GoPro Hero3: Yay or nay?

As long as you don't strap it to a personal drone and fly it in a national forest or wilderness area, I'm all for it.

Battery life IS an issue with most of these cameras (I have not personally used the GoPro). I used a $100 helmet camera this summer for packrafting and backpacking trips. I kept the regular P&S for still photography. I would imagine a regular camera would take better stills in almost any scenario.

I know its one more thing to hassle with but I really like taking videos of my trips now. Its probably something I will do on most trips in the future.

A full battery will get you about an hour to 1:15 of video. It's standard for 90% of your footage to suck and get tossed, so that's 6-8 minutes of decent footage (if you practice with the camera and know what you're doing). That's enough for a trip report for a 3-5 day outing. Longer in the field means more shooting for me, and so more batteries.

Documenting my trips is important to me and I'll put up with the carrying weight and inconvenience of setting up shots. I'm amazed how much I enjoy watching my own trips months and years later. It brings back the experience in ways stills cannot begin to touch.

It's not for everyone, but there is only one way to find out…

Can anyone comment on the still photo quality of gopro cameras? I use a point and shoot for work every day and am curious if I can replace it with a gopro. I take upwards of 7000 photos a year and seem to go through cameras every other year. I'm also curious if the gopros are tough, too. I'm an appraiser so the quality for work is low but I like taking good quality photos when in the wilderness.

Thanks

It's almost a crap shoot. There is no adjustable white balance, so some gopros I have used had horrible magenta tints in snow scenes. Others have been good. Some have had soft edges in the corners, and some have been sharp. This kind of stuff is harder to pick up on in video, so it is a more forgiving format. I do shoot stills with my gopro, but it is not a replacement for a P&S if for no other reason than it lacks any sort of viewfinder and zoom. They are tough, robust little cameras though and are basically indestructible if you keep the housing closed.

Skip the Hero3 and get the Hero4…. leagues better…

I saw quite a few GoPro cameras on the PCT this year. Seemed to work fine for folks who used them, but now there's something new! How about this?

http://www.v360life.com

The wide angle distortion on GoPro videos gives me a headache, especially when most amateur videographers insist on fast panning or sticking it on the end of a trekking pole without thought of image stabilization. Watching a GoPro video feels very unnatural, unlike a well composed 21-28mm equivalent focal length still photo. Use a longer focal length on a video camera and you have something that requires stronger composition skills, but yields a far superior result.

I have been using the Garmin version of the GoPro as my hiking camera for almost a year now. I use it for still photos and video.

I have found a few tricks that help:

1) I use the narrowest/most zoomed setting instead of the wide angle. In reality, this just means that the camera chops off the edges of the standard ultra-wide angle lens. This means that the worst of the fish-eye geometric distortion is chopped off. What remains is not usually very noticeable for hking snapshots.

2) On the Garmin, this narrow field of view automatically turns off the image stabilization, which I would turn off any way. It’s really annoying.

3) I limit the use of moving video as it is simply nausea inducing in anything but small doses. Little bits here and there with the camera mounted on a hiking pole, usually when walking up to a viewpoint or something like that.

4) I use a lot of stills that get panned or zoomed in the video editing software. I use some video pans, although I’ve learned to keep them short and slow.

5) The thing I like is that I hike with the camera mounted on a shoulder strap or on my hiking pole. I have a remote control hanging on the sternum strap of my backpack, so I can snap a still or a video any time without having to fish for the camera.

Here’s a link to a full-rez photo from the VIRB.

VIRB full rez still photo

It’s not quite as good a Nikon point and shoot, but it’s acceptable for travel snapshots. Biggest quality faults are no flash option, no exposure compensation, and unpredictable color balance.

Here are my three favorite hiking videos I made from last year. You can go to full screen/hi-def in Youtube to see them in high resolution (although YouTube does degrade video quality a bit). Still, I’ve been happy with the results for my purposes:

Acadia National Park video

Mt Eisenhower video

Franconia Ridge video

Battery life? The Garmin uses field replaceable rechargeable Lithium ion battery. It’s good for about 3 hours of hiking with continuous GPS tracking (it geotags all photos and can superimpose a track on the video) and intermittent still and video. I swap batteries at about the three hour mark when it beeps. I could go longer if i shut the camera off, but then I lose the nice feature of having it instantly available. The batteries are the same as the lithium ion batteries in my handheld GPS, so a spare could be used in either and recharged in either.

Overall, I think having the video option makes these action cams a good choice for general purpose hiking snapshots. They would not suffice for “fine photography”. But, I don’t bother carrying the point and shoot anymore.

I appreciate the feedback.