If you haven’t already sprung for a Gopro, there are some things to take into consideration.
Firstly, Gopro isn’t the only game in town. Sony have just released their update to the AS15, the AS30. It’s an incremental update, so no changes in megapixels or lens type, but the addition of GPS data might be interesting. It’s well reviewed anyway, and there are some fans on this forum. A solid buy.
The Gopro situation has become a little confused lately. The Black Plus has just been released, with Gopro boasting about a raft of incremental changes. Most of these changes are very welcome, but the claim that image sharpness has improved by 33% is misleading to say the least.
The Black has a lot of features that broadcast professionals want. In a sense it’s a pro-level camera. Even the automatic output settings are flatter and more muted than other makes. This is a design feature, as the clips tend to contain much more information allowing you to adjust the image later in professional software or Gopro’s own excellent and free editor. The focal length of the Black allows for objects in the foreground to be in good focus, while keeping the background nicely crisp.
The Black Plus has taken a different route. Colours are more intense and white balance favours deeper blacks. Foreground sharpness is very crisp, but this has been achieved at the expense of background sharpness. Running a clip taken on a Black and Black Plus side by side, the Black will have a generally crisper feel because it retains high level of sharpness throughout the scene.
The good news is that the Black is probably quite a bit cheaper now, and is arguably the better camera. I’d say it’s significantly better in fact.
The White Edition is basically a Gopro 2 with some enhancements. The Silver Plus is a scaled back version of the Black Plus, so will have the various improvements with the corresponding loss in overall image quality.
If you can get hold of a reduced price Black, you’ll have an absolutely superb camera that should last you for years. I suspect they’ll become much sought after as supplies run out.