Cameras/GoPros... and Some dam chat!

@Photecs said:
@dc9mm, that looks like a great option… especially to start with. Thanks.

Yea they are so cheap if you lose it no big deal. They are not as good as the newer Go Pros but a friend has an real old one and its better than his old one. I think it was one of the first ones though. If you want it for pictures I would get a Go Pro. but for video its ok .

There are lots of camera mounts available - suction cups for kayaks, clamps for canoes.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Camcorder-Mounts/ci/13931/N/4071351447

Most people I know that use GoPro’s use a helmet mount, and usually for video. If the objective is to get a picture, you will get a higher-quality image by taking a still rather than a screen-shot of a video, but whatever works. tdaniel’s picture above looks pretty good.

I have an old waterproof Pentex Optio that I use for pictures and video. I have two cameras, so I will mount one in the boat that I can point forward or back, and I will often put one on shore on a tripod. It takes a bit of time, so I don’t do videos very often, but I did this one at my local park-and-play spot a couple of weeks ago - you can see the camera clamped to a thwart on front of the boat in the shots from shore. If I was going to do pictures this way I would set the camera to do timed interval shots.
https://vimeo.com/308737032

@eckilson thanks for sharing

Nice one, Erik, but admit just looking at that dam on the video made me nervous given the Iowa thread.

There’s a small dam on a popular river up here. There are a couple of cables strung across the river just before the water flows over - perhaps to stop any foolish paddlers who ignored the warning signs posted along the shore upriver?

@Rookie said:
Nice one, Erik, but admit just looking at that dam on the video made me nervous given the Iowa thread.

That dam is nothing compared to the one in IA, but even so, you learn to stay away from them. Around here the rivers are smaller, but there are dams everywhere. The Slater Mill - the first water-powered textile mill in the country - is about 20 miles downstream from where I was paddling, and there are 11 dams in that 20-mile section. At one time, each provided power to a textile mill.

http://eckilson.blogspot.com/2010/10/rolling-dam-blackstone-waterford-dam.html

On just about any river trip you do around here (MA, RI, CT) you will have to deal with a dam, or a breached dam. In the video above the river was around 3 feet. The first half of this video is what it looks like at 7 feet.

https://vimeo.com/251027341

At flood stage (30 feet - I have only seen it once) the stone arches of the bridge are completely underwater and the river is dead flat but moving incredibly fast. Not someplace that you want to be.

The second half of the video shows the Manville Dam, which is the next dam downstream, and another of my park-and-play spots. If you are interested, there are some pictures of the old Manville Mill here, and the collection of raceways, flywheels and belts provided power to the mill.

http://eckilson.blogspot.com/2010/12/exploring-old-manville-mill-november.html

Gone pretty far off topic for this post, sorry about that.

@Rookie said:
There’s a small dam on a popular river up here. There are a couple of cables strung across the river just before the water flows over - perhaps to stop any foolish paddlers who ignored the warning signs posted along the shore upriver?

Yup - you see a lot of those around here - usually with orange floats on them. They last for a while, but eventually floods or ice take them out, so you need to replace them frequently.

Speaking of dams, I wish that the US would make more use of extended weirs on smaller rivers and streams, as the British do. In fact, the Brits design them specifically so that canoes and kayaks can slide down them without any risk by building them with a notch that provides an entry path over the lip. The long gradual runout of a concrete weir creates very little turbulence at the base. I had the pleasure of dropping in canoes and kayaks over several of these on rivers in Yorkshire on my trip there in 2017.

One notable difference between the UK and the US is that the former designs much of their infrastructure around people (and their recreation) rather than commerce and machines. In fact they even build the weirs with whitewater recreation in mind – the Howsham weir on the Derwent has gates in the mill outwash rapids for play and competitions. We crossed this one and the weir at Kirkham Abbey upstream. It’s really quite fun and sure beats portaging. Fish can cross these safely too. This is one reason why you see more river paddlers in the UK in small WW boats rather than touring kayaks, even on rivers that are mostly flatwater.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMECNUkSI4

Howsham Mill, on the island in the background of the video, is an ancient medieval water-powered grain mill that was lovingly restored and converted to a hydropower generator with a turbine plus three Archimedes screws. No vehicles were allowed on the site – all the moving of equipment and material was accomplished using horses. The island is a landscaped park with hiking trails and the mill building is open to the public and has facilities for classes in environmental science. In the US, the old mill probably would have been torn down and replaced with a fast food franchise or some rich snob’s McMansion.

