I don’t understand why people go gaga over this stuff. It’s a camera in a plastic box with a screw hole. Are there that many Richard Bransons out there?
Now that smartphones are increasingly becoming water proof I can’t see this providing incremental value over a phone in a fancy case in the long run.
The original GoPro was reasonably priced camera with support for image stabilisation, in a small enough package to stick to your helmet / body / apparatus, without looking that dorky.
I use mine every day, it's getting on a bit now, but I still really like it.
When they first came out they did allow a new level of filming for extreme sports (there were very few waterproof cameras around). These days you can buy a Chinese clone for $20 that does more or less the same.
To be fair, the $20 Chinese clone is of a lower quality than the GoPro I bought in 2013, 5 years ago. The image quality of GoPros is quite impressive. 4k@60fs and 1080p@240fps with GPS
and waterproofing is impressive for such small form factor.
A 720p Polaroid Cube and a Red Weapon 8k are both a 'camera in a box with some screw holes'. You can make anything sound stupid by reducing it to a simplistic description, but it's not contributing anything useful to the discussion.
GoPro completely changed skydiving photography. Before GoPro we would fly around with camcorders clumsily bolted to the side of our head. Now they can be mounted anywhere, with greatly reduced chances of injury (a fast opening can expose you to dozens of Gs, causing severe neck injury when a heavy object is on your head).
There are now a ton of options other than GoPro, but GoPro was the one that got the product/market fit first and changed everything.
I think it's because you can give them money, and then be shooting incredible video 10 minutes later without much setup or hassle. Just like a small computer in an aluminum case with a good screen and camera, putting a few pieces together in the right package lets people have experiences they're excited about.
>I don’t understand why people go gaga over this stuff. It’s a camera in a plastic box with a screw hole.
Because there's a market for cameras in a plastic box with a screw hole (and the ecosystem of screw accessories).
Just because you don't have a use for one doesn't mean people don't.
>Are there that many Richard Bransons our there? Now that smartphones are increasingly becoming water proof I can’t see this providing incremental value over a phone in a fancy case in the long run.
Yeah, like I'm going to tie my smartphone to my car, or use it to film my mountain bike ride or dive 30 meters with it duct-taped to my scuba mask...
You should think about then :-) Only half kidding here, its a great example of the difference between "parts" and a "product". And understanding why people go gaga over it explains the value it adds for them over the basic parts. Once you can see that value, you are well on your way to developing a product that you can sell for a profit.
The product here is essentially a point and shoot camera for people who want to take the picture but are engaged in an activity that doesn't make it easy to operate a camera, and further that activity might cause them to drop a camera and that would damage your typical model.
The original Hero took the notion that you could be out doing some sort of physical activity with your friends that you enjoyed, and if you could capture some action shots of the activity you could relive those fun times over and over again. It had a side effect of letting people who talked about doing amazing things bring a video to the conversation to add evidence they weren't exaggerating.
Its one thing to have a fish story of this huge fish that got away, it is something else entirely to have the helmet camera view of your efforts to land said fish and the heartbreak of the line snapping.
So there is value in capturing that experience and the Hero folks packaged up a point and shoot camera into a package with a set of features to make capturing that experience fairly friction free. People are willing to pay money to have that capability, and voila product.
Great explanation. I think a lot of comments along the lines of “I don’t understand something so it must be dumb” are better framed as “I don’t understand something so my model of the world is incomplete”.
Phones are bigger and harder to use. You can't easily attach a phone to a bike helmet or motorcycle handlebars. Phone cases are pathetic and won't survive a crash. Phone cases can't be taken on a 100-foot deep scuba dive. Phones (especially in cases) don't allow one-handed operation while bouncing around in the back of a jeep.
They are not solving the same problems or serving the same markets.
The GoPro is easy to mount, whether that's in a helmet mount while ziplining in Mexico, on a backpack strap while horse riding, or on a chest mount while hiking through a waterfall. The GoPro is quite waterproof and with the outer housing, can be used for some scuba situations - certainly safe for kayaking and whatnot. The GoPro is also simple to operate and can be operated with gloves on - which is important if you're trying to use it while snowboarding.
Because this is much sturdier and much cheaper than my iPhone?
I don't want to repeatedly smash my $1000 phone into the water while I'm wakeboarding. I'm perfectly happy to smash this sturdy little $200-400 thing as many times as it takes to get a good shot.
If you don't understand why someone would buy a GoPro-type camera instead of just using their iPhone then you are probably well outside of the target market. In addition to the mobile phone form factor being unsuitable for a wide number of commonly used camera placements, an iPhone would not survive a single average day of filming PoV freeride mountain biking or skiing/snowboarding.
Am I missing something or is this like exactly the same as the Hero 6, just with a new number?
EDIT: By my eyes it looks like they improved the stabilization algorithm and added live streaming? Still though, pretty light release. I was hoping for a 960fps HD mode like the Note 9.
