59 and planning your 'last' big trip !!! Give it another 20yrs and see how you feel then

'How do I film my trip' must be the second most contentious question asked after what oil should I use. Everybody has their own favourite approach / equipment / editing method etc, but one thing you will notice is that equipment has moved on since 2007.

A lot of people - me included - use GoPros as they're relatively inexpensive, produce ok results, they record onto cards so you don't run out of storage space (unlike some phones) and there's a raft of accessories around for them so you'll be able to mount them pretty much anywhere you want. On the down side they can be awkward to use, the options menus are confusing, the battery life is pretty short and they have a very wide-angle view (which is not always what you want). But if you're willing to spend some time learning them and putting the effort in on the road (it's very rarely switch it on and leave it run) they're probably the best bet - in my opinion. They do have the advantage over phones that if one falls off and gets run over you haven't lost your phone. There are loads of very cheap GoPro clones on the market. I've used three of them over the years and they've been universally rubbish.

We've used a GoPro for videos while travelling however at the moment we're using an iPhone for occasional videos. We have the GoPro however have chosen not to mount it. Now, we don't try to record every km, just occasional videos of particular sections of road or scenery. If you want a continuous video of your trip then a GoPro makes more sense.

PS: if you're old at 59 I suppose I'm ancient...

Part 2.

Loading up your bike with GoPros is only the start if you want to produce anything like Long Way Anywhere or even making something of YouTube std. There's a technique to film making that these days goes beyond filming a 20 min section of pretty scenery and slapping some pirated rock music over the top in iMovie.

In fact to produce anything decent changes what you're doing from filming a bike trip to riding a bike between locations on a film shoot. You'll be riding the same section of pre scripted road half a dozen times to film everything from different angles, your fellow travellers will have to become unpaid actors / extras (and that, in my experience, is really hard - they want to get to a destination, not spend half the day p*ssing about with cameras) and you'll have to get used to doing warm and friendly speeches to camera (a phone may be better for this) to link the riding sections together. All of this is why people filming their trips 'properly' seem to take three times as long to get anywhere as you and I just riding normally.

And then there's sound. Unless you're planning a silent movie the microphones on GoPros and most phones are terrible. It's as important (at least) as the visuals and almost everybody (me included) overlooks it. Have a look at this for a run down of add ons for phone filming -

https://www.dpreview.com/news/723449...r-vlogging-rig

And check out some of Jan Krijtenburg's videos here and on YouTube to see how he does on bike filming. Here's a link to his YT stuff -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7o...KqR3SyQiVy6ehw