Got my hands on a pre-release at work. It's 12fps at 4k. Writes h.264 to the card. 4K doesn't look great at 4K (due to sensor quality, and h264 bitrate), but sampling it down to 2K makes a sort-of acceptable 2K.
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GoPro Hero 3
- Thread starter george-brooks
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That looked pretty good, considering the small sensor and lens construction. If I knew I didn't NEED 4K for anything, I think I'd default to shooting at the 2.7K.
Is the 4K even useful at 12fps? I will probably only ever use it for time lapse work, and downsample to 1080. Will it be ok for that?
Good to hear the 2.7k is passable. I think the majority of the time I'll use the 1080p 60, thats what I really bought it for over the now cheaper 2.
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Depends on what you need I guess. The 2 is basically the silver edition 3, so if you're planning on using a wifi remote or (more realistically) using the iPhone app, go for the 3 silver edition so you dont have to spend another $80 on the wifi bacpac. If not, go for the 2. I'm thinking of buying a 2 now as well to use as a B cam.
If there's any chance you'd want to use your phone/tablet as a viewfinder (even if it's just to setup the camera) get the new one. You can add it to the older models, but it pretty much negates the price drop on the GoPro2. All the newer models have it built in. The improved sound a image quality is an added bonus.
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Were you using the protune mode, or the normal one? On the gopro2 protune upped the bit rate, but I don't know how if it would on the 3 since the bit rate has to be a lot higher for 4k anyway.
BTW, could you post a quick frame grab of an ISO 12233 chart shot? (Source: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/res-chart.html ) I'm really interested in how the lens perform at 4k. (The Chinese action cam I've linked to above has pretty good true resolution at 1080p (as opposed to teh much worse 720p) so it's not impossible this thing also has an excellent lens.
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Yup, hope it was caused by the low(er) bitrate and can be fixed by upping it.
I'm also interested in what exactly were the problems: mudding while moving (aka Pana GH-1 mudding, also common with other Pana P&S cameras released also in 2009; for example, the 720p TZ7)? Or, plain bad lens resolving power, which surely can't be helped by upping the bitrate?
Thanks for finding that! Clears things up. Can anyone post the full resolutions? Like what does 2.7K mean in terms of aspect ratio? Are we talking 2700x1536~ and is the 4K 4096x2160/2304 or is it 4K HD at 3840x2160? I think that needs to get cleared up....also frame grabs on an ISO 12233 chart would be GREAT to see how many lines this thing can actually resolve...I think 2.7K and 1440p would be the best choices but again I don't know what the full dimensions of these entail....
I am not affiliated with this site but want to pass on the deal. MPgear.com Hero 3 pre-order includes a free 32 Gb card you can upgrade to 64 GB as well for a small fee. I searched the net and found a discount code for the site, "CPZERO" and saved about 45 bucks or so. Needless to say, I placed my pre-order and am excited. Just wanted to pass this info on.
Have a Silver edition
My Silver edition arrived yesterday. The form factor is actually a big plus for me. I wear my GP on my kayak helmet, so size and weight makes massive difference. I have uploaded a few bits and bobs to my kayak site -
http://www.unsponsored.co.uk/press/
My black edition is on pre-order.
My Silver edition arrived yesterday. The form factor is actually a big plus for me. I wear my GP on my kayak helmet, so size and weight makes massive difference. I have uploaded a few bits and bobs to my kayak site -
http://www.unsponsored.co.uk/press/
My black edition is on pre-order.
Is there any noticeable quality increase from the Hero2 with the Silver edition?
Can't wait to get my Black edition! Desperately need it for a project I'm working on.
That would be nice, but its totally unnecessary right now. Very few of us even have the monitors to support 2k+ even, and no one is watching it online or has a TV above 1080p. What I would like to see in the next gen of DSLRs is 1080p with 4:2:2 color and max frame rates around 120+.
Well I mean unless you want to mount a RED Scarlet on your head...Not saying the quality is even close because its not but the GoPro is a good way to acquire a specific look of footage and now you can have a bit more resolution to work with....didnt mean it would be on par at all just for first person "C camera" shots...believe me I know how far ahead the Scarlet is haha.
Agreed, got a little excited for a second
. What I really NEED right now is 1080p (no line skipping or pixel binning) with 4:2:2 and 10bit...when color grading the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 is night and day...also chroma keying is easier and cleaner in 4:2:2...Im fine with 1080p48 or 1080p60 for now...720p120 might be a cool feature...I could see 1080p60+ being added by doing anamorphic resolutions like DVCPROHD so say 1280x1080p72, not full raster but better than upscaling 720p thats already line skipped to hell...I like AVC-Intra but I hate the AVCHD folder structure and just want a nice 100mbps H.264 or even MPEG-2 with 10-bit 4:2:2 in a .MOV container...I could then transcode to ProRes 422 and life would be amazing.
Well I mean unless you want to mount a RED Scarlet on your head...Not saying the quality is even close because its not but the GoPro is a good way to acquire a specific look of footage and now you can have a bit more resolution to work with....didnt mean it would be on par at all just for first person "C camera" shots...believe me I know how far ahead the Scarlet is haha.
Agreed, got a little excited for a second
a 50 mb/s data rate would be nice too to make DSLRs broadcast safe!
I was under the impression there had been some changes, specially to help flatten out the fisheye effect.
Well, you shoot (and PP / archive) in 4k now and don't end up having to re-shoot the entire thing when 4k TV's become common.
Just to make sure: That is only partly true.
The 50 fps are not a limit, but the European standard that is being broadcast. While they often are the standard on camcorders, they are not a hard limit of any sort. The Canon 550D (T2i in the US) shoots with 60 fps in Europe just like in the US. So does the Sony A77 (which is neither Canon nor Nikon).
The 29 minute recording limit is very true for most DSLRs, since in Europe "camcorders" are taxed at a higher rate and for the camera to be treated as a still camera, it mustn't record more than 30 minutes in one go. However, this limit was never present in actual camcorders. All camcorders (including the older GoPros) record as long as your battery and storage medium will last.
Just to clarify.