I've owned 4 iterations of kindles, and imho current Oasis is in a whole different category than any of my previous ones. Physical page up/down buttons, splashproof, one-handed reading comfort, pixel density, page-turning speed, battery life... it all adds up to a nearly "perfect" ebook reader.
I seems to me like breaking ground on gimbal-free stabilization is the killer feature here, if it is impactful as the marketing video suggests. For mountain biking, much of the video captured is too shaky to really watch without it being super distracting.
With no additional case, the Hero7 is safe to 10m. With a case, you can go much deeper. The default waterproof case that my Hero4 came with is good to 33m (and I've taken it to 33m myself). There's a dive enclosure that's good to 60m. I'm sure there are even better after-market options, but very few people dive beyond 30m.
With the case on my Hero4, I wouldn't expect any problems leaving it in a pool for even months at a time. I haven't seen the Hero7 but if it survives an hour it'll probably survive a lot longer, unless something is particularly sensitive to chlorine.
First thing I get hit with is the site trying to register for push notifications, then after scrolling down slightly, a newsletter modal. That's definitely a good way to convince me to close the tab.
I also found the popups annoying enough that I just closed the tab.
I do not think that it is influenced a bit by one's score on scales of pedantry, internet-familiarity, or nerd-ism.
It's more like people want to get to the information the web designer is presenting, and the designer is sticking all these obstacles in the way. Many people will simply say "Nevermind" at the obstacles.
Yet there will be a few who persist and give their info for whatever reason. Since there are very large numbers, the marketing people who insisted in putting up the obstacles will cheer "look how much customer data we got!". What they won't notice (if they even kept the data), is how many people they lost by simply clicking away. Marketing people seem to have an endless capacity to mistake forcing behaviors that annoy their subjects for creating 'engagement'. And CEOs mistake these CMOs as doing a good job.
I've found the keyboard shortcut to be a lot less annoying Esc. I just do it automatically these days on any popup. These damn website notifications aren't going away anywhere, they are getting all the more pervasive. So I've just learned to live with them and be less annoyed.
You should look into disabling javascript on untrusted pages with something like uMatrix. I visited the GoPro site without any popups, nags, notification requests, etc.
I'm so sad that they killed off the Session line, it was a nice cube-shaped GoPro, and it was great for quadcopters because the cube is easier to protect with a mount, but they weren't making any money on selling them so they had to go, you can see how it can be protected here: https://cdn3.bigcommerce.com/s-7sp5w/products/336/images/284...
I know people that have bought 5+ GoPro Sessions because it is now being removed from the market, but it has opened up for competitors to copy the formfactor, but nothing comes near in my experience.
I hope we get good protective TPU mounts for the Hero 7, but I have my doubts about flying around with a touchscreen, it is bound to crash and break :(
I bought a Session 4 as my first GoPro and based on the experience I don't know if I'd buy another GoPro.
The camera can't be used while charging and the battery will die in a matter of days (even with WiFi disabled) so there's no impromptu or spontaneous usage. You have to know in advance that you'll need it and charge it up ahead of time.
The camera frequently overheats and then locks up trying to shut itself down.
The camera is suppose to start recording with a button press and stop recording with another press of the same button. It usually starts recording fine but more often than not when you press the button again to stop the camera will just lockup. If you don't hold the button for 10 seconds to force a hard reset the battery will drain in a matter of minutes.
It's been a really poor user experience considering how nice the hardware itself is and how much they market it as a premium product.
That is really interesting and sad that you have had such a bad experience, I own both a generation 4 and 5, and haven't had any issues at all.
I have only used mine in Denmark and the UK, so that is quite cold conditions so that might be one reason why I haven't experienced any overheating issues.
I do seem to remember disabling bluetooth+wifi to save battery, but I do not need to charge ahead of time.
Maybe you got a bad camera, and maybe that is why it wasn't profitable to continue.
Tech specs and Hero evolution aside I feel the marketing department made a great video. Makes me want to go out and Do Stuff. While recording it.
(edit) Put differently: I think they really hit the nail on the head from a branding and association ("I also want to") perspective. There's definitely a market gap to wrestle about here.
i stopped buying gopros due to poor battery life after 3+. it seems every new version can do more stuff (4k, 240fps, wifi, etc) at the expense of runtime. battery life never seems to be a feature. has this improved at all?
I'm convinced their promo videos are shot by teams carrying tons of batteries. If you are actually adventuring / backpacking for a few days etc, a go-pro is no go unless you want to be worrying about battery life the entire time.
filming in winter + ProTune mode + 1080p60, however, is a frustrating experience. 30min is typical. if battery is brand new then maybe you can squeeze 45min out of it.
My experience as well. That's why I have two batteries and a battery pack. Although I'm not doing much filming right now, it's more hassle than I expected.
Have you ever strapped a go pro to your head? It's heavy and really throws you off. I think they've found that if you add battery capacity, you also increase the weight, which reduces the number of places you can use it.
