ANGELA B. PAN

Here are my top 5 favorite GoPro Mounts and Accessories for travel and adventure photography.

If you are looking for a super simple way to capture water sports, time lapses or just have a different perspective for your images and videos, read on…

My personal GoPro journey started when I got the GoPro Hero 2 in 2011.

My husband, Andrew and I were starting to get more and more into scuba diving and I wanted to have an easy way to capture what we were seeing underwater. Of course, I could have gotten a housing for my DSLR camera, but it wasn’t really something I wanted to invest that much money in. In order to get quality housing for the camera, it had to cost as much as your actual camera. We don’t live near a beach so I was skeptical to pay thousands of dollars for something I could only use one or two times a year.

Plus who has time to mess with lighting, flashes, and settings when you’re just trying to scuba diving for fun. All the fishes would have swum away by the time you had your focusing correct.

Captured with a GoPro Hero 5 and the Fifty/Fifty Dome by PolarPro

So as an alternative I always had an underwater point and shoot cameras that lasted half a year. Or I would buy a separate underwater housing for point and shoot cameras. Even then the cameras never lasted as long as I thought they should have since they had been underwater. So that was reason number 2 why I didn’t want to risk the same thing with my DSLR camera.

But when the GoPro first came out, I remember being amazed. This tiny camera fits in the palm of my hand, it takes amazing pictures, AND I could take it underwater! Slap on an underwater housing with the red filter (to neutralize the color) and my underwater images were AMAZING! I was hooked ever since. Unfortunately, I can’t find any of those images of those early on videos. If I happen to stumble upon them one day, I’ll update this post. But this is not to say the quality of images will be the same as a DSLR camera underwater. This was just the easiest, solution for me. The DSLR images will be far superior.

I loved having a small adventure camera to go underwater or carry around with me and not worry about dropping or messing it up. Just the way that they are built they seem so rugged that can take falls, scrapes or pretty much anything you throw at it. Perfect to take anywhere if you just want to throw it in your backpack quickly.

Since the evolution of the GoPro cameras, you don’t even particularly need underwater housing anymore. The GoPro is waterproof and as long as you’re staying above 33 ft (10m), you should be good to go without any kind of underwater housing. But with housing, you can go down to 196ft!

The best part about GoPro cameras is all the different mounts and accessories that go along with the camera. OMG, the possibilities are endless and SO MUCH FUN. 

I may have had the GoPro Hero 3 as well. Now I’m at the GoPro Hero 5 Black. I love this little camera.

So with all my adventure camera experience, here are my favorite mounts and accessories that I have used to capture some of my favorite travel images and videos:

Side note: In my opinion, I would skip out on the Accessory Kits you see on Amazon. There’s just so much in them and I’m pretty sure you won’t even end up using half of the screws and mounts that you get with them. It will just end up as a pile in your closet.

After using your camera a few times, you’ll get an idea of what kind of images you’ll want to capture and just purchase those mounts or straps that will help you accomplish that idea.

Head Strap

GoPro Head Strap and QuickClip

You may feel a little ridiculous walking around with this thing on your head but the unique perspective is my favorite part. I love how it keeps you hands-free PLUS you can include your hands in the shot. That way your viewer can see exactly what you’re doing. Perfect for any kind of tutorial videos or just giving your viewer a little more personal view of what it’s like being at your travel location. I used to use this strap a lot when we were scuba diving but now I use it for fun photo walks or on long hikes in mountains.

Click here to view the head strap on Amazon.

Here’s a video example of what it’s like with the head strap perspective. Start at 0:44.

Click here to read more

Taken around the same time I captured this image, I had so much fun watching these fish swim by. I wasn’t able to go underwater so seeing one of these fish swim from above the water was pretty cool. One after the other, more and more started to show up and I was so excited. At one point it seemed like they just kept circling Andrew and me.

I don’t know about you, but when animals or wildlife just show up like this I get extra excited. Sometimes it’s hard to keep my composure but with them circling us, I had plenty of opportunities to capture this image. I think my favorite part about this image is seeing how thick the waterline is. I don’t know why it wouldn’t be the fish. I just think this perspective is so interesting. Plus I like all the water bubbles in line with the fish. It honestly makes me want to go back to a beach later this summer and try it again.

But honestly, they just kept circling us and we had no idea what was going on. After a while, Andrew asked if I got my shot and I said yes. Then he told me to put my camera on video mode so he could jump in the middle and I could capture them all racing away. LOL. I still haven’t looked at the video footage yet, but I’m pretty sure it will just like a big blob of nothingness. If it turns out well, promise I’ll post it. HAHA

By the way, I’m working on a blog post of all my favorite GoPro accessories and I’ll definitely be discussing how I captured this image. If you have any other questions about the GoPro, please let me know and I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

My camera settings for this image is F2.8 at 1/800th sec and ISO 100 with my GoPro Hero 5 Black.

In a crazy turn of events, Andrew and I spent the weekend in Turks and Caicos. At first, I didn’t think we were going to make it considering I had emergency surgery two weeks ago but in the end, we made it happen! I tried my best to try to postpone the trip. Going through all the paperwork and things to get a date change but it just wasn’t working in our favor. So we decided to just take it slow and still go to the Caribbean island. Why waste the money we already put down for it?  The purpose of the trip was to celebrate a huge milestone for Andrew, so that is exactly what we did 🙂

It turned out to be an amazing trip. Yes, we took it slow. But that’s what a beach vacation is all about. At least for me. What better way to recover and just lay around all day than under a beach umbrella. But there were definitely times when we were walking around in the airport or on the beach where I just couldn’t go anymore. I had to sit down and take a break and Andrew was very patient with me.

Prior to leaving for the trip, I thought it would be fun to get a new toy. So I bought a PolarPro FiftyFifty Dome for my GoPro. I love the GoPro as an underwater camera and I wanted to step it up a notch and try out the dome. Since Andrew and I have been to Turks and Caicos a few times before, I knew there wasn’t going to be much to photograph above water. So I envisioned him doing a handstand in the water so I could really see what it was going to be like shooting above and below the water line.

Since the camera is so small, I thought it would be easier to just set it to timelapse and just concentrate on getting the composition right. My camera settings for this image is F2.8 at 1/1900sec and ISO 100 with my GoPro Hero Black 5