Smaller, lighter, better batteries, the amount of TV shows that now have obvious POV/GoPro stuff in them is increasing fast, lots of shots with cams stuck on cars, bikes and more – for these guys they are almost a disposable asset that can be thrown around – I’m sure they get a bulk discount but I’d be interested to see the sales figures
Yea, but no.
We do use them. But despite what GoPro would tell you it’s not really broadcast quality footage, if you look out for it you can spot the GoPro shots a mile off. There’s also issues with editing the footage as there’s no inbuilt timecode.
If you look at Top Gear a few years ago years ago, that’s a GoPro inside the car, you can tell because the dynamic range is woeful. If you watch TG now, or The Grand Tour the in car stuff is shot with Panasonic GH4’s (the image stabilisation in the GH5 doesn’t lend itself to in/on car shooting).
There are far far better cameras for professional filming, they just cost more. For example the lense for a Toshiba IK-HD5 costs about 3x as much as the most expensive Go-Pro (and the camera’s about 10x, and you need a recorder, monitor, audio mixer, audio embedder, control interfaces, an engineer to rig it etc etc). We’re filming a show at the moment and per car is in the region of £40k of kit (and no Go-Pro’s).
Go-Pro’s do get used, but usually only as a last resort or for budget reasons, or there isn’t the crew available to do it properly.