Hello today I'm going to be looking at taking stills with video on the Go Pro HERO4
Adorama TV presents Capture the Action with Martin Dorey and you are
Hello, I'm Martin Dorey and you're watching Adorama TV. Today we're going to be looking at shooting video
with stills on the GoPro HERO4 camera. Now it's a function we haven't looked at very much
but it is very useful because it means you can shoot video and capture stills,
at set intervals during the whole of the shooting time. How do you do it ? I'll tell you.
Setting up the HERO4 to shoot video or stills is easy and it's actually easy on
the camera too but as usual it's going to be easier for me to show you on the app.
The function is available from the video menu although on the HERO3 and the
HERO3+, it was hidden away in the capture menu but now happily it's out
proud and easy to find. In video mode press the Settings button select the
video and photo mode, then select the interva. You can choose five seconds, ten
seconds, thirty seconds or sixty seconds then choose the video quality
you'll see that you have a limited choice of resolutions in this mode;
1440, 1080 and 720 and you also have a choice of fields of view and frame rates but
again this is limited but the thing to remember is that the higher the
resolution the higher the quality of your stills. So for example if you shoot
at 1440 with a wide field of view it's going to give you better quality than
shooting at 720 with a medium field of view. Now in the HERO4 black and silver
edition manuals it doesn't actually tell you what quality you can expect
however if you go back in time back to the HERO3 and the HERO3+ manuals it is in there
Now say that at 1440 you can expect 12 megapixels and when you go onto a medium field of
view, you can expect to go down to about eight possibly five on a narrow field of view down
to something as little as 2 megapixels. OK well look how good are the stills
Alright here we go I'm shooting now
1080, 25 frames a second with an interval of five seconds between stills and we
will make a comparison.
Hello mum!
OK what we have to do now is set up for stills 12 megapixels and here we go
exactly the same lighting.
We'll have a look at those and compare them.
OK, well look that's remarkable because when you put these the video still and the
still side-by-side you'll notice the aspect ratio is different. The still is
4:3 and the video still is obviously following the format of the
video picture which is 16:9 so but quality wise they are remarkably
similar so you're getting fantastic quality out of your skills in this mode.
Shooting stills in this mode does mean that you won't be able to use Protune but
the spot meter still will work for both photos and videos so if you're happy
with GoPro color and being at the mercy of auto everything ISO and the white
balance then you'll be absolutely fine
OK well there is another way of taking stills simultaneously with video and if
you've been using a GoPro previously you'll know once you run your video and
start shooting all you have to do is press your power button and it will grab
a still. Grab another one. Press it hold it and it will start taking one still every five seconds
Although the one thing you need to remember is that if you press it and hold it for
too long you'll power down the camera also in relatively low light situations like
this you need to be careful that you don't move the camera when you press the
button because it could affect your stills.
The one thing about shooting stills with video as oppose to for example
capturing stills at half a second intervals is that it is a bit random
you're never going to actually potentially capture the moment the way you want it
because it's only taking one still every five seconds, now the only way you're really
going to get your stills of decent action if that is what you want to do, is to frame
grab from the video now in GoPro studios it is possible to export jpg straight from
GoPro studios which you can save wherever and use them later but the
quality is nowhere near as good as you would get shooting direct from the camera.
So where does that leave us
OK look shooting stills with video is going to give you remarkable quality
stills and as good as your standard stills from the GoPro which is fabulous
however the only problem with this is that because you're shooting at intervals
of five seconds you just don't know what you're going to get so if it's really
important to take stills of critical pieces of action you'd probably be better
off shooting continuous at half a second intervals, however you know we've had so
much fun using this mode and we've got some great shots some great video footage, enjoy!
That's it for now, thanks for joining me on Adorama TV today, don't forget to go
to the Learning Center for more great hints and tips and also please subscribe
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