The all GoPro models discussion thread

[JonRB]

RizzoTheRat said:

Well the silver's £269 at the duty free Dixon's at Heathrow, that's only just cheaper than Amazon let alone the e-bay sellers. vEry dissapointed.

Where are you flying to/from? Unless it's outside of the EU then Duty Free isn't actually free of Duty these days.

[RizzoTheRat]

Outside EU, but that's a good point, I didn't investigate futher than looking at the sticker price, would that ahve been an EU price and you'd get a further discount on showing a boarding pass? Never occoured to me to ask.

[engineer21]

right lads needing a wee snippet of advice, my brothers just qualified as a diver (paid himself through so is piss poor now - for now) id like to get him a Go pro (birthday / congrats)

im in the states at the moment and spotted a white hero 3 in walmart for $200 (as a bundle) but brief reading online seems to suggest this is the lowest model?

I wanna get a decent one as he will make underwater movies and motorbike movies so any advice where to get one and what to get in USA?? iam in new Orleans if that helps?

cheers

[JonRB]

[redacted]

[JonRB]

I've been playing around with the timelapse feature of my GoPro.

This 4½ min long video covers sunrise to sunset earlier in the week. I got the GoPro to take a photo every 5 seconds, and then I used FFMpeg to assemble that into a video, taking in 50 of those frames every second and spitting out a 25fps video (so in other words I could have taken a photo every 10s)

http://youtu.be/BMq5Sz9ekuE

[Salgar]

JonRB said:

I've been playing around with the timelapse feature of my GoPro.

This 4½ min long video covers sunrise to sunset earlier in the week. I got the GoPro to take a photo every 5 seconds, and then I used FFMpeg to assemble that into a video, taking in 50 of those frames every second and spitting out a 25fps video (so in other words I could have taken a photo every 10s)

http://youtu.be/BMq5Sz9ekuE

That's cool, nice and smooth

I assume you had it plugged in all day, what cable do you need for that? Can you just use a usb plug? As that wouldn't work if it was plugged into a PC as it changes into something usb mode if you do that?

[JonRB]

Salgar said:

That's cool, nice and smooth

I assume you had it plugged in all day, what cable do you need for that? Can you just use a usb plug? As that wouldn't work if it was plugged into a PC as it changes into something usb mode if you do that?

I used a USB mains charger, so that it had a nice stable uninterrupted power source. I have drilled the case on one of my GoPros, so was able to plug a USB cable into it whilst still having the waterproof enclosure on. I packed round the cable with blu-tak to make it weatherproof again.

Yes, plugging into a computer will establish a data connection. But you can buy a nifty little adaptor on eBay that can stop that happening; it's essentially a very short extension lead with the data cables disconnected. Very useful!

[spartridge]

Have posted elsewhere on this but just realised this is a more relevant thread - so could really do with some ideas/advice from those more experienced before I open the wallet....

I had a bit of a play with recoding footage a while back - mostly with an Action pro 2 that had to go back due to a sound issue - and have now settled on what I want to try and achieve: front and rear cameras recording simultaneously so footage can be combined later for PiP, plus decent sound from between the exhausts.

Stikes me that my choice is to go with a vBoxlite type solution (£££, relatively low res, inflexible) or alternatively a couple of GoPro3 with wi-fi capability controlled by a tablet/smartphone. The plan would then be to
fit the front one low down (footage I've seen always seems to represent speed better from here) and the rear between exhausts (the sound seems fairly decent when in the waterproof case, although a little muffled). I'm thinking that I could also run USB cables from cameras to cockpit to i) charge from cigarette lighter, and ii) download files, which would save me having to constantly mess about with them.

Thoughts? Ta

[Dave 500]

Simple solution would be GoPro H2's with battery packs and 32gb cards.

4 hours of recording and battery life, start and forget.

Use a clapper board to sync the two cameras together.

[MPoxon]

Regarding charging. I have just bought a mobile batter pack for my camera as mine runs out of juice after about and hour and a half. I normally use my Tom Tom lead to power it from the ciggy lighter but this is limited on length.

I have just bought a 10000mAh External Battery pack from amazon which has 2 usb ports along with an additional 32GB card.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0063AAIRG/ref=...

