Record V8 screen in cockpit video with GoPro 13?

[lonkelly]

I record my flights with a GoPro 13 on a suction cup mount on the canopy above my right shoulder. I can see all the flight instruments clearly in the video. I can generally see the LX9000 navboxes well enough if I zoom in. However, the recorded V8 is too dim to read, and it looks like the brightness varies from left to right across the screen. The V8 is easy to read with my eyes, but not in the GoPro recording. Does anyone have ideas? Is there some sort of polarization in the V8 screen I could compensate for at the camera?

[Piet Barber]

Piet's diagnosis: 

There's glare on your screen from the side rail of your canopy that just happens to line up with your V8 screen.  

Option 1: You can move the camera position slightly such that the canopy rail isn't in view of the reflection of your GoPro. 

Pros: Free

Cons: you're probably going to see something else in the reflection. 

Option 2: The fact that it's reflecting can be attenuated by using a CPL filter on your GoPro.  I've found great success with this product for my Hero 11: 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09C5MT4R3?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Pros: Makes looking outside the canopy less reflect-ey and glare-ey.  That izod Alligator logo on your polo shirt won't get reflected on the canopy as brilliantly if you have a good CPL filter.   I recommend this option the most, because of this reason alone. 

Cons: 

• If you get the CPL orientation wrong, your whole LX9000 screen could be black, which will be really disappointing when you're trying to upload this footage to YouTube.  You'll have to make sure you got it right before you go do your 1000k flight.  
• there's a cost, however modest, to getting the CPL filters. 
• When viewing the recorded video afterwards, it becomes obvious which instruments have a vertical CPL and which ones have a horizontal CPL.  I get this choice: Do i want the LX9070 and V8 in the screen? or do I want the transponder and Becker screen in the video? It's a hard-set dichotomy and there doesn't appear to be a compromise.  I chose the former, BTW. 

Option 3: Set up your V8 in the LX9000 to have black-text-on-white background.  This tends to attenuate those canopy rail reflections way better. 

Unsolicited Editorial: When I become king of the world, my first act will be to outlaw any displays that have white text on black backgrounds. This applies to all websites and flight instruments. Dark themes suck. I'll die on this hill. 

[Tango Eight]

“Dark themes suck”

Winter instruments enters the chat…

🤣

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[Jeff Stetson]

Action cameras are set up to use the fastest shutter speed possible to capture, well, action. If the shutter speed is faster than the screen refresh rate, you get effects like you see. On my GoPro 10, I use a ND8 neutral density filter. This passes only 1/8 of the incoming light, requiring the shutter exposure time to increase by a factor of 8. (Also lets photos/vids give a nice propeller blur instead of often breaking it up into pieces). You may have to experiment a bit with other choices. Too, an ND filter reduce glare and reflection effects somewhat. Search "telesin gopro nd filter" on amazon for some options.