Did you see the video on the page with the girl skateboarding? And holding the camera outstretched from her arm? It's really hard holding something heavy that far from your body while also doing things that require balance.
Bring a battery pack that you can stick in your back pack. But keep the camera lightweight!
As a motorcyclist, I just want them to innovate the painfully obvious feature of a waterproof pass-through for power. I have a Hero Session, which is a delightful small item, but you can only feed power to it by opening the waterproof cover.
I don't understand, I have the 6 and stabilization is already really good. Truth be told, I'm not doing stunts on rough terrain, but even on gravel roads it does the job. The video looks like it's totally turned off for "Previous GoPro".
GoPro has been dying for a few years, there are a ton of alternatives at much lower prices and if you're just strapping it to a bike or something no need to go top of the line.
Even for higher end stuff like aviation there are cost effective alternatives, however the form factor of a Hero secured to a tie down point is pretty great.
I'll add that based on their last earnings call it sounded like they learned a lot from xmas 2017. Now they're introducing new models every year and at lower price points. Competition is one reason. Also, saturation is probably why we see that $100 trade-in credit for any old digital camera. There is a slight premium to pay, but in a lot of cases I think it's worth it for waterproofing, build quality, software stability, etc.
Their stock has really tumbled but I think they've figured out the formula now and the stock will probably turn around in 2019 after the xmas sales numbers are in.
They again are sticking with EIS, and again the demos are of extremely well lit scenes.
EIS solutions don't hold up quite as well in lower light, where OIS absolutely shines. Video, just like photos, has individual frames that have exposure times, and in lower light the longer exposure time == garbage source frames that no amount of EIS can fix. But expect a tonne of extremely well lit examples pretending that it's a cure all.
The best solutions marry EIS and OIS. That's exactly what the iPhone does.
The respective pros and cons of EIS & OIS don't change with light level. EIS works by cropping part of the image which results in a narrower FoV and a lower resolution, however these effects occur regardless of how bright the scene is.
The additional moving parts of OIS systems make them less suitable for ruggedized cameras.
Video is a series of photos. Captured by the photo sensor identically to taking photos, but for bandwidth and time reasons usually downsampled and with a max exposure time of the framerate.
In low light that 30 FPS camera will increase the exposure time to up to 1/30th of a second. In a bouncing, rapidly changing camera this yields a smear of a photo. OIS combats this by limiting capture motion during most movements.
There is absolutely an enormous difference between the two, and it yields the classic garbage in = garbage out problem.
You're ignoring the effects of motion blur. Consider a smoothly panning camera in a poorly lit scene. OIS can move the lens to cancel out the pan so you don't get blurring.
EIS can only do it if you take multiple photos at a much higher frame rate (I think the Pixel 2 does this but it is very uncommon, and probably too power intensive to do for 4K video).
OIS systems move a subgroup of lens elements to compensate for movement of the camera. The degree of that movement is very limited. The main purpose of OIS is to approximate a stationary camera platform from a near-stationary one. Many OIS systems get turned off for panning - while more sophisticated ones support being turned off in the panning axis - specifically because they don't handle movement outside of a very limited range. For applications where the camera is intended to be in-motion the appropriate mechanical solution is using a gimbal, not OIS.
The main purpose of gimbals or EIS is not to produce sharper individual frames but to reduce jarring across a sequence of frames by smoothing the camera movement - gimbals do it physically while EIS simulates it after the fact by using a subset of the total sensor area.
At 30fps the longest possible per-frame exposure is 1/30s. An action camera-wearing athlete moving at a leisurely 20mph will travel about a foot in 1/30s - and that's just movement in one axis. OIS is not going to help with per-frame motion blur when the camera moves that much or more during the exposure.
OIS is not going to help with per-frame motion blur when the camera moves that much or more during the exposure.
A camera rotating or tilting just a few degrees has magnitudes more of an impact than the fastest possible athlete. And yes, of course OIS "turns off" during panning (and the resulting image blur is not only consequent, it is expected and natural), as it would counteract the effect. Just to be clear, I spent two years building a commercial image stabilization solution -- I'm pretty educated on what I'm talking about.
The value of OIS + EIS is that with OIS the vast majority of frames have the stablest possible capture, while EIS can effectively fix what OIS misguessed (e.g. the beginning of a pan that OIS tries to counteract). This is exactly what the iPhone does.
Then you should know that tilting is rotation. Unless by rotation you mean specifically around the optical axis to differentiate from pitch and yaw... in which case you should know that such rotation is uncorrectable by optical systems - though it is correctable by sensor-shift systems.
I think the point you're trying to make with "a few degrees has magnitudes more of an impact" is that rotation has more impact than shift. I agree that the rotation caused by moving the lens a few millimeters has more impact than shifting the camera a few millimeters for sufficiently distant subjects. This is why early IS systems were focused on mitigating pitch and yaw as opposed to shifts: moving lens groups to counter millimeters of rotation is within the physical capabilities of a system that can fit within a lens and it gives a lot of bang for the buck in a narrow sweet spot. Rotational movement is most prevalent in hand-held cameras while operating the camera - for example pressing the shutter button - and less so when it's just being held. This is why there was a standard trick in still photography of using bursts of continuous shooting to get clearer captures: the first frame is impacted by sudden pitch but subsequent ones are much less so. OIS does an excellent job of addressing that first frame blur.
