My friend Clarence was in love. He had to have one. Before Christmas these little cameras were essentially non-existent in San Diego. If you found a store that was getting in a shipment you had to reserve a place in line at the delivery truck door. Clarence did just that and I'm pretty sure broke a few of California's traffic laws in the process. Now, these sporty little cameras are readily available and Video-Gear has them in stock. When people ask which one they should get I just tell them to go with the Black Edition. It's an absolute no-brainer after you try all three.
As you can see in the picture below, the stock items that ship with the camera provide you with reasonable rigging options. The case comes with two backs: waterproof and audio friendly. The mounts are sticker backed and work surprisingly well. Clarence has been using a number of these on his motorcycle and nothing has gone flying down I-5 yet. The kit even includes the Wi-Fi remote. Oh, and nothing says "I have a YouTube account" better than GoPro stickers!
The side of the product box gives you details on most of the supported specs. Unfortunately 4k is only supported with 12fps (4k-cine) and 15fps (4k) - at least according to the GoPro app. The box may not be giving us the complete story given firmware upgrades over time. The 4k resolution is probably best for time lapse type videos. At 2.7k you get 24/25/30p, but only 24p in 2.7k-cine mode. Everything below 4k is likely just a scaling of the sensor. The 1080p-60fps is enough for over-cranking in many situations and at 720p you get up to 120fps! That's more speed options than any DSLR delivers today. The next solution to over-crank that fast is the Sony FS-700!
One issue I found is that the 4k footage doesn't directly import into Premier Pro CS5. You have to convert the footage through the free Cineform Studio software into an AVI file. The MOV conversion didn't work for me on my PC. The Apple folks may face the opposite situation (dunno?).
I previously wrote about Protune and the GoPro Hero 3 color science in the blog entries here, here, here, and here. In practice I found Protune to be quite usable. With the Hero 3 you can lock down white balance in Protune mode to 3000k, 5500k, 6500k or "cam raw", which solves most auto-white balance induced color problems, but you still can't lock down exposure. One warning is that "cam raw leaves the color **very** desaturated and the color matrix at basically what the name implies. Considering this is 8-bit 35Mb/s footage in Protune mode, I recommend that you test this setting yourself before thinking that 8-bit raw-looking footage will give you the adjust-ablility you want. The additional nice thing about Protune is that it gives you the full (claimed) 11-stop latitude of the camera. Normal mode still tends to be pretty consumer contrast-y.
One of my friends tried to import the Protune footage into Final Cut 7 and didn't have any luck. So test this configuration with your editing software before assuming it will work in your production.
On of the most compelling reasons to get the Hero 3 camera is the built in Wi-Fi and GoPro app compatibility. In the photo below you can see one of the screens in the app as it appears in the iOS version of the app. The app is also available for Android. The two apps are somewhat different. Clarence uses the Android app on his phone and the iOS app on his iPod Touch (shown below).
While using the GoPro app you can preview framing! Finally! It makes life with these devices so much easier. ...and because you can capture at 2.7k you can shoot a bit wide and re-crop or re-size the video later. The downside to constantly using the Wi-Fi preview is that we were finding that the camera would go through a battery every 80-90 minutes on the Black Edition. The battery life on the Silver Edition was quite a bit longer, even with Wi-Fi preview turned on. To solve this during a day long shoot we found a couple USB cell phone chargers and plugged those into the cameras to keep them powered.
The only issue I have with the Wi-Fi preview is that there is about a 6 second delay between the live action and the preview image. So while adjusting stands, furniture, people, etc..., you just have to be patient.
The Hero 3 cameras have a number of viewing angles available, that are essentially crops of the sensor since the camera still has a fixed f/2.8 lens. In the photo below I recorded all three angles of view at 1080p so you can see the difference between ultra-wide, medium, and narrow. I was only a few feet from the flowers, so even at the narrow setting the field of view is respectably wide. Also, since this is a digital crop there is no lens distortion reduction, it's just less apparent if you're looking at a crop in the center of the lens. With 4k resolution available I would have expected GoPro to do some lens correction in camera. Maybe in the future.
I also took two frame grabs of the footage at 2.7k and 4k so you can download them and look at the resolution. The pictures have not been cropped and only the text label was added in Photoshop. Notice how there was a color shift in the 4k frame? This footage had to be processed through the Cineform Studio software so I'm guessing that's where the color shift occurred - something to watch out for if you end up using this software to convert footage for edit software compatibility.
I used the original GoPro when it first came out and it was frankly a huge disappointment. I might have well just used a Logitech web cam (very bad experience). However, things have clearly improved and changed for the better with the Hero 3. If GoPro allows manual exposure through a firmware upgrade this camera will be even more functional. They just need to provide some type of case with a variable ND filter so the shutter speed can be chosen instead of dictated. The lack of motion blur still gives this camera away. Yes, I know it can be added in After Effects, but there's just something visually better about doing it in camera.
Personally, the 2.7k resolution is a huge deal. It allows me to not only crop the footage, but also downscale to provide sharper looking footage. At 2.7k I can reverse some of the lens distortion in my edit software without feeling guilty about the resolution reduction. But the biggest selling point for me is the GoPro app. I wouldn't want the camera without it now. Clarence and I were recording an instructional video for two days straight and we knew exactly what we were recording and when the boom mic was in the shot. Without the preview the Hero 3 would have been unusable for that project. The 120fps over-crank came in handy when the instructor wanted to show an action in slow motion - no problem. The project's video is going to the web, so down-rez'ing to 720p was perfectly OK.
The Hero 3 Black Edition is in stock at the shop. Call Jeff or Nikita if you'd like to check one out...and bring your Android/iOS device loaded with the GoPro app.
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