Having always thought that there is no way I would bother to take the camera to work, plug it in, upload and edit videos, start a youtube channel etc, it seems I'm behind the times, and you can (near) instantly transfer to your phone, and then share your short unedited clip to your friends.
How quick does the novelty wear off, or is is still fun to quickly re-live your fun experiences with your friends. Main use would be MTB and skiing.
I bought one last year, I have yet to create any "edit" worthy of keeping. Trouble is most of what we do feels adventurous while we do it, but is rather dull when committed to video. And personally I am not going to invest the time and effort into learning how to combine the rare exciting points in otherwise dull footage, to create a video worth watching. Maybe it is just a problem with the gopro software and it might be easier with another application, but I suspect that really you just have to have an eye for that kind of thing, and I don't.
I have one. Use it once a year to make course preview videos, the rest of the time it sits in a shoe box.
I do actually really enjoy making little vids.. but having a purpose or the time to do so limits use
The novelty will wear off. But they are quite handy for recording stuff when you remember you've got one.
Our boys wanted one, they love that 'Do You Know' programme on CBBC and she uses loads of them to see how stuff works. Knowing what kids are like I wasn't about to drop £200 to indulge them, £25 on a knock-off for Christmas seemed acceptable for something to test the water to see if they actually use it.
Turns out they use it a lot and also that the quality is very good for something so cheap. We've used it biking, surfing, tobogganing etc and it's been fine. I download the video to my phone to then edit (in the Quik app as it happens) and can even control the camera from my phone too. Bonus of it being cheap is that it takes the worry about using it in the sea etc as if it get's wrecked now it certainly doesn't owe us anything and the replacement cost isn't loads.
Editing-wise I like the Quik app, we've created quite a few edits with snippets of video as well as pictures all set to either one of their pieces of music or something from our own library.
TBH I'm now wondering about getting a newer version that doesn't need a case to be waterproof. It'd be a cheap(er) copy though as I don't think the GoPro brand is worth the extra £££.
How quick does the novelty wear off, or is is still fun to quickly re-live your fun experiences with your friends.
Not sure it is fun for the friends asked to watch someone else's 'sick edits'. Those that are worth watching have already went through the watchability filter and appear on sites such as this and pinkbike etc.
If you want to record your ride then yes they are worth it.
I got a Session 4 in a sale (so less than £99 at the time) and it's great with the kids, when we rode the local trail center's blue for the first time I recorded the lot and spent all evening cutting it down to two minutes, and they loved being able to watch it again.
Remember that unless you're actually skilled, in video you'll be slow through berms and jumps will be small. Be at one with that.
I'd say pretty much the same as madhouse, I'm not fussed by it but my 4 year old really wanted one to be like Maddy. Spent a grand total of £30 on an Apeman from Amazon and so far it's been great for use in the pool and sea on holiday.
As for me using it, I used to have an old style action cam and used that a bit when snowboarding. I enjoyed making the edits but now don't have the time, also, things are rarely as epic on video as they are in your memory.
I use mine on Time Lapse mode to get photos that I wouldn't be able to get otherwise. It means I have thousands of photos to look at so I have a rule that I only keep one per ride.
Every single bit of video I've taken with it has been super dull.
I've a few mates with them, the only vids worth watching are the ones they got of me falling off 🙂
One thing I would recommend is using a video to improve your jumping, but you can do that with a phone and a mate, you don't need a GoPro for it.
I mostly use mine to take time lapse photos. I set it up to take a shot every couple of seconds. It doesn't take too long to flick through and pull out any good ones. I normally bin 99% but usually get a few keepers and they are often a bit different/unusual.
For example ..
Bought one for MTB but it doesn't get used much for that but's great for the kids taking down water slides or bodyboarding get used much more than I thought it would. The vids were a ball ache to process but I've not tried Quik on my S9 which I suspect maybe be much quicker than on my older phone. The new go pro 7 black looks amazing but I couldn't justify spending that much on what is essentially a toy for us.
How quick does the novelty wear off,
Fairly quickly.
It's well covered above, but if you're hoping to impress others you're wasting your time. To make even a short 'sick edit' you'll need either a few cameras, not one, or ride the same thing a few times, ideally both and then spend about 10x the amount of time editing as you do filming. Also you need a fairly beefy PC or the free GoPro editing software will shit itself all the time, after you've sworn enough at it and you've waited an age for it to do the whole post production processing thing you can upload it to social media to complete indifference of your friends and family because you're never going to compete with 'a dusty day in Whistler'.
But if you just want to film little things for yourself they're okay, even if a lot of the time, you don't bother actually watching the stuff you film.
I rented one years ago for a 6 day trip to Scotland.
