[Closed] GoPro cameras, were they just a fad?

I suspect a lot of people now realise that most videos are incredibly dull in the hands of your average rider, in contrast to the gods and goddesses in all the GoPro media. I can't imagine ever wanting to watch my rides back again or show them to anyone else.

So yes, maybe a bit of a fad. I've certainly not used mine as much as I thought I would.

Certainly was for me, as above even if you put the effort to make a decent ‘edit’ it’s only going to be marginally interesting to you.

I think the market is probably saturated for standard sports cams, the exiciting stuff is the drones and 360 cams but they’re expensive and less user friendly.

I was looking at a really good biking video only last week but it wasn't someone trying to show off their skills, it was a bikepacking trip. I think they can still work for that type of subject.

My wife bought me one for my last birthday. Used it once. It's sat in the garage since. It seems a bit ungrateful but I don't really see the point.

I use mine occasionally, but make sure I edit, change camera positions etc. Special video made last week as I was riding with my son and his son - so three generations having fun in the woods at Greenham Common 🙂 That was worth the time and effort.

My wife bought me one for my last birthday. Used it once. It's sat in the garage since. It seems a bit ungrateful but I don't really see the point.

Same here, (I LOVE my Mrs & she's very thoughtful) used mine 3 times in a year.

That sounds fab (@sportsnapper), I have a little edit lying around I might share but that was a year ago. I never ride with it, I only use it as a fisheye lens when doing photography. Oh and my friend took it hiking in Sweden lately but I still don't have the urge to ride with it. They seem to be expensive toys in the wrong hand. Think i'd rather take my mirrorless and a mini tripod out.

scotroutes - Member
I was looking at a really good biking video only last week but it wasn't someone trying to show off their skills, it was a bikepacking trip. I think they can still work for that type of subject.

aye there was one I saw the other week abotu some guy doing the ht550 which was pretty cool, takes a lot of effort to do a decent edit think, and tbh you need to have a bit of personality if you are going to make something interesting to other people. videos of normal folk riding normal trails, without any narrative or storyline to some generic sound track is only really of interest if you are actually trying to recce a trail or something, even then first thing I'll do it mute it!

Oh that reminds me of that nutter that did ard-rock on a green Orange 5, crashed in fod and had multiple injuries.

edit: Dave Jenvey!

I was looking at a really good biking video only last week but it wasn't someone trying to show off their skills, it was a bikepacking trip. I think they can still work for that type of subject.

You got a link please Colin?

At least he's got a bit of character though manlikegreg....

As above, most average punters vids are shit.

Little from column a... Lots of people got bored of it fast- recording's easy but actually making a halfway interesting video is work. I've done some stuff I'm pretty pleased with but I have countless hours of video I know I'll never even look at.

Davesport - it's the same one Seosamh77 mentioned

I use mine on holidays and biking. Quite nice to get videos of the boys and other family members

I use mine quite a bit, mainly for holiday type stuff though. Although that includes bike holidays.

Giving it to the kids to mess about with round the pool has resulted in some quite entertaining videos 😀

I have hours of footage, rarely if ever watch it. Turned a few bits into little films, I may watch those when I'm old(er).

that's the very one SR! good vid that. 🙂

Stop using it for video. Set it to take a photo every 3 seconds instead.

Great vid SR!

In general the 1 min clips edited down from a weekend for instagram get more views and responses.
I do full trail vids of places I don't get to as often as a reminder of the trails before heading back especially where it's not obvious which jumps etc are good or bad.

If you like that HT550 video, it's worth digging out more of Barrys work.

The trouble with the older GoPros in the UK is the weather is not up to the promo clips that get shot in really sunny spots. And as soon as you take them into the woods you're stretching the sensor. I used mine in Oz this summer and got so much better results than a lot of the footage I've shot in the UK.

Timelapse mode is great - unless you were planning video and pressed the wrong button -I've had that happen a couple of times including last week (but it wasn't me pressing the buttons!)

Here's the recent one of the family riding - it's a bit long at 3 mins, but difficult to make it hang together any shorter

I enjoy saying 'GOPRO STOP RECORDING' when I catch someone up

[img] [/img]

For me the time [s]wasted[/s] spent filming and editing mediocre footage of me on a bike is better spent watching content from people who know what they are doing.

I use mine more on holiday than riding these days.

Used mine only a handful of times on ‘big’ days such as Snowdon. The trouble I have is watching the footage back makes me feel funny. I guess it’s the perspective or something.

Only use it around the kids now. Filming them when we are out or as a waterproof camera/time lapse solo shooting.

Ultimately was a bit of a waste tbh!

ime Usual lifespan of Go Pro + user.

1. Gifted/buy a go pro
2. Take it out every ride for a week.
3. Edit clips into a ‘sick edit’
4. Realise that the ‘sick edit’ is a bit rubbish and only actually just shows some very mediocre riding down some very boring trails.
5. Realise that using go pro whilst riding is actually far too much of a faff and not really worth it due to point 4.
6. Leave go pro in drawer collecting dust.

again, only use mine to record rides with the kids.
happy with that for what i paid for a go-clone, if id paid hundreds perhaps not so much!