Due to inertia, when a camera is attached to a larger object in motion (athlete, surfboard, vehicle, etc.) random rotational movement is much less pronounced while continuous shifting is. Correcting sustained directional movement - be it rotational or shift - is not something OIS systems are designed to handle. They are meant to correct random movement around a mean, essentially they provide an instant mechanical "reversion to the mean" of sorts. Correcting tens of centimeters of shift is well outside their capabilities and shifting a camera tens of centimeters during exposure will absolutely result in noticeable blur. It doesn't remotely require "the fastest possible athlete" to achieve that level of shift during a 1/30s exposure.
The point is not that EIS is better than OIS - the systems serve different purposes. The point is that OIS doesn't bring as much value to action camera use cases and it comes with the significant downside of reduced durability.
5-axis OIS system absolutely correct for rotation (e.g. roll), as of course sensor-shift and rotation is a component of OIS.
The point is not that EIS is better than OIS - the systems serve different purposes
They serve remarkably similar purposes and can be complimentary. It's actually interesting because your claims sound like what Google said with the Pixel (1) and its completely substandard EIS-based solution. With the pixel 2 they added OIS and complement it with EIS. Everyone eventually gets to OIS + EIS. But while they're trying to be cheap we hear the spiel about why they just don't need OIS.
Because EIS alone is substandard unless you have a fantastically fast sensor or perfect lighting. Which is why EIS samples are always on the brightest possible days. It isn't by accident.
EIS is more akin to a poor-man's gimbal than it is to OIS, and that's the purpose it serves in GoPros. One could argue that for sufficiently small range of movement a gimbal and OIS can serve similar purposes for stills photography - a gimbal after all is a form of external stabilization. However EIS is not seriously applicable to stills photography as it does nothing for a standalone capture and OIS cannot replace a gimbal (or EIS) for video capture other than in very narrow scenarios where static support would generally be a better solution.
It's obvious that OIS + EIS > EIS. However it's not that case that OIS > EIS for all applications. One could argue that given just OIS one could apply EIS in post, but that's just a different implementation of OIS + EIS.
As far as I know, the GoPro is fixed-focus - there's no moving parts in its optical system. Adding mechanical stabilization whether optical or sensor-based would reduce the durability of a system of which one of the main criteria is being able to withstand repeated impacts. Maybe it's possible to build a sufficiently ruggedized OIS solution, but it's not clear whether the expense or size/weight of that would make it viable for action cameras.
Not a GoPro-specific comment, but I am kind of shocked at the extent to which cameras have become such an integral part of people's lives. When I was a kid, cameras were these big things that you kept in the drawer for a once-a-year vacation. Even as they got smaller and went digital, and then the marginal cost to take a photo became zero, people didn't obsess over them and take pictures everywhere. When the first mobile phones started to get built-in cameras, people still weren't filming everything.
Some time in the last decade something changed, and now everyone seems to be recording everything, including themselves, all the time. Recording themselves shopping, recording themselves eating, recording every little event they go to, every little mundane aspect of their lives, dashboard cams, helmet cams, home "security" cameras that aren't really providing any security, just recording everything. Last time we got to go on a vacation, I don't even think my wife looked at anything we visited without having a screen and a camera in between.
What's with this compulsion to get pictures of everything? Do people actually go back and look at all these pictures and videos of themselves?
Sharing experiences with other people is generally enjoyable for a lot of people. Simple as that. Instagram, etc. make sharing very very easy. Most people do not like to be alone when doing fun activities (hiking, biking, skateboarding, etc.), and simply have way more fun doing those things with other people. Being able to share photos and video provides or expands on that little pleasure in life. If you're a loner (not saying you are), then this might not make sense to you.
Optimistic. The other perspective is that people are trying to show off and make their lives seem more glamorous/adventurous than they are. That's what I see all the time.
Riding the NYC subway is surreal these days. The majority (not a guess, an observation) of people are spending 30-60 minutes each way experiencing waves of desire, envy, and jealousy by scrolling through Instagram. It's like science fiction.
I think there are a number of factors, that when combined, contribute to this behavior.
1. Access: we have our cell phones with us all the time. That wasn't true about cameras in the past.
2. Quality: early camera phones took lousy pictures so they were never going to be as useful as a real camera. Now that the quality is as good as the point and shoot digital cameras we used to use, phone cameras are a no-brainer replacement.
3. Social Connection: although we are less "connected" to friends and family now, people want to feel more connected and that's easy with photo sharing and social media platforms. So they document everything so they can share, or humblebrag, or whatever they're going to do on these platforms to feel some kind of human interaction; however shallow and trite that may actually be... the feeling is real.