I thought I had some great footage until I started viewing the videos... besides ending up feeling nauseous (I had mounted to the camera to the bars) it was excruciatingly boring and the terrain/trails looked pale.
Most if not all of the comments echoed above hold true.
Kids def have more fun with the thing. We don't have a go-pro but we recently bought those gorilla tripods to record their basketball techniques etc and they ended up wrapping the thing around the handlebars with their phone attached and voila they had some headache inducing footage but still cool to watch as they had set off into the woods by themselves.
Remember that unless you’re actually skilled, in video you’ll be slow through berms and jumps will be small. Be at one with that.
This is correct . What feels like utmost gnar at the time looks lame on watching back. The issue is the camera makes everything look flat. I remember watching a vid of someone riding the matador at inners and it looked a piece of piss. Then I had a shot riding it myself.. And it wasn't.
I actually think that tamer trails look better as at least you are going fast rather than dragging the brakes down a steep technical trail that looks pan flat on film.
I remember getting round this by speeding up my holiday footage by 30% before uploading it to my face book page. 4 of us went, I sped up 3 of us and slowed down one by the same amount. He still doesn't know why he looked like he was far slower than the rest of us 🙂
U can knock together a simple "edit" for Instagram fairly easily using footage imported into Google photo's. I've done it once. Novelty worn off now
I've got one and to be honest I hardly use it because the editing software is a pile of sh**e - if anyone can recommend any reasonable editing software it might get used more.
MSP
Trouble is most of what we do feels adventurous while we do it, but is rather dull when committed to video.
This x10000
"Look as this gnarly step thing I raced down"
*video bimbles down a flat track*
This x10000“Look as this gnarly step thing I raced down”
*video bimbles down a flat track*
Yep, if nothing else it makes you appreciate how big/fast things like WC DH courses or Rampage or Hardline actually are.
This thread is a good reminder that I've been meaning to dig out mine for the kids to play with. Also I don't know if newer ones are any better but the colours were so dreary out of the box - the stuff that goes in the gopro promo videos is actual camera footage but put through tens of thousands of pounds worth of colour grading software.
I use it all the time and agree with all the above.
The secret though is to get the settings right for video and the type of vids you want to make. A gimbal really helps as well.
I use davinci resolve 15 for edits, it is free and doesn't kill my PC.
There are plenty of youtube vids that will take you through settings for the camera and most importantly how to colour grade the footage.
Agree with the main theme of peoples comments above
However if you have family I think they are worth having for use on hols in addition to the occasional cycling gnar fest!
We have taken ours on holiday for a few years now and we all enjoy a robust camera to take beach / water shots etc This year our simple go pro was excellent for taking pictures of the thousands of fish we saw snorkelling
I can remember stuff in a way that makes it miles better than it actually was, therefore I don’t feel the need to get a camera.
Dull for general trailcentre mincing. I use mine to look for better lines on dh runs that I didnt notice at the time. I find it very useful for that, but wouldn't inflict it on friends or family.
Novelty wears off fast, take mine on holiday and that’s about it now. Don't even use it much on holiday unless I’m snorkelling etc, even then I never view the footage again really.
I can see me getting one fairly soon for my daughter to use & to video her learning to cycle etc. but I don't think I'll be spanking a load of cash on a GoPro.
I see more merit in the 360 cameras that are starting to pop up though - like the Insta360 that was featured on here recently.
Being able to hold the camera, capture the full 360 degrees and then edit how & where you want the 'camera' to point when editing seems a lot more powerful. But, they're expensive.
As Oldtalent said, they do have a use for improving your own riding. Plus i do scout out new trails using other peoples dull footage on youtube 😀
I bought a sj4000 go pro knock off on the back ot a PSA here a few years ago. Tend to agree with the above, for cycling it's a bit shit really and and never gets taken out riding.
I did however use it on this year's sailing holiday and took a load of 30s video clips as you would photos. At the end of the holiday I used the video editing software you get free on win10. The end result was pretty decent* - it must have been 40 mins of footage reduced to less than two minutes video.
*Decent in that my partner & I enjoyed watching it back / not get 18.6 million youtube hits decent...
I think it was Ray Mears who said "you can live off the land, or you can move through it; you can't do both".
Same applies with "sic edits". Either go for a ride, or make an edit. Doing one will comprise the other.
I like to ride my bike.
I worked for a UK distributor of Go Pro so could have had one very cheaply. I don't have one as nothing I do is worth filming and inflicting that footage on other people.
I've had one for years, some of the novelty wears off (i.e. I no longer take it on every ride) but for the annual trip to the mountains, it's nice to pull together an edit while being depressed about not still being in the mountains.
If you're not riding solo, its easy enough to get some static footage to break up the headcam stuff which (I think) makes it more watchable:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10105974500619693&id=3222221
(Excuse the Facebook link!)
