I’m off to Morzine in a couple of weeks and thought it’s as good a time as any to get an action cam. Having just splashed out on a van I could do without having to spend £100’s if I don’t have to..

Can’t go wrong with the basic gopro.

I bought a Go Pro Hero, been very impressed. Its also tiny, so have been able to mount it under the peak of my helmet:

Making a Sugru GoPro mount

I’ve got a chinese cheap copy which seems to work fine. The manual is a bit rubbish and it’s not so intuitive to use but once you get the hang of it, it does the job. Lots of mounting options included although not a chest strap but you can get away with clipping it to the chest strap of a camelbak.

It’s very similar, possibly identical judging by the packaging, to this one:-

http://www.halfords.com/cycling/cycling-technology/helmet-cameras/sports-cam-hd-action-camera-1080p

At least with the Halfords one you might have a manual in decent English and better return options if it breaks.

GoPro’s customer service is great too. They replaced my Hero when the catch broke despite it being out of warranty.

GoPro is the best. Just get the basic one unless you have lots of money or really want massive resolution

The thing go-pro are best at is marketing.

Buy this gadget and you too can do super cool extreme things with beautiful people.

Just get the best genuine gopro your budget will allow. They are the clear market leader but not just from a marketing point of view.
Yes there are plenty of cheap ones including the SJ something or other but I would put money on the fact that most owners cannot say if they bought a genuine one or fake. Even when all the evidence points to them being genuine they are never quite sure. There are loads of threads on here about it. The footage never seems up to much either but I’m probably comparing it to my Hero 4 Black. Plenty of stories of the cheapies bricking themselves, randomly crashing and loosing footage with very little comeback.

Have a look at the techmoan YouTube channel.
He seems to provide insightful and impartial reviews of the “other” brands and options with the inevitable benchmark being GoPro.
Nephew has a GoPro session and it is v small and neat.
SJ Cam do an M10, same shape and a lot cheaper.
I’m sure places like Gearbest will supply the genuine ones but tech own does post links of approved sellers.

Go pro session for me. £150 and does all you want it to. It’s the smallest and lightest option and you can shoot loads of footage on a 64gb card available separately for about £12.

Many, many camera’s take similar or even better quality footage but GoPro’s advantage was always the ease/variety/security of mounting the camera on your self/bike/lid/whatever.

Others have now caught up with the mounting options but GoPro are the originals.

I would however buy all the mounts from eBay as the Gopro branded mounts are ridiculously expensive. They all fit onto the camera mounting as if they were branded stuff.

However: be prepared for all the gnarly footage that you shoot on hols to look rather lame, slow and flat when you return to base.

Have a look at an Ion pro available from staples, waterproof cylinder camera

GoPros are the only thing I’d recommend to film makers or anyone with those kind of ambitions, due to the external mic port and higher bitrates/better encoding than other cameras. If you’re just arsing around and uploading to youtube though, those things are probably not such a worry and you might be better off with something cheaper.

There are alternative brands which are perfectly good IMO/IME…

I have some older drift cameras I occasionally use still, they work well enough deal reasonably well with moisture and impact, adequate for the odd YouTube video, I won’t be buying a new shiny gopro just to capture my bumbling adventures, but I do prefer to use them with go pro mounts…

Sony were doing a good action camera not so long ago also… Worth a look?

I’m a big fan of my SJ4000. Not quite as good as a GoPro (especially not a top end one with Protune) but then it only cost forty quid. For mincy footage of me on the Youtube it’s plenty good enough. Realistically though I wouldn’t pay much more than that – if you can pick one up for under fifty quid and add a chest mount then you’re laughing.

I went cheap to start with an SJ4000 just to see if I would really use it, camera is garbage but it did give me chance to play.
Now have a GoPro 4 Silver and they are worlds apart in comparison.
For starting out get the Hero session anything less is a waste of money.

However: be prepared for all the gnarly footage that you shoot on hols to look rather lame, slow and flat when you return to base.

😀

I have a Go-Pro 4 silver and an SJ cam copy.

The SJ-cam does take videos but it is not a fluid product to use.

The footage on the Go-pro is way better and so simple to operate.

The app is a big bonus

But you get what you pay for.