GoPro: Road Riding in Bristol

The clocks have moved an hour forward, lighter evenings, the suns starting to pop out. Here's a still from todays road riding, using a simple GoPro Stem mount. Still has been pulled from a video clip then lightly colour corrected.

Quedgeley Wanderers - Logo Development

A quick logo for a local football team. Not a football fan but it was quite fun to do something a bit different! Colours and outline specified by the team themselves.

An honest review on the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition

So the latest GoPro range consists of three cameras in the ‘Hero 3’ series, but are they worth upgrading to? The lower end of the Hero 3 series if the GoPro Hero 3 White edition, next up is the Hero 3 Silver Edition followed by the ultimate camera being the Black Edition. Although GoPro’s new range offers a few new additional features has the cameras quality got even better after the last generation? After first inspection the Hero 3’s have a distinctively smaller casing and it’s slightly lighter too, only weighing in at 73g rather than the 98g of the Hero 2 – 25% lighter. Is this really noticeable though? The Hero 2 doesn’t feel heavy and after you’ve used it a few times you wouldn’t even know it’s there.

What does the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition offer over the previous cameras? Well you can record at 4K rather than just 1080 resolution. Why GoPro have added this as a resolution I really don’t know, 4K is the same resolution as a cinema screen so the chances of being able to play this back on your 42” television is pretty narrow, not only that but you also wouldn’t notice the difference on a screen this size. If you are, however filming at 4K then don’t expect to film at too high a frame rate. Unfortunately you’ll only be able to record at 12 frames per second, this will appear very glitch. It looks like GoPro have added this feature to show the other manufactures what they’re capable of more than anything and the feature itself is a bit useless.

So there are three new cameras? The Hero 3 White, Silver and Black? No strangely enough, the only new one out of these three is the Hero 3 Black Edition. If you check the specs out of the White and Silver Edition Hero 3 they’re the same as the original Hero 1 and 2, these two aren’t actually new cameras. Unfortunately their reshelled older cameras, so if you’re looking to upgrade your Hero 2 to a Hero 3 Silver Edition, you would essentially be buying the same camera. If you’re looking to upgrade your Hero 2 to a Hero 3 White Edition, you would actually be downgrading your camera. The only completely new camera from this series is the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition

GoPro Hero 3, White Edition – Reshelled GoPro Hero 1
GoPro Hero 3, Silver Editon – Reshelled GoPro Hero 2
GoPro Hero 3, Black Edition – Completely new camera

I’ve come across and used four different GoPro Black Editions now and all are having similar issues with it lagging, freezing and crashing. These cameras tend to be used in circumstances where you are either wearing gloves for riding, halfway up a mountain or under water and having to unclip the casing and then remove the battery really is a pain. Not only that but when you’re half way up a mountain in minus fifteen and you unclip the casing you’re guaranteed to get condensation in the sealed unit and you will struggle for the rest of the day to clear it which writes off a whole day recording.

On GoPro’s website the most recent firmware update for the camera is 15/12/2012 but there really needs to be a newer fix to get rid of all these updates. After visiting GoPro’s facebook page and scrolling through posts people have sent them it’s clear to see that a lot of Hero 3 owners are getting the same problems. The next issue with the Hero 3 seems to be the battery, The Hero 1 and 2 both have batteries of 1100mah and although the Hero 3’s battery looks a lot smaller it is a lot deeper and rates at a respectable 1050mah yet the battery life seems so bad? Especially when the specifications state it should be able to record for over 1 hour and 20 minutes. As a Film maker I tend to record in quite short bursts to make the files much more manageable; I’ll turn the camera on, film a quick 20 second clip of something and then I’ll turn it off. I don’t know if there is something I am doing wrong but it seems to completely total the battery? Using this recording method means I can use my Hero 2 on the slopes all day with no issues, if I do this with the Hero 3 I can flatten it as quick as 30-40mins and that’s without using the WiFi.

On clear crisp days, there’s no doubt about it that the Hero 3 Black edition captures astonishing footage that do show improvements over the Hero 2 but we don’t always film in perfect conditions. In overcast conditions where there is a lack of sun the Hero 3’s quality really drops. Everything looks underexposed so the overall image is much darker than how you would expect it to be. Where as if we compare this to the Hero 2 the image maintains decent brightness and you can see shading much better where as Black Edition has made everything look a lot more defused.

There are however benefits of the Hero 3 Black Edition, you can’t ignore the fact that the Hero 3 records at 120fps@720, the slow motion it offers is just incredible. The human eye can see at 25fps so you can slow down your footage when using this recording mode by approximately 5 times to create an incredible slow motion picture. A thing to bare in mind here though is the laptop or desktop you are using, 120fps is very demanding and you want to be using a computer that can handle it otherwise the feature is useless. The Hero 2 still records at 60fps@720, which is still pretty sharp and if you know what you are doing with your video editing you can slow that up using plugins like Twixtor to make it just a as slow as the Hero 3 Black Edition.

Conclusion, so which camera do you go for? Well to start with as stated the Hero 3 White & Silver Editions are just reshelled Hero 1’s and 2’s with a few new added features so I wouldn’t recommend either of those, especially if you are considering upgrading from your existing Hero 2. The real question is GoPro’s Hero 2 vs Hero 3 Black Edition? If you don’t mind that the Hero 3 is a bit glitchy at the moment (We HOPE this will be fixed by GoPro soon) and you got a couple of quid to spare then having the built in WiFi is a nice bonus and being able to record at 120fps really is breath taking. For most people out there though we recommend the GoPro Hero 2, they’re not only cheaper but they offer much more clarity on overcast days that the Hero 3 really lacks. It may not record at 120fps but as explained, 60fps is still pretty special and can be worked with to make even slower.

Capital Hoist - Logo Development and Web Design

Capital Hoist are a new company that rent building hoists. Here is an initial concept for a logo for them applied to clean minimalist Web Design.

Snowboarding in Bansko, Bulgaria - Video Editing

Even when I'm away on Holiday I'm still filming and creating videos. I was lucky enough to get to go away to Bulgaria for a break away Snowboarding. The conditions were a bit gloomy and overcast so the footage wasn't as well lit as I would of liked it. Still a fun video to shown my time away, mostly filmed on the GoPro Hero 2.