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I've been looking for a digital camera to take out on rides and for on hols when snorkling, so was looking at some of the "tough" ones that are available.
Then remembered about the GoPro, might be a better solution but have the following questions...
how tough are they?
are they properly waterproof?
can the take stills as well as video?
if they can whats the quality like?
how tough are they? tough, case is replaceable
are they properly waterproof? yes, 60m I think
can the take stills as well as video? yes, set on timer
if they can whats the quality like? [url= http://www.eyeofmine.com/gopro/hd/stills/index.html ]Google it, or ...[/url]
How tough? How waterproof? Check this:
Fully waterproof to 60m, reports of them surviving being run over by a rally car and still working.
Stills - yes, 11mp, various settings - single frame, self timer, 10 frames a second burst or timelapse at various intervals.
Quality is excellent for what it is (fixed lens, auto, no manual control) - have a look on Flickr for stills taken with them but it is limited as a stills camera.
Thanks for the replies, sounds perfect for my purposes. 🙂
The GoPro HD is a 5mp stills camera, the newer HD2 is 11mp. So if you plan to use it as a stills camera then it is best to pay a bit more and get the HD2.
I'm thinking of getting one of these but I've read conflicting reports about exactly how much computer processing power is needed to edit HD footage without any problems. What are GoPro owners using, hardware and software wise? Ta.
The GoPro HD is a 5mp stills camera, the newer HD2 is 11mp. So if you plan to use it as a stills camera then it is best to pay a bit more and get the HD2.
I doubt that as I would bet decent money that the lens cannot significantly resolve the difference between 5mp & 11mp.
What are GoPro owners using,
windows movie maker
Using a 3 year old dual core macbook with iMovie to edit. Seems to handle 720p footage ok. Not tried 1080p yet. I'm using the original HD Hero. I can take stills of reasonable quality, but because of the lack of lcd screen its hard to know what you'll get.
Short edited clip of the 1st run with it:
Good point, yup, I was talking about the HD2.
There are a couple of differences that may or many not be worth the extra cash so worth reading up on.
I went for the HD2 based on better low light performance, 60fps at 720p for slowmo and future comparability, such as with the WiFi backpack that's due out. There's some good comparison videos on line.
I was worried about editing but my 2.2GHz dual core laptop handles it fine, running Linux Mint 11 and Kdenlive. I downloaded some raw 1080p files to check that my PC was up to it before getting one.
You can take stills like with and ordinary camera (but the fisheye lense distorts thing a bit) or set the timer. Think the HD2 gets a better lens to go with more pixels.
I landed head first onto a rock bed with the camera taking the full impact. Small scratch to the lense with the only damage. You can buy replacement cases as said, but you also just buy lense kits (note the original screws are a pain to remove - I had to drill 2 screws out - but the replacement kits has better ones).
Shoot in 720 mode if your worried about computing power and iMovie or WWM (windows 7) works fine for basic editing. You'll have to convert the native MPEG4 files if using Vista.