I’d like to try and make this style of post a regular feature of my blog. Perhaps once a month, I can produce a ‘YouTube Update’, detailing all that I’ve uploaded within the previous thirty days. I’m sure that not every reading this is already subscribed to Olly Outdoors… Some may prefer not to keep a Google account.

With several walks around Wales over the past couple of months, I’ve been quite busy on the uploading front and I’m very, very close to achieving my one-hundredth subscriber!

First, let’s take a look at the video relating to my previous blog post:

This was my perspective from a meet-up and walk with fellow YouTuber and outdoors-goer, Mark – better known as Wye Explorer.

‘Freedom Calls’ was the video that Mark released, from the same walk, days after I uploaded mine.

Before we actually met and, at a time when we’d agreed to do this walk, I was worried that we were destined to produce similar videos, with people generally taking a preference for Mark’s over my own… But I was really pleased to see such a distinction between our work. Viewers may have a preference for one over the other but, it’s now a trivial issue that I’m no longer concerned with.

My most recent video features a Wales Coast Path walk:

I’m hoping to write the accommodating blog post on this one very soon but it was my first walk in a long weekend, en route to Pembrokeshire with Brunel Walking Group.

It’s not the first occasion where I’ve been disappointed and frustrated with the audio quality… While I could probably learn to speak up and project my voice, I haven’t been able to do anything about the noise of the lens’ auto-focus that this camera highlights, even with the recording volume set to ‘Low’. It’s a known issue and something I spotted but chose to overlook in the reviews.

(I’m using the Olympus ‘Tough’ TG-4.)

So, for the first time in a walking video, I wrote a script and recorded narration on my smartphone. Feedback has been really good and I’ll look to try this again in future. I would like to have more ‘talking to the camera’ scenes but I’m not sure whether wearing a LAV mic would be the right answer for me.

In mid-November, I uploaded a short video with the subject of water; featuring a few brief and unused clips from my August weekend in the Derbyshire.

Prior to that, I showcased a very memorable 18 mile hike in the Black Mountains:

This one again demonstrates the issue I have with camera noise and, from the reviews I did read before buying this camera, I it seems unlikely that even Brian Blessed would be able to overwhelm it. Also, I do not believe that I have a faulty unit; this is a design flaw with this model and others in the Olympus ‘Tough’ range.

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Otherwise, this camera is ideal for outdoors adventures. It is waterproof – I’ve let it get soaked a number of times and it still films and captures without any additional problems. I expect it’ll also be sand or dust proof as well (not that I’ve done much desert-trekking or woodworking of late).

I am noticing that it quite frequently takes ‘blurred’ landscape photos although, this may be something I can resolve by learning about the wealth of settings, features and adjustments available.

Thanks for reading and for watching.

PS. There is another ‘Olly Outdoors‘ on YouTube and, although I don’t know how YouTube have allowed this, my channel is actually the most recent addition! I’m certain that I searched for the name before selecting it. I hope I don’t get “caught” and have to re-brand myself as I’m now paying for the domain name of this site.