4. Memory: I think we're becoming reliant on our phones and computers to augment our memory. When I was a kid, I knew everybody's phone number. Now, I don't remember anything that I can look up. I did not decide to do that, that's just what has happened. So, there is some legit need to photo/video things that are important, that we do want to make sure we "remember".
5. Cost: the cost of cameras and memory is much cheaper than it was even when camera phones started to become a thing.
This is more of an outlier, but the other thing is kids. Now that it's effectively free to take nearly unlimited photos and videos, I take a lot of my kids. I wish I had more photos and videos of my childhood. The funny thing is, my kids are still very young and even they love the photos and videos of themselves when they were even younger since they cannot remember those days at all.
So, we'll all have those fun memories from when they were learning to walk, talk, read, ride a bike, use alexa, etc. My daughter just scored her first goal in soccer last week and I must have watched that 10 second video over 100 times now. Admittedly, the photos and videos of my kids are close to the only ones that actually do get viewed later, and I share these with family and they legitimately get excited when they receive them since they live far away.
But I agree, we also need to be in the moment more.
Do people actually go back and look at all these pictures and videos of themselves?
Yes. To counter this, let me ask you: what's with people who don't enjoy the hobby of photographing and recording things always making the absurd assumption that those who do illogically never have a later use for such media? Why do you try to frame people with different interests as literally insane?
Outside of a controlled studio, it may take hundreds of photographs to get one really good one. With video, you never know when something interesting will happen (e.g. dash, helmet, and security cameras), so the more continuous the recording, the better.
Incidentally, as someone who likes photographing things, I consistently remember events and recall details of places visited better than my camera-eschewing friends. The camera is a tool that increases my engagement.
I've got #26 now (YI 4K action cam). It's considerably cheaper than the GoPro at $149. It's not bad for casual use, but the fact that the gopro is waterproof by default and it has better image stabilization among other features, I'm going to trade it in ($100 credit) for the new Hero 7. But, if you're looking for something cheaper, the YI is fine or maybe the Hero White if you want waterproofing instead of 4K.
Considering this is HN, does anyone have any input on the latest GoPros vs Garmin Virb Ultra 30, specifically in terms of telemetry formats vs general camera quality? Garmin seems to be the data king here, but I'm curious as to whether the GoPro is perhaps the better camera, and if so, whether this could offset the differences between the data formats.
I should note that the telemetry is important for our usage, GPS logs especially.
We have two Ultra 30s at work (used in humid areas, mostly at walking speed) and with GPS turned on (obligatory) and 1440p/30fps video we get 90-110mins of continuous footage before the battery is completely drained. Longer battery life would be nice and every now and then we get hiccups/glitches (looks like frames are skipped) with the setting above. Doesn't invalidate the footage in any way and it's rare, but still annoying. Could be a firmware bug, really. Audio is so-so, but that is to be expected (we haven't tried external microphones yet, since the setup needs to be as simple as possible).
Would a GoPro help with any of the above or is it a similar experience in terms of battery etc? If anything, the GoPro seems more rugged (for our needs, the Virb needs a case). What about video quality? Interface? (I did read DC Rainmaker's comparison[0] which was what made us choose the Virb, together with the fact that there's an SDK for FIT and at the time of purchase GoPro didn't have a Github repo[1])
GoPro's GPMF data is embedded within the video file, whereas Garmin's FIT[2] format is separate and is logged to whether one is recording or not as long as the camera is turned on. Both have their pros and cons, FIT seemingly being the more flexible format (it's basically a big timeline with events attached) but one also needs to identify what part of the data stream corresponds to which video session and it's not as "linear" to read as GPMF (?). In FIT every single logged coordinate is also timestamped (10Hz GPS), whereas it seems that you only get one timestamp/second for GPMF coordinates (18Hz GPS).
I wrote a little parser to extract and integrate the relevant telemetry data elsewhere and have started looking at doing the same for GPMF (I wanted to write it from scratch in a language I'm learning). Since I have no recent GoPro at hand it's been difficult finding raw samples for the GoPro, other than the GPFM GitHub repo - youtube won't suffice since I need the original video with the telemetry intact.
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[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadNow that smartphones are increasingly becoming water proof I can’t see this providing incremental value over a phone in a fancy case in the long run.
I use mine every day, it's getting on a bit now, but I still really like it.
There are now a ton of options other than GoPro, but GoPro was the one that got the product/market fit first and changed everything.
Because there's a market for cameras in a plastic box with a screw hole (and the ecosystem of screw accessories).
Just because you don't have a use for one doesn't mean people don't.
>Are there that many Richard Bransons our there? Now that smartphones are increasingly becoming water proof I can’t see this providing incremental value over a phone in a fancy case in the long run.
Yeah, like I'm going to tie my smartphone to my car, or use it to film my mountain bike ride or dive 30 meters with it duct-taped to my scuba mask...
