding at the Savojärvi lake.

Continuing on a trail packed by walking.

I don't think a skier would mind me riding here.

Entering the Lammenrahka mire.

Time for lunch.

After lunch I continued for another hour along the ski track trails...

... before running out of time. I then had a 40 km ride ahead of me, of which 15 km was on forest roads consisting of everything between mud, ice, slush and water.

My last hour turned into pure misery, when I had the worst bonk for one and a half year. The plan was to use the opportunity to train riding with an energy deficiency, since it is good training for the long endurance race events, but I hadn't planned to let it go this far. Riding in a zombie-like state isn't fun, but it does teach you something. Hopefully I learned to try to remember some extra energy bars next time.

And finally a small video:

Astute readers will notice that I had a big tent, as well as some other extra gear. I tested bringing everything I would need, except food, for a week-long unsupported solo trip in Lapland*. The new Salsa Alternator Rack  Wide enabled me to put a larger drysack on the rack. My 12 liter seatbag would not suffice for this. I also intended to take a little more food in a separated dry bag strapped underneath the tent, where I now had the Ridgerest ground pad. The ground pad would have gone on top of the dry sack on the rack. However, after arriving home from a visit to my mother I had very little time to pack and could not find any more straps, so I just grabbed a little food and packed it were it fit. I think the original plan would have worked fine, though, and would have been good enough for the purpose. The tent is however unnecessary big and heavy, with space for three persons (two in the winter) and weighing 3.5 kg, including ten snow pegs and some other stuff. I also would take pogies on such a trip instead of just ordinary gloves.

* The Lapland April fatbike trip will not take place this year. This time I'm quite content with the winter so far, and I decided to save my limited vacation time for something else. Maybe next year.