29Jan Filming product close ups with a Gopro Hero 3
It can be tricky trying to get camera placement just right when shooting hands on product shots. One of the most affordable ways to accomplish this sort of thing is to use an extremely light camera like the Gopro Hero 3.
A boom mic stand is designed to hold heavy condenser microphones in place even when the stand is fully extended which makes it a perfect overhead mount for the Gopro Hero 3. In this case you can see that I have the hero 3 floating over a small table about 2 feet above the work area.
To get the Gopro Hero 3 attached to the stand you’ll need the 1/4 20 cage adapter and this 1/4 20 to microphone stand adapter. In this case i’m using the aluminum 1/4 20 gopro adapter I posted awhile back. Once everything is attached position your gopro and adjust your field of view in the camera to accommodate your work area.
In the above test video I didn’t bother trying to color match the product shots with everything else being filmed. Matching the footage from the Hero 3 to DSLR video is pretty easy if you record in “protune raw” mode. The raw label in the camera doesn’t mean you’re getting raw stills from the hero 3, it simply allows you to make a few more adjustments to the picture profile using Gopro’s free editing software. With a little bit of tweaking the protune recordings can be made to match a DSLR without much problem.
You can find a few examples of the setup in action on my second youtube channel here. Once the intros and formats are flushed out the hands on product stuff will start showing up on my primary channel.
January 29th, 2014 at 10:01 pm
thanks for the tip. 🙂