Long Range ShootingSniper Rifles

See it to Believe it, Video your Shooting

ChrisWay
Posted onJan 2, 2024 at 1:39 PM
Updated onUpdated on Jan 2, 2024 at 2:23 PM

See It to Believe It: 12 Ways your camera or phone can change your game for the better
Videoing yourself practicing at home and the range can be a booster shot in your rifle shooting
performance and a great way to prepare for the new season. Not only does it allow you to
review and analyze your technique, but it also provides valuable insights that can help you
improve your game, fix mistakes, and get an edge you didn’t realize you had. In this article, we
will explore 12 ways videoing yourself can enhance your riflekraft skills and take your
marksmanship to the next level.

  1. Self-Review
    Watching yourself on video provides a unique perspective that, otherwise, you can’t get while
    in the midst of training. You can identify areas where you excel and areas that need
    improvement, allowing you to make necessary adjustments to enhance your performance. Only
    you know how it felt and watching again can provide some visual insight to a feeling you are
    already familiar with; linking the two can come on review and enhance your understanding of
    how your fundamentals feel.
  2. Identify Weak Points
    By closely observing your video, you can pinpoint specific weaknesses in your fundamentals,
    such as improper NPA or body positioning. Recognizing these weak points are the first step
    towards addressing them and ultimately improving your overall game. Once you know where
    your issues are coming from asking an expert for advice can be easier and quicker as well.
  3. Correct Mistakes
    Seeing your mistakes on video gives you a chance to correct them and come up with multiple
    options to try next time youre practicing at home or at the range. Whether it’s a flawed trigger
    press or improper positional technique in, video analysis allows you to identify mistakes and
    make the necessary adjustments to perform better.
  4. Analyze Body Language
    Your body language can reveal a lot about your mental state during rifle shooting. Videoing
    yourself practicing enables you to analyze your body language and make adjustments to project
    competence, remain focused, and improve your overall performance. Scientists have figured
    out in dart throwing how to predict world class ranking based on body language just before
    performance so theres something your body can tell you about your ability and belief and that
    has a lot to do with the impact of your freedom seed.
  5. Assess Performance Progression

Over time, video footage creates a log of your progress. By comparing older videos with recent
ones, you can track your growth in all areas of performance, identify fundamental and also
tricky areas where you have improved, and set new goals to continue pushing yourself forward.

  1. Improve Self-Awareness
    Videoing yourself practicing enhances self-awareness by providing a realistic view of your skill
    level. This awareness is crucial in identifying your strengths and weaknesses, which allows you
    to develop a targeted training plan for improvement. If you don’t know how to develop a
    training plan, that’s where a riflekraft coaching plan can help you connect the dots!
  2. Enhance Visualization
    Watching yourself perform well on video can build a mental image that will help keep you
    focused on success. This visualization technique can significantly improve your performance by
    increasing your belief and understanding of your abilities.
  3. Study Pros Technique
    By studying video of the pros in your field, you can learn valuable techniques and incorporate
    them into your own game. Video footage enables you to closely observe their movements,
    strategies, and tactics, helping you enhance your own skills. Plenty of videos are out of high end
    performance and watching those can reveal the truths and the dogma that float about
    surrounding the concepts of fundamentals, wind, movements, and stage strategies. If they are
    hitting all the shots they take, its gotta mean something even if it breaks traditional rules.
  4. Share with Coaches and Trainers
    Videoing yourself practicing provides an excellent tool for feedback from coaches and trainers.
    As the shooting sports continue to grow and become more competitive coaching and training is
    going to continue to rise in demand. Sharing your videos with a coach allows them to evaluate
    your performance remotely, provide constructive criticism, and offer personalized guidance for
    improvement.
  5. Track low performance skills
    Recording your practice sessions can help monitor areas of low performance. By reviewing the
    footage, you can identify potential causes and make educated and necessary adjustments to
    prevent further repeating these patterns.
  6. Set Clear Goals
    Video analysis helps you set clear and specific goals for your practice. By identifying areas that
    need improvement, you can create measurable objectives and track your progress over time.

This enhances your motivation and drives you towards achieving your desired performance
level.

12. Share Your Journey
Lastly, videoing yourself practicing allows you to share your journey with others. Whether it’s
through social media or private groups, sharing your videos can inspire others, create a support
system, and help you stay committed to your goals.


So, grab your camera or smartphone, set it up during practice, and see it to believe it! Videoing
yourself practicing will give your skillsets a jumpstart for the new season faster than you think.
Improvements in your performance are what were all after and this is a great way to raise the
bar as well as overall enjoyment of your riflekraft journey.

117D-RTO
Could you run through the actual setup of recording yourself during training? Particularly thinking about gear recommendations, camera positioning, and data management of the video files. I've tried using a GoPro, a cellphone on a small tripod, and a TriggerCam. The cellphone was the easiest to make happen but getting the files off was a pain, GoPro I ran into battery issues and the TriggerCam was causing accuracy issues (probably not the fault of the device but my setup with hunter style rings etc).
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      AKMachinist
    • January 22, 2024
    I completely agree that an article with advice on HOW to film your own practice would be incredibly helpful. I'm always impressed by you guys who do it and you've done a great job laying out the benefits. An article that could help me get started and avoid some of the frustration and pitfalls that I'm sure are there would be great.
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    My_Friend_Tikka
  • February 16, 2024
Your questions about recording--gear recommendations--depend on how much you want to spend. Camera positioning depends on what you want to capture. What information that you capture will be important to help you analyze your mechanics behind the rifle? In addition to all of your essential range gear, the camera gear will be extra weight, extra set-up time before you get behind your rifle so you'll want to be patient with yourself and your equipment so that you don't miss recording things that will help you in your goals.