The product here is essentially a point and shoot camera for people who want to take the picture but are engaged in an activity that doesn't make it easy to operate a camera, and further that activity might cause them to drop a camera and that would damage your typical model.
The original Hero took the notion that you could be out doing some sort of physical activity with your friends that you enjoyed, and if you could capture some action shots of the activity you could relive those fun times over and over again. It had a side effect of letting people who talked about doing amazing things bring a video to the conversation to add evidence they weren't exaggerating.
Its one thing to have a fish story of this huge fish that got away, it is something else entirely to have the helmet camera view of your efforts to land said fish and the heartbreak of the line snapping.
So there is value in capturing that experience and the Hero folks packaged up a point and shoot camera into a package with a set of features to make capturing that experience fairly friction free. People are willing to pay money to have that capability, and voila product.
They are not solving the same problems or serving the same markets.
I don't want to repeatedly smash my $1000 phone into the water while I'm wakeboarding. I'm perfectly happy to smash this sturdy little $200-400 thing as many times as it takes to get a good shot.
EDIT: By my eyes it looks like they improved the stabilization algorithm and added live streaming? Still though, pretty light release. I was hoping for a 960fps HD mode like the Note 9.
It seems to be a very shiny SKU with some serious firmware issues.
Edit: not m, but ft. The question remains.
(I'm very skeptical of the waterproof claim. Words mean things and I am sure they really mean water resistant.)
With the case on my Hero4, I wouldn't expect any problems leaving it in a pool for even months at a time. I haven't seen the Hero7 but if it survives an hour it'll probably survive a lot longer, unless something is particularly sensitive to chlorine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Resistant_mark
I do not think that it is influenced a bit by one's score on scales of pedantry, internet-familiarity, or nerd-ism.
It's more like people want to get to the information the web designer is presenting, and the designer is sticking all these obstacles in the way. Many people will simply say "Nevermind" at the obstacles.
Yet there will be a few who persist and give their info for whatever reason. Since there are very large numbers, the marketing people who insisted in putting up the obstacles will cheer "look how much customer data we got!". What they won't notice (if they even kept the data), is how many people they lost by simply clicking away. Marketing people seem to have an endless capacity to mistake forcing behaviors that annoy their subjects for creating 'engagement'. And CEOs mistake these CMOs as doing a good job.
I know people that have bought 5+ GoPro Sessions because it is now being removed from the market, but it has opened up for competitors to copy the formfactor, but nothing comes near in my experience.
I hope we get good protective TPU mounts for the Hero 7, but I have my doubts about flying around with a touchscreen, it is bound to crash and break :(
The camera can't be used while charging and the battery will die in a matter of days (even with WiFi disabled) so there's no impromptu or spontaneous usage. You have to know in advance that you'll need it and charge it up ahead of time.
The camera frequently overheats and then locks up trying to shut itself down.
The camera is suppose to start recording with a button press and stop recording with another press of the same button. It usually starts recording fine but more often than not when you press the button again to stop the camera will just lockup. If you don't hold the button for 10 seconds to force a hard reset the battery will drain in a matter of minutes.
It's been a really poor user experience considering how nice the hardware itself is and how much they market it as a premium product.
I have only used mine in Denmark and the UK, so that is quite cold conditions so that might be one reason why I haven't experienced any overheating issues.
I do seem to remember disabling bluetooth+wifi to save battery, but I do not need to charge ahead of time.
Maybe you got a bad camera, and maybe that is why it wasn't profitable to continue.
(edit) Put differently: I think they really hit the nail on the head from a branding and association ("I also want to") perspective. There's definitely a market gap to wrestle about here.
I'm convinced their promo videos are shot by teams carrying tons of batteries. If you are actually adventuring / backpacking for a few days etc, a go-pro is no go unless you want to be worrying about battery life the entire time.
This usually lasts all day of regular use.
I now have 3 batteries and never have to worry about battery life.
Did you see the video on the page with the girl skateboarding? And holding the camera outstretched from her arm? It's really hard holding something heavy that far from your body while also doing things that require balance.
Bring a battery pack that you can stick in your back pack. But keep the camera lightweight!
https://youtu.be/l4fHeiqtGOA
I'll add that based on their last earnings call it sounded like they learned a lot from xmas 2017. Now they're introducing new models every year and at lower price points. Competition is one reason. Also, saturation is probably why we see that $100 trade-in credit for any old digital camera. There is a slight premium to pay, but in a lot of cases I think it's worth it for waterproofing, build quality, software stability, etc.
Their stock has really tumbled but I think they've figured out the formula now and the stock will probably turn around in 2019 after the xmas sales numbers are in.
EIS solutions don't hold up quite as well in lower light, where OIS absolutely shines. Video, just like photos, has individual frames that have exposure times, and in lower light the longer exposure time == garbage source frames that no amount of EIS can fix. But expect a tonne of extremely well lit examples pretending that it's a cure all.
The best solutions marry EIS and OIS. That's exactly what the iPhone does.
