Hi everyone, today we're taking a look at something a little bit different.
This is the GoProHero 3 Black Edition.
Now, the idea behind the GoPro
is to create a very small wearable camera
which has high frame rates so you can do slow-motion footage
but also high resolution as well so you can either
have a very high resolution image so up to
4k at 15 frames a second 2.7 K
at 30 frames a second or just good old fashioned 1080p at 60 frames a second
and also 720p 120 frames a second.
All of these are obviously just numbers but what you actually get
is a very versatile and small video camera system.
Now the whole idea behind GoPro is it's meant to be a wearable camera so it's perfect
for action cam people,
it's perfect for photojournalists and video journalists and really for anyone who's
looking to get their hands free
whilst they're filming. So for instance with this particular unit
it comes with a waterproof casing
and the camera then sits inside the casing. Now it's waterproof and dustproof, and it's waterproof down to
around 140 feet I believe, which makes it perfect for things like scuba diving
and even for some of those deeper dives, if you're so inclined.
Now personally, I'm using the camera from a photojournalism point of view
so for me it's a case of getting the camera onto my body somewhere just
letting it roll and capturing
you know what's going on around me. One of the main problems I have
is keeping my hands free at all times. When I'm using a traditional video camera I tend to have
one hand
being tied up at all times and it's not always the safest thing when I'm out
videoing. With the Hero 3 I can strap the camera to my body, start shooting
and then still have my hands free for, you know, not falling over.
All of this, combined with its waterproof and dustproof resistance,
the incredibly high frame rates and resolution the GoPro provides
make it a fantastic video camera for the price. As you're going to see from some of the
footage
coming up later in this review it's absolutely fantastic and it's up there with, you know,
some of the very best camcorders
as it were and digital camcorders that are available. At times the footage
is approaching the quality that my DSLR can produce but all in a very
small package
and with a much wider range of frame rates. So with the GoPro Hero3
you place the camera into its waterproof casing, lock it tight and
no moisture or anything get through. I've used this outside in the rain
and found that while I got absolutely drenched the camera was still absolutely
fine. Now with the Black Edition it comes with wifi built-in.
Now this is useful because it has a wifi remote that can allow you to change all of
the settings direct from a remote
or from an Android app and it means you don't have to go fiddling around with the
buttons or potentially taking the camera out of the casing
to make things easier or quicker. Everything can be done from a small
wifi remote on the Android app. Now you can see the battery on the GoPro 3
it's actually quite small and you'll get around about
35 to 45 minutes out of the battery. Some
of the reviews have said you get around an hour, hour and a half out of the battery,
not in my experience I'm afraid and a lot of it does come down to the resolution you're
shooting at
as well as the frame rate. The harder you work the camera the more the battery's
going to drain.
But additional batteries aren't too expensive, they run to around £20-£25.
You can also buy an extended battery pack which goes onto the back of the
camera
and that can more than triple the battery life as well.
It uses a micro USB to charge so
quick and easy to charge and you've all got plenty of micro USB cables and
USB hubs floating around. And as for the wireless remote
it works very easily, can drop onto a keychain or you can attach it to your belt.
and it allows full control over the Hero 3 including changing settings.
So here's some stock footage as it were, that I shot using the GoPro 3 whilst I was on holiday,
As you can see, the colour reproduction is absolutely fantastic
whites are white, blues are blue and that is most definitely a swimming pool.
Even when you are walking around with the GoPro 3
when you're working at such a high frame rate you can create quite smooth
motion when you come back
into your editing suite and as you can see the
quality and the amount of detail the GoPro is picking up here
from, you know, a seascape as it were is absolutely
fantastic and here again is some footage with me just walking around
at an event going on on board the ship we were on whilst we were
on holiday and again the detail that's picked up in the very back of
the image is still sharp and well reproduced and you know we can even
capture things like sunrise over Gibraltar, at
Europa Point and
the colour reproduction is just fantastic, I cannot get this across enough
it does such a wonderful job at really capturing the light that's coming in, the
colours and the sharpness of the image as well
is really excellent. A lot of this footage was captured at1080p 60
so at 60 frames a second and even when we come indoors
this is St Michael's cave in Gibraltar very very very dark
the camera has boosted the ISO quite considerably
and I've made just a few tweaks in post-production just to kind of help the
colours come out a little bit.
