 I love going to the beach. Whether I'm on vacation or going local, I spend as much time there during the summer as I possibly can. It's a place for me to collect my thoughts and ponder my minuscule existence in the vastness that is the universe. It's also just a ton of fun. I love playing in the water, skateboarding on the boardwalk, surfing, you name it. For me, going to the beach is always a great time. The beach also kinda sucks. It's hot and there's sand everywhere, which I find in my shoes and in my clothes days or even weeks after I go. And there are no power outlets, which is fine for some people, but I don't want to leave the beach with a dead phone. So if I'm going to trek all the way out to the beach, we're going to have to solve some of these problems first. I've done some really crazy stuff with action cameras for The Verge, everything from riding skateboards to go-karts to planes to Indy cars. So if there's anything that's going to get me into the water, it might be that. So we reached out to Mikey DeTempo, who's a filmmaker and a pro surfer, to see what he could do with GoPro's newest camera. This is a guy that's shot all over the world with just about every kind of camera you could imagine. How did you get started in surfing and filmmaking? I had gone on a trip to the Maldives. We were sailing around from Atoll to Atoll, a dream trip. And I was going, man, how do we not have someone shooting motion on this right now? I got a friend in Florida who is a really great filmmaker. I was like, hey, let's make a surf film. We'll go travel around the world. We'll do like five or six trips. I had no clue what I was doing. And that's kind of what started my filmmaking. And from there, I haven't stopped. Mikey took us out to one of the private beaches near his home in Montauk. This is tough. So camera technology. Were you able to use waterproof cameras? The first surf film I did, we actually did on all Super 16. A Bolex water housing is like pretty much the biggest nightmare there is. So we got the newest GoPro here. This is the GoPro here for our session. And I'm curious what you think something that's this small and this waterproof out of the box does for a surfing expedition if you want to bring this on a shoot. That being that it's that much smaller is insane. That's the only problem with the bigger one is it's a lot. It's a big commitment when you take it in the water. If you're shooting with it in your mouth or if you have a handle with it or something like that, you have to pay attention. Yeah, you've got this thing, but that could change things even more than the GoPro already has. This thing tops out around 1080p, 1440p. It doesn't have 4K. Is that something you worry about as a filmmaker? I mean, everything has limitations. But as long as it's shooting 60 at 1080, that's all you really need. Mikey was only out there for a few minutes, but he was still able to get some pretty amazing shots like this POV shot from his hand, which was using GoPro's new hand mount. But the waves weren't large enough for him to do much more than that or for us to get out there ourselves. So we went to our backup plan. So Mikey, we brought along this underwater sea scooter thing. Yeah. And you can just really just like take it. It's like your James Bond under there. Sounds like something I'm going to need. I've never surfed before. The Sea-to-Sea scooter is more or less a toy that pulls you in the water at three miles an hour. It's fun, but the choppy ocean gave us some trouble, especially for Sean. Every time I went out there with it, it just felt like I was getting pushed around by the water and not being pulled around by the Sea-Doo. So yeah, it didn't work that great at pulling us, but it did allow us to get some great underwater footage with the GoPro. We had somebody in the water shooting with a Canon 5D Mark III, and we honestly liked the GoPro footage better. It's more dynamic and plus the camera is just so much smaller. It was small enough that we could forget about it and do what you're supposed to do at the beach. And that's have a great time. After Mikey took off, Sean and I set up Camp Inland to check out some more beach tech. One of the big problems I have with going to the beach is there's sand everywhere. So one of the things I found is called the Sandusa Towel. It's got a special material on the bottom that not only repels sand, it also won't let water pass through it. So let's test this then to see actually if it works, right? So yeah, that does a pretty good job of keeping the water out. Yeah. The nice thing about this towel is it's not crazy expensive and you can just find it online. It's made in Australia. You won't ship it anywhere in the world. One thing that I think is essential when you come to a beach is having a way to play music. As long as I've been going to the beach with friends or family, we would always stop and pick up a crappy $10 plug-in speaker. And now we have Bluetooth speakers. This is Logitech's UE Roll. It's waterproof. You could toss it around in the sand. And the best part is it actually sounds good. We have the JBL Pulse here too, which is one of the better Bluetooth speakers. But it's not waterproof. No, it's not waterproof. And we've been playing back and forth with these all day. I really think I like the sound of that thing better. It's a little bit cheaper too. So I'm always worried when I'm out here that my phone's going to die. So what we brought here is a Goal Zero solar panel charger. I really like the idea of this thing. It's a little cumbersome. It's kind of hard to set up. There's a lot going on. Yeah. The wires just kind of like hang out the back and everything like that. So if you're going to be outside all day and you want constant power and you have a lot of sunlight, I think it's a pretty good option. But it's not perfect. So my solution is just this little brick that I got off Amazon. It has a smaller footprint overall. But this thing is pretty cool. Yeah, but that thing you're going to be able to use indoors. That's true also. Yeah. All right, Sean, as someone who doesn't often come to the beach, what do you think the coolest thing we looked at was? The thing that's probably going to bring me to the beach more than anything else that we saw was the GoPro. I really like the idea of being able to get something out of your trek to the beach, whether it's some footage or some pictures, something like that. But I think all of this stuff is actually worth looking into if you want to make your beach experience a little bit better. Not even so long ago, five years ago, the idea of coming to the beach with your phone, with a good Bluetooth speaker and being able to stay charged all day was expensive. And today it's really simple to do.