The additional moving parts of OIS systems make them less suitable for ruggedized cameras.
In low light that 30 FPS camera will increase the exposure time to up to 1/30th of a second. In a bouncing, rapidly changing camera this yields a smear of a photo. OIS combats this by limiting capture motion during most movements.
There is absolutely an enormous difference between the two, and it yields the classic garbage in = garbage out problem.
EIS can only do it if you take multiple photos at a much higher frame rate (I think the Pixel 2 does this but it is very uncommon, and probably too power intensive to do for 4K video).
OIS systems move a subgroup of lens elements to compensate for movement of the camera. The degree of that movement is very limited. The main purpose of OIS is to approximate a stationary camera platform from a near-stationary one. Many OIS systems get turned off for panning - while more sophisticated ones support being turned off in the panning axis - specifically because they don't handle movement outside of a very limited range. For applications where the camera is intended to be in-motion the appropriate mechanical solution is using a gimbal, not OIS.
The main purpose of gimbals or EIS is not to produce sharper individual frames but to reduce jarring across a sequence of frames by smoothing the camera movement - gimbals do it physically while EIS simulates it after the fact by using a subset of the total sensor area.
At 30fps the longest possible per-frame exposure is 1/30s. An action camera-wearing athlete moving at a leisurely 20mph will travel about a foot in 1/30s - and that's just movement in one axis. OIS is not going to help with per-frame motion blur when the camera moves that much or more during the exposure.
A camera rotating or tilting just a few degrees has magnitudes more of an impact than the fastest possible athlete. And yes, of course OIS "turns off" during panning (and the resulting image blur is not only consequent, it is expected and natural), as it would counteract the effect. Just to be clear, I spent two years building a commercial image stabilization solution -- I'm pretty educated on what I'm talking about.
The value of OIS + EIS is that with OIS the vast majority of frames have the stablest possible capture, while EIS can effectively fix what OIS misguessed (e.g. the beginning of a pan that OIS tries to counteract). This is exactly what the iPhone does.
> I'm pretty educated on what I'm talking about.
Then you should know that tilting is rotation. Unless by rotation you mean specifically around the optical axis to differentiate from pitch and yaw... in which case you should know that such rotation is uncorrectable by optical systems - though it is correctable by sensor-shift systems.
I think the point you're trying to make with "a few degrees has magnitudes more of an impact" is that rotation has more impact than shift. I agree that the rotation caused by moving the lens a few millimeters has more impact than shifting the camera a few millimeters for sufficiently distant subjects. This is why early IS systems were focused on mitigating pitch and yaw as opposed to shifts: moving lens groups to counter millimeters of rotation is within the physical capabilities of a system that can fit within a lens and it gives a lot of bang for the buck in a narrow sweet spot. Rotational movement is most prevalent in hand-held cameras while operating the camera - for example pressing the shutter button - and less so when it's just being held. This is why there was a standard trick in still photography of using bursts of continuous shooting to get clearer captures: the first frame is impacted by sudden pitch but subsequent ones are much less so. OIS does an excellent job of addressing that first frame blur.
Due to inertia, when a camera is attached to a larger object in motion (athlete, surfboard, vehicle, etc.) random rotational movement is much less pronounced while continuous shifting is. Correcting sustained directional movement - be it rotational or shift - is not something OIS systems are designed to handle. They are meant to correct random movement around a mean, essentially they provide an instant mechanical "reversion to the mean" of sorts. Correcting tens of centimeters of shift is well outside their capabilities and shifting a camera tens of centimeters during exposure will absolutely result in noticeable blur. It doesn't remotely require "the fastest possible athlete" to achieve that level of shift during a 1/30s exposure.
The point is not that EIS is better than OIS - the systems serve different purposes. The point is that OIS doesn't bring as much value to action camera use cases and it comes with the significant downside of reduced durability.
The point is not that EIS is better than OIS - the systems serve different purposes
They serve remarkably similar purposes and can be complimentary. It's actually interesting because your claims sound like what Google said with the Pixel (1) and its completely substandard EIS-based solution. With the pixel 2 they added OIS and complement it with EIS. Everyone eventually gets to OIS + EIS. But while they're trying to be cheap we hear the spiel about why they just don't need OIS.
Because EIS alone is substandard unless you have a fantastically fast sensor or perfect lighting. Which is why EIS samples are always on the brightest possible days. It isn't by accident.
It's obvious that OIS + EIS > EIS. However it's not that case that OIS > EIS for all applications. One could argue that given just OIS one could apply EIS in post, but that's just a different implementation of OIS + EIS.
As far as I know, the GoPro is fixed-focus - there's no moving parts in its optical system. Adding mechanical stabilization whether optical or sensor-based would reduce the durability of a system of which one of the main criteria is being able to withstand repeated impacts. Maybe it's possible to build a sufficiently ruggedized OIS solution, but it's not clear whether the expense or size/weight of that would make it viable for action cameras.