But overall bearing in mind this was being shot in near total darkness the only light
is being given via some illumination points on
the stone but other than that the camera is having to do an awful lot of work here
and even in near total darkness was able to pick out really fantastic colour
and wasn't too grainy. This is just your
traditional street scene as it were, again
filmed in Gibraltar. But you can see that its ability to handle the white points
really really nicely, the colour graduations are spot on and
more importantly the motion as I'm walking along as well running at 60
frames
means that you get very smooth motion most of the time
even though the camera is effectively strapped to my body. More Gibraltar
footage,
and again you can see the shadows are really well defined, they
haven't been blown out and neither have the highlights too badly. I could have done a bit
more work in post-production just to
bring the highlights a little bit more into
balance as it were but it didn't really feel like it was necessary,
the quality of the footage was good enough straightaway. One of the great
things with the software
that they provide with the camera it's available as a free download from GoPro's
website
is its ability to very quickly do tuning to your image
and that effectively creates a series of looks so you may have a pro tune look, you may
have a
warm summer's day look a cool look or you can come up with your own
combination
and really this adjusts things like your exposure, contrast
saturation and the sharpness of the image as well. One thing that I found great with
GoPro is because it's quite a discreet camera
you can pop it on your body go about your daily business as it were
and film the things going on around you and for the most part people simply do not
notice the camera.
A couple of people came up to me and asked me if I was pretending to be Iron Man
blinking lights on the chest and all, but by and large
it's a very discreet way to capture everything that's going on around you
and for video journalism point of view, that's exactly what we were
looking for. We want people to be
natural whilst we're filming. So coming back to the UK I was really interested to see
well
how would GoPro cope with less than ideal light situations
and one of the things in the UK that we can guarantee is we have
bursts of sunshine lots of grey skies and plenty of rain.
So this was captured just on a couple days after I came back, fairly sunny day but
quite a cool temperature
and cool light overall and again you can see whilst the sun was directly in front of me
and that's always going to be a problem for most
lenses and optics, what you find is the colour reproduction was still fantastic
and again even though I'm walking very quickly it doesn't create a huge amount of shake
running at 60 frames a second.
So coming back to the Hero Pro 3 itself
there's plenty of accessories you can get for Go Pro, they've really done a great job with
the whole
aftermarket stuff. So for instance, spare batteries LCD screens because by default
GoPro doesn't have its own screen you simply download the footage afterwards or
watch it from your Android device. But you can if you want add an
additional screen onto the back for
those people that need to kind of have a bit of a look at their footage
afterwards or
want a touch screen to be able to change the various controls.
But really from my perspective if you bought the Black Edition you may as
well use an iPhone or an Android app
to really interact with the GoPro it's much quicker
and obviously one of the main issues with having a screen running on the back of the
device is you are going to be draining the battery even faster.
Now this is the chesty. The chesty is effectively a sling
that goes onto your body, clips across the front and you attach the GoPro to it.
This was basically my weapon of choice for filming. It allowed me to
pop the chesty over my clothes pop a coat on over the top if necessary
and then shoot as and when I felt like it. Alternatively I could just wear the strap
quite happily around the ship whilst I was on holiday
and people weren't overly fazed by it. One of the great things is if you unclip it
you can then tuck
the camera effectively under your arm a bit like a side sling. The Go Pro comes with a
range of accessories as well including car mounts,
cables, additional mounting position brackets
and all sorts of different things as well as a complete pack of cables
which I haven't shown here but overall with the GoPro
running about £270 off Amazon
you get a really great range of not only mounting points
but also accessories to help you get the best from the GoPro
and also the waterproof casing as well. If you're looking for the chesty sling
then that will set you back around £30 but it's well worth it and
incredibly well made
and because of the tightness of it it really keeps the camera bound to your body so you don't
get a lot of rattle or shake.
This footage was actually shot at 720p
120 frames a second and then it's been down shifted to 30 frames a second for you
on YouTube but it
creates very smooth motion. More importantly as you can see this is
even with a wide angle on there when we converted the footage back
in post-production we've got a very nice natural flat looking image
no nasty fisheye bulging going on.
This footage was shot internally at the ship. Now one of the main issues that you're
dealing with there is obviously
uneven lighting and rather unnatural lighting specifically caused by
the windows which have a coating so the light that's actually coming through is being diffused to a blue.
You know, that's always going to cause some issues to the camera but what's
interesting is that
you see I'm walking through these various environments
the camera is adjusting very quickly, its response rates are very very good
to changes in colour, white balance and so on. Makes it
a very good and useful camera to use indoors. One thing that I haven't really seen
done a lot with GoPro.
So that's all. Do feel free to share this with your friends
let everyone know about the review and also like and comment if there's
anything
specific you'd like me to look at with the GoPro Hero 3
Black Edition.