GoPro cameras, were they just a fad?

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.

They’ve been very good at capturing the upgrade market but it’s hard to see where they can go next. Once you have super–hi-HD that’s as good as can be viewed, whats the next angle?

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?