Take us for a drive in your country

Yeah, speed traps are a problem up there, but a bigger problem is the fact that they have done nothing to maintain the road since it was built. The route is lumpy as hell and riddled with ill-placed and poorly seated manhole covers. The only maintenance they have done on it is the addition of tar snakes.

Still, if you do a sighting lap to make sure there are no cops, it can be fun as hell.
 
Yeah, it's a fun drive if you know the coast is clear. You're right, the poor state of repair is far worse than the police. Last time I was there with my Stealth it got some nasty bump steer in the rear from it. I love how they just fill in holes with asphalt and it just ends up sinking in. They need to repave the thing with a bike lane.
 
There were two things on my to-do list for making car videos:

1. Catch the morning fog at sunrise
2. Do a trip along the North Sea coast, visiting all the small harbour towns, where the ferries depart to the East Frisian islands.

So I did both.

In a Mercedes E200 Convertible.

Starting at 5 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

With 8? C outside.

But no problem. I set the heating to max, switched on the seat heating and the air scarf and put a hood over my head. So apart from my hands, everything stayed warm :)

It's roughly a 120 km trip and to make the whole thing more entertaining, I time-lapsed the countryroad passages between the towns and villages. Still the whole movie is about 55 minutes long, so I cut it into three parts.

So here is the first part of a morning trip westward along the North Sea coast in East Frisia, starting near my home town of Wilhelmshaven, ending up in Norddeich. I think there are some really amazing shots in there, especially in the first part.



Comments welcome.
 
Nice Video MacGruffin. If it was me the trip would have taken considerably longer. I wouldn't have been able to resist all the nice photo opportunities you've encountered and stopped at every one of them.
Talking photography: I think the horizon could be a bit higher up in the frame, about at 1/3 of the pictures overall height would be good. As for time-lapsing, I think that a different strategy would have worked better: speeding up the less spectacular shots and keeping the really good ones at real time or even slowing them right down. I read that to really appreciate a photo, you should look at it for about 10 seconds. Sticking to that rule, try making sure that the really scenic shots get at least 10 seconds on the screen and speeding through the non-scenic ones.
 
I did slow down for one particular shot. Maybe you have noticed ;)

But you have a valid point of course. The purpose of this video was showing the coastal town and villages with their harbours, not so much the landscape inbetween, that's why I sped those passages up. But I already thought myself, that cutting together a scenery drive alone from that material would be a nice idea.
 
Why do you film the sky so much? Makes me dizzy.
 
What? Would you like to see more tarmac instead? Besides, the camera mount kinda limits the angle.

Here's part two:

 
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Did someone say tarmac? What about a bumper cam?


Excuse the last 2.5min being black, I didn't check the file before I uploaded and then I deleted the original :( Still, it's a different perspective on things.

It's the GoPro with the suction cup adhered to the top of the front bumper's right air intake (don't worry, that tunnel only supplies air to the transmission oil cooler; the main cold air intake is on the other side), so the camera is basically where the front tow hook would be.
 
Veritable said:
Did someone say tarmac? What about a bumper cam?
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Damn, I was just about to post the crap videos I've made the last couple of days... I guess I won't even bother, it seems like you got this part of the world covered pretty well.
 
MacGuffin said:
What? Would you like to see more tarmac instead? Besides, the camera mount kinda limits the angle.
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I'd love to be able to look straight ahead, yes. 10-15 degrees down or something.

Still, lovely videos :D
 
Thank you :) Here is the final part:


And for those who would love to see the drive through the morning fog unplugged, I cut together these two videos, where I spared out the towns and left the original sound of driving around in a Mercedes cabrio:



I guess this is all for now :D
 
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Adrian said:
I'd love to be able to look straight ahead, yes. 10-15 degrees down or something.
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I have to agree there. Additionally, aiming at the sky often makes the camera adjust the lighting settings accordingly, resulting in the non-sky part of the picture being too dark.
 