Some time in the last decade something changed, and now everyone seems to be recording everything, including themselves, all the time. Recording themselves shopping, recording themselves eating, recording every little event they go to, every little mundane aspect of their lives, dashboard cams, helmet cams, home "security" cameras that aren't really providing any security, just recording everything. Last time we got to go on a vacation, I don't even think my wife looked at anything we visited without having a screen and a camera in between.
What's with this compulsion to get pictures of everything? Do people actually go back and look at all these pictures and videos of themselves?
1. Access: we have our cell phones with us all the time. That wasn't true about cameras in the past.
2. Quality: early camera phones took lousy pictures so they were never going to be as useful as a real camera. Now that the quality is as good as the point and shoot digital cameras we used to use, phone cameras are a no-brainer replacement.
3. Social Connection: although we are less "connected" to friends and family now, people want to feel more connected and that's easy with photo sharing and social media platforms. So they document everything so they can share, or humblebrag, or whatever they're going to do on these platforms to feel some kind of human interaction; however shallow and trite that may actually be... the feeling is real.
4. Memory: I think we're becoming reliant on our phones and computers to augment our memory. When I was a kid, I knew everybody's phone number. Now, I don't remember anything that I can look up. I did not decide to do that, that's just what has happened. So, there is some legit need to photo/video things that are important, that we do want to make sure we "remember".
5. Cost: the cost of cameras and memory is much cheaper than it was even when camera phones started to become a thing.
This is more of an outlier, but the other thing is kids. Now that it's effectively free to take nearly unlimited photos and videos, I take a lot of my kids. I wish I had more photos and videos of my childhood. The funny thing is, my kids are still very young and even they love the photos and videos of themselves when they were even younger since they cannot remember those days at all.
So, we'll all have those fun memories from when they were learning to walk, talk, read, ride a bike, use alexa, etc. My daughter just scored her first goal in soccer last week and I must have watched that 10 second video over 100 times now. Admittedly, the photos and videos of my kids are close to the only ones that actually do get viewed later, and I share these with family and they legitimately get excited when they receive them since they live far away.
But I agree, we also need to be in the moment more.
Yes. To counter this, let me ask you: what's with people who don't enjoy the hobby of photographing and recording things always making the absurd assumption that those who do illogically never have a later use for such media? Why do you try to frame people with different interests as literally insane?
Outside of a controlled studio, it may take hundreds of photographs to get one really good one. With video, you never know when something interesting will happen (e.g. dash, helmet, and security cameras), so the more continuous the recording, the better.
Incidentally, as someone who likes photographing things, I consistently remember events and recall details of places visited better than my camera-eschewing friends. The camera is a tool that increases my engagement.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/7161074011...
I've got #26 now (YI 4K action cam). It's considerably cheaper than the GoPro at $149. It's not bad for casual use, but the fact that the gopro is waterproof by default and it has better image stabilization among other features, I'm going to trade it in ($100 credit) for the new Hero 7. But, if you're looking for something cheaper, the YI is fine or maybe the Hero White if you want waterproofing instead of 4K.
I should note that the telemetry is important for our usage, GPS logs especially.
We have two Ultra 30s at work (used in humid areas, mostly at walking speed) and with GPS turned on (obligatory) and 1440p/30fps video we get 90-110mins of continuous footage before the battery is completely drained. Longer battery life would be nice and every now and then we get hiccups/glitches (looks like frames are skipped) with the setting above. Doesn't invalidate the footage in any way and it's rare, but still annoying. Could be a firmware bug, really. Audio is so-so, but that is to be expected (we haven't tried external microphones yet, since the setup needs to be as simple as possible).
Would a GoPro help with any of the above or is it a similar experience in terms of battery etc? If anything, the GoPro seems more rugged (for our needs, the Virb needs a case). What about video quality? Interface? (I did read DC Rainmaker's comparison[0] which was what made us choose the Virb, together with the fact that there's an SDK for FIT and at the time of purchase GoPro didn't have a Github repo[1])
GoPro's GPMF data is embedded within the video file, whereas Garmin's FIT[2] format is separate and is logged to whether one is recording or not as long as the camera is turned on. Both have their pros and cons, FIT seemingly being the more flexible format (it's basically a big timeline with events attached) but one also needs to identify what part of the data stream corresponds to which video session and it's not as "linear" to read as GPMF (?). In FIT every single logged coordinate is also timestamped (10Hz GPS), whereas it seems that you only get one timestamp/second for GPMF coordinates (18Hz GPS).
I wrote a little parser to extract and integrate the relevant telemetry data elsewhere and have started looking at doing the same for GPMF (I wanted to write it from scratch in a language I'm learning). Since I have no recent GoPro at hand it's been difficult finding raw samples for the GoPro, other than the GPFM GitHub repo - youtube won't suffice since I need the original video with the telemetry intact.
[0]: https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2017/03/best-action-cam-2017-gop...
[1]: https://github.com/gopro/gpmf-parser
[2]: SDK here https://www.thisisant.com