another GoPro thread

first and foremost, I do hereby promise not to make any bouldering videos with trance music for the soundtrack.

Now, with that out of the way, I want to hear from anyone who has the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition. How do you like it? What's good/bad? I understand the battery life sucks, but other than that what is your opinion and have you used it while climbing and with what mounts?

Thanks pals,
Michael C

Dunno if you've seen the amazon reviews..

amazon.com/GoPro-HD-HERO3-B…

They're quite.. um.. mixed.

yeah, quite mixed indeed.

It seems like in terms of doing what it's made to do, it's awesome. There's not a better POV camera out there. But there's a lot of complaints about it freezing up, or "bricking". And that the battery life is short.

I have no problem getting a second battery, at $20 that's not a big deal.

As far as all the complaints about the camera freezing up, bricking, taking a dump, etc., that has got me a bit hesitant. It seems like if you get a good one, without any issues, you're golden. But the negative to positive review ration is definitely a bit lopsided. And it sounds like GoPro customer service sucks. But, if bought through Amazon (as I planned on doing anyway) they have a friendly return/replace policy.

Man, I really want one of these too!

I recently got for the holiday the Hero3 silver edition.
No complaints. Battery life seems short over my regular camera, but still reasonable. A second battery seems necessary for sure. Doesn't seem as short as my buddy's who has the black edition.

Unless you need the super high quality or really want the controller sans using your smart phone to do the same, the silver does it just fine.

-Jon

Been messing with my friend's Black a bit. Yeah I did notice it froze a few times but just hard restarting it (remove battery) always solved that. That and didn't have a problem when I was out on the trail just pushing start and stop. Also unless you plan on doing the stupid low frame rate 4K shooting, or want to do 1080 slowmo stuff you could get away with the Silver.

I would be interested to see a shoot out between the Black and Silver under a bunch of different lighting conditions.

Got the black for x-mas and played with it down in la paz mexico for 10 days, seven of which I was camping with no power. Purchased 2 spare batteries so that it would last for as long as I needed it to. The original battery seems to last abot 2 days wit no use and a few hours of intermittent use. One of the second batteries won't hold a charge for longer than a day if in the camera. The third was still going strong in the camera after 4 days. I had not changed any of the original settings. Think this is more of a battery quality issue thana camera issue.

The camera took great pictures and video, though there were some were the auto balance wasn't sufficient. Usually low light pointed towards a brightly lit object.

Finally I wished I had checked out the camera prior to leaving because I found out just how easy it is to get your fingers in the pictures if you hold it the wrong way. Now I know. Granted you can also change the wide angle setting, but I never tried that.

Just get the GoPro 2, the difference between the 2 and 3 is marginal.