GoPro questions

[CRAMBONE]

I searched and did not really see anything.

Looking to buy a GoPro. I need some input on which model or models to start my search with. And where are the best places to buy these online? Also how are you guys mounting these to your body? I have seen guys with them mounted to nvg plates and such, but I don't know if there is some type of harness or something to mount to my torso.

Possible uses will be helicopter rides, mounted to the dash in crappy foreign traffic, mounted to a shotgun barrel while duck hunting/clay shooting, and maybe mounted to an AR rail. Not really into any extreme sports like kayaking or dirt bikes.

[Hmac]

There's a chest mount and a head mount, as well as a wide variety of helmet mounts and vehicle mounts. Not to mention any standard tripod mounting accessory. There are picatinney mounts to put on an AR as well as a variety of sportsman's mounts for putting on a gun barrel, fishing rod etc. GoPro has such a huge infrastructure that you can mount the thing to just about anything, including helicopters.

As to models, I do a lot of editing and I wanted the resolution and much higher frame rates of the Hero4 Black. If you're not really into the artistry of the video editing then likely any of the entry level models would work fine for you.

[wildcard600]

Even the basic Hero 3 white editon will do 1080p video at 30fps which is enough for me. Mounting options are practically limitless with the various official and aftermarket mounts and accessories. just search gopro mount in amazon or ebay and you could spend hours looking through it all.

[nimdabew]

I would take a look at the hero 4 lcd or whatever it is for the built in display. That is the one I have my eyes set on this christmas/birthday/good husband day/crash free pilot day this year.

[MegademiC]

I have a 3 silver. 30 or 40 fps 1080, 60fps 920p iirc, and 120 fps at 480 for decent slowmo.

I'd like to see a 240fps. 4k doesn't matter to me, as I think the 920 is still very clear with a decent frame rate.

It all depends on what you want to do with it.

I don't plan on upgrading until I see a 240fps, but half the videos I do are of shooting.

[eodinert]

I have five Gopros, spanning several generations... Just some random thoughts.

I went with Gopro because of the case, more than the camera... Certain atmospheric over pressure events tend to happen around me, and they can be tough on cameras. The water proof Gopro cases are really durable, and I have done things with them that even surprised me when the cameras survived.

Gopros are very wide angle... so anything that is not close to the camera will not be very visible with a Gopro. I haven't tried duck hunting, but I imagine if a camera was mounted to a shotgun barrel, the duck would look very very small, and the video would not be terribly 'watchable'. I almost always use a camcorder (mine has a 40x optical zoom) along with my gopros... I cut back and forth between the gopro shots and the camcorder shots when I edit.

Also, most video cameras will 'jello' (distortion in the video) when mounted to a weapon (even a relatively low recoiling one like an AR)... because of that, I'm not too fond of weapon mounted cameras.

Recording video is only half of the package.. you have to be able to do something with the video once you shoot it. For the stuff I do, I'll get five hours of video, and 20 seconds of it is worth watching... so you have to learn to edit. Gopro has free software to edit (and it's OK), but you can only edit gopro video with it. If you use another camera, you'll have to get different editing software to paste it all together.

I agree about not needing 4k, I'd rather have frame rate than more resolution (1080p makes me happy).

[GotAmmo]

I love my GoPro Hero 3+.

I use it for motorcycle mentorship videos with my BN and i find the App on my phone lets me watch my bike while im inside the bar. So a bonus on the added security measure

[MegademiC]

Only thing to add is that angle can be changed to "narrow" which is similar to standard.

[alvincullumyork]

I have the 4Silver, the one with the the LCD display on back. I'm still playing around with it and trying to get clearer shots at speed. I use it almost exclusively for dirt bike riding and on my adventure bike which I ride like a dirt bike. I am using a chin mount which I think works pretty good but won't work for shooting except maybe pistols. The GoPro editing software is okay and I think it would be much better if my computer didn't suck so bad.

This is a shot of my friend from last weekend. Besides being a nasty crash I was disappointed in the picture quality in slow mo. I was in 1080 at 30 fps but I'm going to try and bump the frame rate up to 60 fps and go to 1080 super and see if that helps. Turn it up to 1080p before you watch, the blurriness is really apparent when you watch the slo mo at the end.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QD-FvXAmo2Y


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Hmac]

The higher the frame rate, the better the slow motion. Slowing down a clip shot at 30 FPS is always going to suck.

[nimdabew]

After doing more reading, the Hero4 Silver would be a better buy than the Hero+LCD. i am going to save the extra scratch and just buy the silver when I get around to it instead of getting the lower end camera.

[MegademiC]

The higher the frame rate, the better the slow motion. Slowing down a clip shot at 30 FPS is always going to suck.

Yup, 60 fps is good. You don't want the final video to fall below 24 fps and higher fps gives better clearity, so you have to balance it with resolution.

[Hmac]

Yup, 60 fps is good. You don't want the final video to fall below 24 fps and higher fps gives better clearity, so you have to balance it with resolution.

Some editing software will interpolate frames to keep the rendered clip at 24 fps or better so that it looks smooth. That interpolation can make for blurry video. Looks like what happened in his motorcycle clip.

[eodinert]

The Gopro software interpolates frames, and if you don't get too crazy with it, it looks pretty good.