DanRoM said:
I have to agree there. Additionally, aiming at the sky often makes the camera adjust the lighting settings accordingly, resulting in the non-sky part of the picture being too dark.
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Well, as I said: The angle was kinda limited by the tilt angle of the windscreen. Mount it deeper and you have the suction cup in your view. And about the lighting: The camera was mounted directly above the speedometer. No matter what angle you use there, it will always adapt to the light. There also was no alternative to fixing it there, because that is the only place of the car, where you can mount the camera without having constant wind noises on the microphone.

Also, the problem with cabrios is, that they don't have a sunroof to fix a camera on ;)

I can understand your desire to see the road, because you are probably driving the car in your mind ;) But the intention also was to catch the ground fog, which is only about 5 meters above the ground and the effect gets lost, when you don't see glimpses of blue sky shining through from above.

By the way: You will occasionally see me use the windscreen wipers. That's when I drove through a cold-air pocket and the window started to steam up from outside. A very strange effect.

Also several times I nearly murdered a duck. For some reason they seem to like to rest on the road in the morning.
 
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Okay, well here's my first attempt (that was even worth uploading):

[video=youtube;cytGJ-0Y8fQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cytGJ-0Y8fQ[/video]

It's sped up a bit obviously. I also uploaded another one at normal speed, but it seems kind of boring even though I sped up the traffic lights.

Feel free to give me your feedback, I'm new to editing and just taking videos in general.
 
I definitely need to get one of those cameras.
 
MacGuffin said:
I definitely need to get one of those cameras.
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You should! It makes sense considering how often you do videos and how high quality they already are with your non-dedicated equipment... what I can't figure out is why I suddenly decided to invest so much money in this stuff, considering I don't do sports and though I do joyride quite a bit they are more or less the same roads.


47 said:
Funky music there Shawn :lol:

Vid looks good, but, no GTI noise?
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I just found some music through YouTube that wouldn't be so well known, so as to not have it taken down due to copyright issues. :D

No GTI noise in that video, I didn't think it worth leaving in seeing as how I was having a pretty relaxed drive through the city center. I do have some videos with nice sounds and nicer roads and I plan to do some more when I wash my car (so I can mount the camera outside). I already uploaded one but deleted it because I'm kind of paranoid about posting videos of me hooning around as it were.
 
Shawn said:
You should! It makes sense considering how often you do videos and how high quality they already are with your non-dedicated equipment... what I can't figure out is why I suddenly decided to invest so much money in this stuff, considering I don't do sports and though I do joyride quite a bit they are more or less the same roads.
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Stuff like this is why I have a GoPro these days - someone else's video, not mine:

I just found some music through YouTube that wouldn't be so well known, so as to not have it taken down due to copyright issues. :D
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Another option would be to look for artists on YouTube who are actively posting and communicating with their fans that way and ask if they minded the use of their work. Many will say yes and give permission, others will say that they don't mind but the record company owns the recording and rights and you'd need to talk to them, some will respond negatively or not at all.

Still other artists give away their music online and/or only ask that you properly attribute their work or link to their site. Worth looking into - you might be surprised at the names who are willing to lend you a backing track.
 
Yeah. There's a lot of bad drivers here, in fact the drivers in this city are probably overall some of the worst I've ever seen.

So I was thinking it would at least be funny to capture some of these people too, footage might actually come in handy some day too... but do you keep your GoPro rolling any time you drive or ride? The logistics of that are a bit difficult, though I've already got three huge idiots randomly.

Regarding the music thing, duly noted. I just knew of that artist and came across that song which was kind of the same length as my video, I think anything remotely upbeat is enough just to keep the video interesting. Anyhow, I hope to actually capture something where I don't need to mask the audio. ;)
 
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I'm starting to do that with the GoPro any time I'm not just running to the store or such. The fact that the swoop-and-squat fraud artists are on the rise here has something to do with it, too.

Sadly, the 919 doesn't have a good place to mount the camera at current, but the 700 does make a good camera bike (witness the videos upthread.) Once I get some crashbars on the 919 I should have a place to mount the camera - and then, yes, the GoPro will probably be mounted and on for most rides.
 
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