If you don't have a good electronics store in your neighborhood, take a look online at places like Adorama, B&H Photo-Video and other online sources that know audio-visual equipment.


Most every camera, video or digital 35mm (DSLR) will have auto functions such as auto focus, auto exposure, etc. Make sure the camera you choose has manual focus and manual exposure as selections and the ability to record audio with an audio input such as a miniplug (3.5mm plug) or XLR cable (3-prong cable). Your camera should record, at a minimum, in high definition (HD). That is 1920pixels x 1080pixels. The frame rate choices for quality video are generally 29.97fps/59.94fps and 24fps. European cameras are 25/50fps. FPS is frames per second. Most cameras are standard with the 4K recording rate, which is a few steps up from HD, so that's desireable. Read the specs on the cameras to compare and find what you need. Sony, Canon and Nikon are good quality cameras to check out.


If you want to record audio, you can check out some wired lavalier microphones, such as the Audio-Technica Pro 70 cardioid mic. You will want to get a cardioid mic, rather than an omnidirectional mic. The cardioid focuses its sound gathering at the top of the mic, whereas an omnidirectional mic gathers sound from all around the microphone. You want sound isolated to pick up just your voice or whatever you aim the mic at. Don't forget the fuzzy windscreen if you decide to record outside. There are wireless options as well but those are more expensive. Be sure to read reviews from customers to help you choose any of the equipment you need.


A good sturdy tripod is needed as well. Make sure it's rated to hold the weight of your camera and any other accessories you might have with the camera.


I hardly discard any footage so I need a lot of storage space on my computer. I buy external storage drives to keep footage archived. You may choose to store in the cloud. Along with that, your computer that you will be using to edit your footage needs to be fast!!! The amount and recording size of all this footage you're capturing needs to flow smoothly through your editing software, which means you need speedy RAM, minimum of 32GB but some people get by with 16GB. Minimum of Intel (or equivalent) i7 processor but i9 is better. Multiple processors at work are better. Think of processors as the pistons in your engine. A quality video card to interpret the millions of pixels flowing through your editor. NVIDIA and AMD are good ones as is Intel.


Then, you need some video editing software. Adobe makes a basic editing software called Premiere Elements and it is bundled with Photoshop Elements. There are others such as Pinnacle Studio and Magix. There might be a free editor on your computer. See if it serves your purpose before investing in something that may be too difficult to use. Also, check the operating specs of the software to make sure it will work smoothly on your computer. See the previous paragraph about the hardware needs of HD or 4K+ video editing.


Check out the "rule of thirds" in a search engine or a photography/video book to understand how to frame a scene or picture. When setting up your shot for your recording yourself behind your rifle, you want to capture just the essential area of the scene. Your camera will need to be on a tripod and locked down so it doesn't pan or tilt unnecessarily. Once you've positioned your camera (maybe at the 4 o'clock or 9 o'clock position), zoom in all the way on your scope as it sits above your chamber and focus the camera (make sure the camera is in manual focus mode). Now, zoom out and set up the essential area of the scene you want to capture. That might be from your back to the barrel of your rifle with a little extra room past your rifle so you can see muzzle jump, etc. As you set up your camera, adjust your exposure so that you can see the features of your rifle and the backlight of the range is not making your foreground (you and your rifle) show in a dark light. This is why manual exposure adjustment is necessary to have on a camera. I said to zoom in on the scope and focus there but any area that you consider important to be in focus can be your reference point as long as it's what serves your purpose. If you wanted to focus on your trigger mechanics, you could just have your head, trigger and a little forward of the scope in the frame. There are tons of videos online to show how to set up a video shoot. If you need to record audio, it's best to record it at home as a voiceover, rather than try to speak over other activity at the range and windy conditions. At home, you can collect your thoughts, write a script or some notes about what you are demonstrating in your video or just review your footage and save the best examples of what you experienced that day at the range.


I'm sorry this post is so long. There's a lot of back-end expense you need to investigate before putting money on a quality video camera.
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    My_Friend_Tikka
  • February 19, 2024
Your questions about recording--gear recommendations--depend on how much you want to spend on quality equipment. Camera positioning depends on what you want to capture. It’s important to capture the proper information that will help you analyze your mechanics behind the rifle. In addition to all of your essential range gear, the camera gear will be extra weight, extra set-up time before you get behind your rifle so you'll want to be patient with yourself and your equipment so that you don't miss recording things that will help you in your goals. Along with that, you will have to be confident in your camera recording abilities so that you can concentrate completely on your task behind the rifle.

If you don't have a good electronics store in your neighborhood, take a look online at places like Adorama, B&H Photo-Video and other online sources that know audio-visual equipment.
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