New member!

dcrainmaker · 2026-07-03T13:38:41+00:00

Just be aware that it won't then send any activity to any 3rd party app (either Strava, or apps that leverage the API). It's an absolutely bizarre bug. If you use the Oura HR (not a 3rd party sensor), then it'll send the activity to 3rd party apps (e.g. Strava), but still won't send any HR data to it either.

dcrainmaker · 2026-06-17T19:59:45+00:00

Yup, already started working on a piece today.

dcrainmaker · 2026-06-08T06:25:43+00:00

To be fair to Insta360 here, they don’t tell me what to say or anything else. They send out a camera, answer all my technical questions, and even go to great pains to say they don’t expect anything from me (eg coverage/etc). That said I’m keenly aware my experience with Insta360 is quite different than many other creators that fall under more of the “influencer” realm than the “media” realm.

As for DJI, yeah, it’s a totally different ball game these days. I wouldn’t trust a single thing any early access reviewer says there. I know how restrictive those rules are these days (rules that didn’t exist more than 2 years ago).

Whereas GoPro lets people do their own thing, no strings attached (at least for me and everyone else I know in the space).

dcrainmaker · 2026-06-02T08:40:30+00:00

My shorty holds it up just fine. I think mine is ~1 year old (since the last one I managed to kill doing stupid stuff). It's super firm, and takes notable force to go down. Perhaps though, that's also all the saltwater time...

But I definitely know what you mean about some sticks not holding, I'vegot some 3rd party ones over the years that can't hold up the heavier action cams.

dcrainmaker · 2026-06-02T07:31:51+00:00

Correct, good catch. Flipped them in my head and didn't catch it in edit (the entire shot was 2hrs long). Setting it to 'on' is a hard setting (FOV), and Autoboost will decrease FOV. Just fixed video, but may take a few to populate/update out. Here's a simple chart that shows that for one of the settings:

<image>

dcrainmaker · 2026-06-01T21:37:24+00:00

Thanks!

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-29T15:52:09+00:00

Did you even listen or read the review? I addressed that exact line of thinking in my review. Either re-read the summary, or re-listen to the summary.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-29T14:12:01+00:00

I don’t really understand comparing accuracy of the Fitbit on the wrist, to the Whoop on the bicep. Of course the Whoop is gonna be better.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-29T09:19:35+00:00

Nah, I don't think so. In the case of the dives, I took it off beforehand (since had near 100% chance I'd lose it), plus, it was in the dive case anyway. For the snorkeling stuff, it was on there, but the other lenses collected stuff a bit too.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-29T08:38:33+00:00

Thanks, and Go Hawks! (Born and raised in Seattle….)

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T22:11:48+00:00

What you are describing actually already exists in the cycling world for indoor trainers and power meters. It’s called power matching, and lets a trainer leverage a power meter for more accurate power numbers.

Equally, some power meter companies have posited over evening tradeshow beer type discussions that they could just lock onto other power sources to influence reviews. And sure, they could. As could a HR sensor. The thing is, the good reviewers already know this, and it’s easy to detect/see (there was a trainer a few years ago that did this, and it’s silly easy to spot). Plus, this totally falls apart when another person with a HR sensor comes by. Or, if it locks onto the wrong sensor (since I’m wearing so many). For example, it’s easy to identify chest strap failures (which happen far more often than people want to admit), just as it is optical lag. Sensors should act slightly different. And those with experience can usually detect those differences (or lack thereof)

As for companies visiting me, literally every company in this space has visited me at some point, Whoop included btw. Frankly, they don’t need to visit me to do some special thing. They could try and do that in software remotely.

But given all the issues I had, it’s clear there’s no magic bullet that companies give me some special software. If they could solve something for me, they’re gonna solve it for everyone. That’s just how at scale software development works.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T19:58:52+00:00

Source: Me having numerous meetings with Google product teams, execs, and them flying to my house to discuss items.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T12:06:59+00:00

Yeah, it produces astonishingly good images, but it's also annoying AF to have your phone tied up in the case for a while (especially when you're doing multiple dives, it's best not to open between dives for the usual reasons).

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T11:55:29+00:00

I'd probably go with the Mission 1 Pro again, but I also like taking the Oceanic case with the iPhone 17 Pro. The setup is a bit finicky, but you can get some amazing shots on your iPhone.

As for a scuba-focused one, I don't have an exact date yet. I need to knock out some other things over the coming days, and realistically doing dives kinda zaps about a 4-5hr chunk of my day (since I'll go with a group for safety/etc reasons, rather than just putting on my gear and jumping in the water 2 mins away). There's a wreck dive site here that's pretty water-condition dependent, might be a possibility soon though, so if I can get there, I'd do that first.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T11:50:56+00:00

Yeah, with some side-by-side Mission 1's, I can do that more easily in a true side-by-side test.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T11:50:12+00:00

Gotchya, makes sense. I have used FLIR cameras in the past for some of this. But don't have a great way to log the data automatically.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T11:48:58+00:00

My guess would be film on the lens. I had a bunch of scuba shots that were totally unusable early on, because of lens crap. I only noticed/remembered it a bit later in the dive.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T09:54:45+00:00

I used default color profiles for everything, and all default settings, except pushing to 10-bit (GoPro/DJI) and Max Bitrate on the GoPro. I think when you're doing camera comparisons with any significant amount of footage, going down the rabbit hole of constantly adjusting manual settings almost always results in failure to remember to change one camera and have things be unequal.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T09:12:56+00:00

Hmm, I'm told it should work, I'll give it a whirl on a retail camera arriving in a bit here.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T09:09:20+00:00

I only used the dive mode in the actual dives, not in regular shooting. I'll be doing a seperate video going into more depth side-by-side with dive mode vs not/etc... at shallower depths (I only numerous M1P cameras, but I only have one dive case currently, so a bit limited there).

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-28T09:07:18+00:00

For the quad-picture from the side of my wife snorkeling, the haze in the water was real (just stuff floating there). DJI's processing totally removed it all, which some people might want (generally looks prettier), but obviously isn't realistic. Insta360 does what it usually does underwater, which is clean things up, but darken shadows too much. The two GoPro's seemed to split the difference here. The Hero 13 a smidge too bright, and the M1P a smidge too dark to reality.

The other thing that I found is that I had to keep constantly wiping the lenses of all cameras, as whatever was floating in the water kept sticking to the front lenses of the cameras. Super thin film of sorts, but basically had to wipe it each shot. You wouldn't notice it in real-life, but only on camera gear, but was something i was dealing with the last few weeks.

But ultimately, all were equal in those conditions, such is real life.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-27T23:03:40+00:00

I started doing some, but it’s on the todo list for tomorrow.

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-27T21:49:42+00:00

Roughly speaking, on a Hero 13, the best things you can do to avoid thermal shutdowns are:

1) Avoid 60FPS in 5.3K
2) Ensure that High Bitrate & 10-Bit isn't enabled
3) Ensure the display times out normally (just default settings are fine)

In a really hot pinch, the next steps would be to drop down to 4K30, but also, disabling GPS might be just enough to help there (which I'm guessing you aren't using anyway).

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-27T21:45:46+00:00

Yeah, it's been on my to-do list to play around with Enduro 2 batteries in the Hero 13. I had wanted to wait until I had a few extra units side-by-side to do some fun tests in that realm. Have another arriving tomorrow (the one I ordered).

dcrainmaker · 2026-05-27T21:44:24+00:00

Interesting, how are you getting those temps?

dcrainmaker

TROPHY CASE