For the last ~50 years, Camp 4 Star has been operating in our area and kids from all our area churches (and their friends) have been attending. Elijah has been going for four years now and Tim and Chelsea have been pouring their hearts and souls into running it. We really appreciate all their work! The photos and videos that we get from camp are already wondering, but I thought it would be fun to spend a day there with all my camera gear. The stakes would be low and I would certainly learn some stuff. I suggested that to Tim about seven years ago and I finally got around to doing it this year.
It was really neat to get to spend a full day at camp. We saw the whole schedule play out in person instead of just on a piece of paper. The choreography of the day was impressive! There’s so much planning and preparation that goes into it, and it all worked so smoothly.
I don’t know if I got anything that camp will end up actually using, but here are the shots I got:
And I also took a bunch of video:
So what did I learn?
- If I’m going to make a video like this, I think I think I would do more of a promo style video where I interview people and use their quotes as the main soundtrack of the video.
- I was nervous about keeping enough battery power throughout the day, but I carried a power bank in my pocket and ran a USB cable from that to my camera. I never had a problem and I could have gone multiple days like that.
- I’ve never used this feature before but my tripod can also function as a monopod. One of the legs screws off and then the head can attach to that. While I felt a little silly using it, it was immensely useful. I would have had a difficult time getting through the day without it, specially when I was using my giant 70-200mm lens. Not only did it remove the weight when I was standing still, but it kept the camera so much more solid than hand holding it. I was able to get good pictures and video even at full zoom.
- If I did it again, I would bring multiple tripod adapters so that I could quickly switch lenses without moving the adapter round. When I use the big lens, the adapter goes on the lens and when I use the smaller lens, the adapter goes on the camera.
- I would also set up some secondary cameras (like a GoPro or two) to catch more continuous action at the beach or at campfire. I did have an audio recorder set up at campfire and that was fantastic, but I wish I had also done that with video.
All in all, it was a great day, and we got some fun memories out of it!