I just started riding a Santa Cruz Chameleon hard-tail as my trail bike. Bolted out of work a bit early on a glorious Friday afternoon to enjoy the trail before the rains dampened the weekend.

I recorded bits of my ride using just my iPhone6, a Bluetooth Wireless Remote Control, and a small tripod. Although I had brought the GoPro 3+, I didn’t really use it much on the trail.

The above video was recorded, edited, and posted all from my iPhone 6 as an exercise in video production on the go. I’m pretty happy with the results and learned a few lessons along the way to improve my future videos.

Lesson 1: Recording in slow-mo reduced the resolution of the video. This became evident after uploading to Youtube and seeing the slow-mo compared to the regular videos that are at 1080p. Next time I’ll just record everything in regular video mode and slow it down as needed in post-production.

Lesson 2: The smartphone mount was too bulky for the tripod so it made it very difficult and time consuming to get the shot angle I desired. By the time I was half-way through the ride, I wanted to chuck the mount and just record everythign with the GoPro, but that has its own disadvantages.

Lesson 3: The GoPro can get some great shots but I have to shoot blind to conserve battery. Although I can use the GoPro app on my iPhone to preview where the GoPro camera is pointed, it eats up battery time on both devices that would severly cut down the amount of video time I could record. I really want to look into getting the LCD backpak add-on for my GoPro 3 so that I can more quickly set up shots with confidence and less wasted battery time on the camera and iPhone.

Lesson 4: Need some extra bungee or longer velcro straps for the Joby tripod. I love this tripod for the last 7 or so years, but the strap that is used to secure it to sign posts, trees, or whatever is quite short for my needs. All I need is another 12 inches of velcro so I can secure it to a wider variety of trees and rocks, this would greatly open up the number of angles I could shoot.

Lesson 5: Pre-download some more music. Although the music used in the above video was…OK…it wasn’t great. It just sounded so generic and too heavy for what I wanted to portray. The music that came with iMovie was just all so generic and didn’t work with my project.

Here’s my GPS track of the ride:

I’m so happy with all the work that the Northwest Trail Alliance has done to make the Sandy Ridge Trail such a gem. Please donate or become a member so they can continue their great work.