Shooting Bali Rides

Cool!  I was invited to Bali to ride and shoot a video for Nina FiztSimons and Ramang Kristian who own and operate Bali Rides.  I got to invite four of my friends down for this four-day gig, so I asked my wife, Laura, and long-time collaborator Aloysius Wee, President of the Kuala Lumpur Mountain Bike Hash Scott Roberts, and GoPro Distributor for Malaysia Khoo Boo Hian along for the ride.

As usual, the riding was superb.  We got to ride new singletrack, including a moderate downhill track, which was about the maximum I could handle with my XC bike.  The weather held up all four days, and the views were stunning!  If you get a chance to go to Bali, give these guys a call.

I took what I thought was a minimum of gear for the shoot, but I've learned that I can pare it down even further.  For my style of shooting, here's what I think I need:

Main Camera: 
Sony A7sii.  Full frame for shallow depth of field.  Shoots insane low light.  Useable video autofocus.

Lenses:
Zeiss 24-70mm f/4.  Relatively compact and lightweight.  A good general purpose lens.
Sony 10-18mm f/4.  Useable full-frame at about 16mm for ultrawide and timelapse shots.  Also restores wide to normal perspective at 100fps at which the a7sii crops in 2.2x.

GoPro:
Hero 4 Black.  For POV, drone shots, and anything that is going to get wet.
Essential mounts: Vented Helmet mount, Chesty, Jaws Clamp, tripod mount, Selfie stick.

Tripod:
I use a tiny Slik Sprint Mini with the center column removed and a Really Right Stuff compact ballhead bolted directly to the legs.

Drone:
DJI Phantom.  I'm still using the original Phantom with a cheap gimbal.  I've two minds about using a drone.  On the one hand, the drone is bulky, heavy and a pain to carry, set up and fly, but on the other hand, it gets shots like nothing else can.

Sound:
Rode VideoMicro on camera.  I used this for the interview with Scott and also for the temple shots, but I should really use it all the time instead of the built-in mic.  For really light weight adventures, I'm going to leave my wired lavalier mic and Zoom H1 recorder at home.

Slider:
Ratrig Mini 35.  Never used.  There just wasn't time to set it up.  All the sliding shots you see in the video are hand held and stabilized in post.  That proved to be good enough for me to leave the slider at home for light weight travel.