I should now be able to power my camera for up to 8 hours and record 8 hours worth of footage (swapping 32GB cards half way). The battery pack should support another camera for 8 hours as well, but I only have one at the moment.

My ideal would be what you have described, one front one back camera recording full time without having to worry about battery life.

I note the GoPro 3 supports 64GB cards.

[JonRB]

spartridge said:

have now settled on what I want to try and achieve: front and rear cameras recording simultaneously so footage can be combined later for PiP, plus decent sound from between the exhausts.

Funny you should say that, but that's exactly what I have done on my latest vid which has literally just finished uploading to YouTube!

http://youtu.be/t0uzHiNYnds

At the end of the video is a short slideshow of stills which show how I did it.


I also did one where the front camera is right down low on the front splitter

http://youtu.be/rW8PCkf1Qto

[Matt..]

What do you all use for tethers?

I'm going on a 6,000 mile roadtrip and may well have occasion to either attach the camera to the car, or other precarious places! I have picked up 3x 1m, 40lb, braided (not steel) fishing leaders and am probably going to use them. Not entirely convinced they're all that strong, but am hoping they will be ok. I will probably go with the approach of looping over the metal bar on the door, and then using a carabiner to attach the other end to something.

[JonRB]

Matt.. said:

What do you all use for tethers?

I'm going on a 6,000 mile roadtrip and may well have occasion to either attach the camera to the car, or other precarious places! I have picked up 3x 1m, 40lb, braided (not steel) fishing leaders and am probably going to use them. Not entirely convinced they're all that strong, but am hoping they will be ok. I will probably go with the approach of looping over the metal bar on the door, and then using a carabiner to attach the other end to something.

My feeling is that a tethered GoPro smashing around on a car at speed would do more than £200 of damage to the car. So I'd rather lose the camera.

[Matt..]

JonRB said:

My feeling is that a tethered GoPro smashing around on a car at speed would do more than £200 of damage to the car. So I'd rather lose the camera.

True
Maybe not for use on the car then, but for use everywhere else.

[Matt..]

If you're doing timelapse/video of driving, how do you usually attach the camera? and which settings do you use? This is for motorways too, therefore probably best it's inside.

Thanks

[MPoxon]

JonRB said:

Funny you should say that, but that's exactly what I have done on my latest vid which has literally just finished uploading to YouTube!

http://youtu.be/t0uzHiNYnds

At the end of the video is a short slideshow of stills which show how I did it.


I also did one where the front camera is right down low on the front splitter

http://youtu.be/rW8PCkf1Qto

Those flames are quality! Cracking video and ingenuous mounting idea

[spartridge]

Dave 500 said:

Simple solution would be GoPro H2's with battery packs and 32gb cards.

4 hours of recording and battery life, start and forget.

Use a clapper board to sync the two cameras together.

Thanks Dave - I should clarify that I predominantly plan to record on European road trips so a long day driving interspersed with decent roads...hence I want the ability to switch on and off to save a lot of sifting/editing later on.

Wondering whether anyone has any experience of using a smartphone as a control mechanism for multiple cameras?

Would ideally want to leave at least the front camera in situ for the whole trip (as cars are securely parked)...hence the use of cables for charging/downloading from cockpit.

[JonRB]

spartridge said:

Wondering whether anyone has any experience of using a smartphone as a control mechanism for multiple cameras?

Each camera is a little WiFi hotspot, so you need to connect to each one in turn to control one at a time. How easy it is to switch WiFi hotspots varies by device. On my Android phone it's just a couple of button presses.

[spartridge]

JonRB said:

Funny you should say that...

Great minds think alike eh? Very nice sounding Sag BTW

Thanks for sharing the clips - it's really interesting comparing the two bits of footage actually... I'm still undecided on best front mounting and now thinking there are merits in all 3 angles

Have you tried facing the rear camera backwards positioned between the exhausts just using the sound from inside the waterproof casing? Only reason I mention it is that a PHer (Kman) did some test footage for me using this method with a 2 (although facing across the car) and the sound isn't half bad...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwHxoXWeqFY (starts about 30s in)


I guess the conclusion is that I have to bite the bullet, get the kit and proceed to arse about with it until you find the best compromise!

[spartridge]

Thanks again Jon...and are you using the Gopro app for this or something else?