Here is all the geeky info that we do to share our passion with others.  When the cold and windy weather days set in, it’s nice to reminisce with pics and video of warm, calmer days with drags screaming.  Once the fish are cleaned and eaten or frozen, all you have left are the pics and videos to remind you of the day. 

Website:  For our website, we use http://www.1and1.com.  Owning your own website is very economical and 1&1 can register your website and host it on the cheap.  We use Microsoft FrontPage for the website design but there are many programs out there for the choosing.

Digital Camera:  Our digital camera is a Konica Minolta DiMage A200 8 Mega-Pixel.  Konica Minolta seems to have gone out of business so you probably can’t get this particular camera anymore but there are so many good ones out there.  Just do a little research to find a decent one.  It takes good shots in a variety of lighting and backgrounds.  We always take our pictures with the highest resolution settings which produces individual pics of about 1.5 MB each.  It’s best to capture the image in the highest setting, then reduce the image for the purposes you want, like posting online.  For reducing the pictures, we use Irfanview from http://www.irfanview.net.  It will resize them while maintaining the sharpness of the photo.  For photo editing we use, Corel Paint Shop Pro X from http://www.corel.com.

Video Camera:  Last year we lost our 12 year old analog Sony Hi-8 mm because it got a little salt water on it.  It was a great camera and took outstanding video and at the time it cost almost $1000.  Now we have a Samsung Mini-DV SC D363.  This camera cost less than $200 and uses the mini digital tapes.  We wanted to go cheap on the video camera so if we lose it to salt water, the ouch factor is not so bad.  I recommend not going with the high end camera like the burn direct to DVD or hard drive models as I don’t think they will stand the test of time in a marine harsh, bouncing, liquid environment that we anglers go into.  The camera takes decent shots, needs good lighting, so night scenes are not viewable.  But for sharing videos online, it does the trick.  

Video Editing:  We also went with the lower end since as soon as one buys software, it gets outdated very quickly.  We use Ulead Video Studio 10.  You can download a full working copy for a 30 day free trial at http://www.ulead.com.  The program is fairly intuitive and easy to learn plus does not sting your pocket book too hard.  For online posting, I save it as a Windows Media Player.wmv file and my goal is to keep it under 10 MB so I can post it temporarily to my cox.net account.  With cox.net you get 7 email accounts that can upload up to 10 MB per account.  Later, the pics and video get moved to this website under reports.  Once I cut the video I want to a reasonable size, I pick a song that seems to fit.  I normally don’t pick the song until I see the video to see what fits.  Video editing takes a lot of computer resources in both RAM, processor, and hard drive space.  Our computer is not the fastest and this is at times a problem, so you want to use the fastest computer you own.  Also recommend getting a separate hard drive to archive your video files as they take up a lot of space. 

Photo Tips: 

Some things I have learned the hard way – always use your flash!  Even if it’s bright and sunny.  The subject may not be in the best position for the natural light to be of use.

Frame up the fish first.  Let it take up most of the visual space.  Then adjust your shot accordingly to include the person.  The mistake most people make is standing too far away.  Suddenly that citation fish doesn’t look so big from 20 ft. away.

Take a picture of the angler and his/her fish as soon as possible.  This is especially critical for off shore fish, as they lose their color quickly.

A few impromptu shots along with staged shots help to remind you of the fun you had, so relax.  Look for opportunities to catch your crew joking around, working the lines, etc.