“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson
It’s amazing where one hour can get you out of London.
In March of this year, I wrote about a trip down to Brighton for a blogging meet-up at the Thistle Brighton hotel. As soon as I arrived and felt the salt in the air, it hardly seemed possible that only an hour earlier I’d been standing on Victoria station. Yet again, though, sixty minutes has proved that’s all it takes for a proper escape from the city.
Last week, I joined about fifteen other bloggers and headed to the Surrey location of GoApe, an outdoor treetop adventure course, situated in the Alice Holt forest of East Hampshire–only an hour by train from Waterloo to Farnham. We’d been invited out by Panasonic and their PR team to test out their new line of hardy, can-survive-everything-but-the-apocalypse cameras and camcorders, and in between getting to know each other and enjoy a day out of London, testing out cameras we did.
The course
While I love being active, most of my day-to-day existence in London is sedentary–whether on the train, in the office, or writing at home. So being able to not only stretch my legs, but to also push myself physically was a welcome change to my routine. We began by strapping on harnesses and getting to know the various carabiners and pulleys that hung from our sides–and just the exact order they should be connected in.
This particular branch of GoApe features five different tracks–one smaller training course and four larger sections that all end in a zip line. Each section began with a long ladder to get you up into the treetops. From that point, there were all kinds of crossings to take you from tree to tree–from rope bridges to swaying logs, from Tarzan swings to tunnels cut into sections that shifted while you crawled through them.
My favorite, naturally, were the zip lines. I love any chance to lose the feeling of ground beneath my feet–and to make epic crash landings into long piles of wood chips. Bark down your back, anyone?
The camera
In principle, I couldn’t wait for the day. Try out new video cameras? Heck, yes. But I’d planned on playing around with the Panasonic models while still taking more traditional shots on my own camera. I even walked over to the training course with a new Panasonic camera strapped around my wrist and my DSLR’s strap strung diagonally across my chest.
“Um, you really taking that out there?” our instructor Kerry asked.
“Sure, why not?” I replied naively.
“Well, I can guarantee you, it won’t survive a zip line landing.” Parting with my SLR for the day felt like a new mother leaving her child with a babysitter for the first time. It just felt wrong.
Once on the course, though, I realized just how freeing it was not having to worry about the camera. Let me give you a quick run-down of stats about the new line of cameras (my particular model was what’s known as a HX-WA10…almost sounds like a virus, doesn’t it?):
- waterproof (down to 3 meters)
- shockproof (up to 1.5 meters)
- dustproof
- sandproof
- freezeproof (down to 14 degrees F/-10 degrees C)
So is there anything these cameras can’t stand? It doesn’t appear so–not on our test run, at least. What I found most incredible about using them was just this–the complete freedom of not having to worry about my camera. With the Panasonic model, there was nothing I couldn’t do. As we swung around, climbed up ropes, and crashed to the ground, all I had to do was flip open my camera and I was good to go.
My only frustration with the camera came when trying to take still shots, rather than videos. When I pressed the shutter, the image I could see on the screen suddenly zoomed in, far closer than what the screen had originally shown. One of the other bloggers (a writer for a technology magazine) informed me this is actually because the camera uses two lenses–one for stills, the other for video–but the same screen.
While it was easy to correct by zooming out before I took a shot, it was confusing to adapt to at first. Clearly, I’m not switching from travel to tech anytime soon…
The conclusion
I found the camera perfectly suited to an active traveller’s needs. While it may not be your best choice for artistic shots of landscapes and architecture (although, as you can tell from the shots in this post–all of which were taken with the HX-WA10–the quality is still fantastic), if you are planning on going scuba diving, hiking, snowboarding, bungee jumping, Zorb rolling (etc etc etc), this could be the one for you.
But that’s enough from me–take a look at the following video made about our trip and see what you think!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDduBSJqamM
Thqt was me! And you do do cool things!!!
Haha yes!! and last night was so fun, hopefully the first of many French meals to come 🙂