@eckilson said:

@Rookie said:
There’s a small dam on a popular river up here. There are a couple of cables strung across the river just before the water flows over - perhaps to stop any foolish paddlers who ignored the warning signs posted along the shore upriver?

Yup - you see a lot of those around here - usually with orange floats on them. They last for a while, but eventually floods or ice take them out, so you need to replace them frequently.

One on that particular river is above the water. Can’t recall how high it was, but it looked like it would certainly make body contact. Not sure if that’s a life saving or liability issue. When the air temps get into positive numbers again, maybe I’ll take another hike there and get a photo.

Mildly curious … is that one of the remaining Boardman dams?

@rival51 said:
Mildly curious … is that one of the remaining Boardman dams?

Bear River, which has the WW park.

@Rookie said:
One on that particular river is above the water. Can’t recall how high it was, but it looked like it would certainly make body contact. Not sure if that’s a life saving or liability issue.
Above the water - that’s not good - hopefully no one is putting it there intentionally. Once you are out of the boat you are really at the whim of the current.

@willowleaf said:
Speaking of dams, I wish that the US would make more use of extended weirs on smaller rivers and streams, as the British do.

We are starting to see those now. The weirs are designed to make it easier for fish to migrate upstream. Here is one on the Pawcatuck River in southern RI - a series of six stone weirs with a channel down the middle for paddlers.

https://vimeo.com/271000782
I some cases these dams have been there so long (this one dates back to the 1860’s) that the wetlands behind them have become habitat for birds and other wildlife that they don’t want to remove. There are also issues with contaminants in the sediments behind the dam. The weirs allow the dam and the wetland behind it to remain, but allow easier access for fish and people. Unfortunately, we don’t have any with slalom courses yet.

Now we have really hijacked this thread.

@Sparky961 said:
I heard just the other day that studies have been done that indicate you will remember more by observing carefully than by taking pictures (CBC Radio documentary). But that’s totally against the grain, so whatever floats your boat - literally.

I think there is something to that, and that is why I don’t take as many photos as I used to. But video requires no attention, until editing later - and that helps the memory, IME.

I don’t like watching video from helmet mounted cams though. Too jumpy, from all the head-turning.

Eckilson: I don’t think we’ve hijacked it. The post is tagged for cameras AND dams.

I’m happy to hear that there are some weir projects in the works this side of the Pond.

I live in Pittsburgh, and our 4 major rivers, that combine to make the Ohio (which feeds the Mississippi eventually) all have a bunch of low head dams which have repeatedly proven deadly to boaters of all kinds. Two summers ago a local pair of young women bought rec boats and threw them into the Ohio upstream of a 16’ low head, ignoring all the warning signs and buoys, even sending phone selfies of themselves (sans PFD’s of course) just before washing over to their deaths (the PFD’s would not have saved them but might have speeded up recovery of the bodies.) We’ve even had commercial marine craft become trapped in the outflow cauldron of low heads with the crew and pilots being killed.

I have no data upon which to base the notion, but I would think that a low gradient weir is more durable and requires less maintenance than the conventional steep drop low head, though I suppose it might be more costly to build due to more material being needed to create the slope. But the absence of the scouring recirculating hydraulic at the base I imagine must mean less erosion over time. Should have thought about this before I retired from the big engineering company – could have called the guys in the hydro division.

I lived a few years in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has fish ladders on the Grand River (at the rapids, of course), so I’ve seen those.

@willowleaf said:
Eckilson: I don’t think we’ve hijacked it. The post is tagged for cameras AND dams.

lol. Ya, I edited the title! All good.

Damn cameras - is that what this thread is about? :wink:

So we DID hi-jack it. Oops! (not sorry.)

@willowleaf said:
Eckilson: I don’t think we’ve hijacked it. The post is tagged for cameras AND dams.

I’m happy to hear that there are some weir projects in the works this side of the Pond.

There are a couple around here - here is another. On this one they didn’t even remove the old dam - just build the stone ramps on the downstream side

Jim C running the Kenyon Dam

I have no data upon which to base the notion, but I would think that a low gradient weir is more durable and requires less maintenance than the conventional steep drop low head,

We’ll see - neither of these has gone through a serious flood yet. Definitely safer that the traditional low-head dam.

I would love to see the camera portion of this thread continued sans dams.

Jon
http://3meterswell.blogspot.com

@Chodups said:
I would love to see the camera portion of this thread continued sans dams.
Feel fee to post something camera related.