Editing Video Footage With A Fogged And/or Wet Lens

[endurovlog]

i was out for a tough ride last weekend and kept having issues with the gopro case lens fogging up or getting wet.

if it's raining i usually just wipe a glove finger across the lens every 15 seconds or so which works great... it seems to act like a chamois and i just edit out the finger wiping as needed.

but the fogging was trickier and i regularly had to stop and wipe the lens.

so had a lot of greyed out footage and started experimenting in sony vegas and settled on this:
- kick up the contrast and darken the image
- used the 'sony sharpen' to bring back detail into the image.

i'm sure heaps of guys already know this, it may even be on the forum already but i didn't see it so hoping it helps anyone with footage taken in the rain.

i was really surprised at how well this rescued a lot of footage. it ain't perfect but it was usable. i figure any decent video editing software will have some sort of sharpen plug in. the key is just not to overdo it of course, just render a few test runs to see how far you can push it.

you can see examples of this in the video below... it varies from normal to badly fogged throughout.

 

[endurovlog]

forgot to say, if anyone has any tips for filming in wet weather i'm all ears. it doesn't rain much here so generally we are clueless about getting good video footage when water does that weird thing with falling from the sky and the sun disappears.

 

[BbqRider]

Sweet, I'll try this out. My Gopro has fogged a few times too, no idea what to do about it though

 

[Marbro_za]

make sure that case is sealed tightly, That the air inside isnt too much warmer than the outside,
or get those fog pads from gopro

 

[SighBored]

If you must have it air-tight / waterproof housing, only option is the pads Marbro_za mentioned. Otherwise, try the open / skeleton case type, and use some masking tape to cover the holes, still leaving a bit of small gaps. This will reduce the chances of water entering, yet still allowing the camera to breathe and fog up the lens.

I have had water enter the housing numerous times in heavy rain, but the camera still went on doing it's thing, no issues.

 

[SwissMotard]

make sure that case is sealed tightly, That the air inside isnt too much warmer than the outside,
or get those fog pads from gopro

The GoPro generates a lot of heat so if you used the waterproof case you can't avoid the heat difference.

 

[endurovlog]

i'll check out those pads... i was using the skeleton case and i figure a tiny bit of water must have got in and just kept fogging her up. live and learn, at least the video footage was still usable.

 

[SwissMotard]

The pads are magical, they work incredibly well.