As many of you know, last Winter I wore a GoPro wide angle digital camera when I competed in several of the regions cross-country ski loppets, including the Mora Varaloppet, the City of the Lakes Loppet and the American Birkebeiner. It was a great experience becoming SkiCam Man, and like a bad dream … he's back!
Yesterday I had a great 17km classic ski at SnowFlake Nordic in Duluth, Minnesota. In addition to enjoying some great early season snow conditions, I wanted to test some new firmware which I had downloaded to my camera. The update from GoPro claimed it would help with resolution in Winter (i.e. snow) conditions, and also allow me to take automatic pictures every 30 or 60 seconds (had been able to take automatic timed photos up to a 5 second interval). The new timings worked great, but I didn't notice much change of photo results. I've found that the camera does well in Winter sunny conditions, but not as good when it's cloudy. Yesterday I experienced both clouds and sun during my workout. You be the judge; I've embedded a sampling of yesterday's photos in the slide show given below. You can also link to my Picasa Web Albums and download any photo w/o charge (see SnowFlake Test folder).
After my ski, I had a great time talking with George Hovlund, owner of SnowFlake and former Olympian. He was intrigued with my camera! I explained to George that this year I was trying a reversed chest mount for my camera (i.e. worn on my back … taking photos of where I've just skied … I like this approach as I now take pictures of skiers faces, and you don't tend to see my arms and poles in the photos).
Finally, just to show the true ski nerd I am … not only do I wear a camera, but I measure my workouts via Garmin and SportTracks. Click to maximize the image shown below.