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/fail-of-the-month-september-2017.html
watch 7 or 8 and tell me why we don't need more go pro

Even a mediocre trail and boring riding can be made into a decent edit if you are willing to put the time in, and that means at least 3 (but preferably more) camera angles and a very tight edit. Obviously that takes a considerable amount of effort. And for what really?

Then there's the additional level of faff they ad to a ride. A friend used to hold us up at the top of every trail to get his gopro right, and then he'd never share the videos because he could never keep up 😈

I lent mine to my tree surgeon colleague and he seems to get some mileage out of it doing little promo clips for his social media etc. It would probably bore other tree surgeons though.

I bought mine to take on holidays for filming when doing fun stuff with the family as it's better than a phone. I use it quite a bit on Ski holidays, and when i'm riding with my son.
I sometimes film some rides to see what it looks like and my sons wants to see what I've been riding if I've been up in the lakes or something.

I suppose it depends on whether you bought it to make sick edits, but i wouldn't say video cameras were a fad.

I stopped using mine as i had a tendency to crash when i had it on .. but definitely on the whole the vids were boring .. I however wish id have remembered it for a few trails out in verbier this year .. as it was the bestiest and fastist id ridden Spanish and Vortex .. before i crashed

1. Gifted/buy a go pro
2. Take it out every ride for a week.
3. Edit clips into a ‘sick edit’
4. Realise that the ‘sick edit’ is a bit rubbish and only actually just shows some very mediocre riding down some very boring trails.
5. Realise that using go pro whilst riding is actually far too much of a faff and not really worth it due to point 4.
6. Leave go pro in drawer collecting dust

+1

Keep it on winter bike; don’t edit/save any footage unless it’s of some bad driving, abuse from driver ... or something bizarre I have passed whilst out.

Used it loads on recent cycling trip abroad. So much easier to take pictures on, and videoed some of the descents for my own viewing.

When it’s off bike it’s in the car set on loop.
So mine gets used.

in contrast the 2 versions of capturing and sharing a weekend away solo for me are

or
[img] [/img]
Generally find the video more engaging

Jesus Mike! You'd hate to have an extra inch your bars there! 😯

it's apparently a massive 1m at the worst spot so huge 220mm to play with 😉
[img] [/img]
You don't need to set it to do pics every 3s either, VLC picks out some great screen shots from the vids

Every rider in london has at least one stuck on them somewhere for "safety" apparently

At some point this week I am going to have to bite the bullet and attempt to give the two moronic feral dogs who have moved in with us their first bath. Setting up the GoPro is going to be part of my preparations for this exciting little adventure. 🙂

Setting up the GoPro is going to be part of my preparations for this exciting little adventure.

This could turn out to be better than any cycling related vid!

I've wasted hours trying to edit clips together to make something worth keeping, not for sharing as such, but just to try to capture what a particularly big ride was like. What I've picked up along the way is that it needs a range of angles, so dropping a few still shots in there, or off-bike video. Just watching 2-3 mins of shaky, clattering POV video taken by an amateur is so dull.

Given their failure to expand beyond POV cameras, I'm pretty confident GoPro will go bust within the next 2-3 years.

Given their failure to expand beyond POV cameras, I'm pretty confident GoPro will go bust within the next 2-3 years.

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

I bought one for a trip abroad a few weeks ago. Strictly for my own consumption as I can never remember where or what routes we did past a couple of days!!

watched a few a couple of times, and will probs do some sort of editing, but frustrated by Go-pros website and App which seems to serve very little function other than to prompt me to buy stuff.

but frustrated by Go-pros website and App which seems to serve very little function other than to prompt me to buy stuff.

I quite like the GoPro QUIK app. Not the most powerful editing tool but easy to use and lets you add in photos/videos from your phone as well.

I've created a few little clips from fun rides in summer, a weekend in Glentress and a couple of days in Bruges. The Bruges one I liked especially because I took loads of photos I'll probably never look through again, but having a little 1.30 clip of the best ones starting from the Ferry out to the Ferry back lets me look back without cycling through hundreds of photos.

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.

1. Gifted/buy a go pro
2. Take it out every ride for a week.
3. Edit clips into a ‘sick edit’
4. Realise that the ‘sick edit’ is a bit rubbish and only actually just shows some very mediocre riding down some very boring trails.
5. Realise that using go pro whilst riding is actually far too much of a faff and not really worth it due to point 4.
6. Leave go pro in drawer collecting dust.

This but substitute "film a very boring timelapse of assembling an IKEA bookcase" for steps 2-5 😆

I do keep meaning to dig it out for the kids to play with though.

I use mine to fill micro SD cards with useless boarding or biking footage then take out card replace and fill another. Think you need to be time rich to convert into a nice short movie.

A couple of years ago i decided i wanted an action cam to record my awesome riding skills (no...not really) so i bought a sony HDR AS200 action cam and all the bells n' whistles that went along with it, I used it a few times but the footage was shite and the faff involved with editing the videos was a complete pain in the arse so i sold it.

Cool story eh?