Just before Christmas 2021, I had a clear out of old electrical items. One of those items was a GoPro Hero 4 camera that I think I bought back in around 2014. I definitely used it – to very good effect – on the cycle from Spain to Norway in the summer of 2015. Athough there was a very small amount of superficial damage to the Hero 4, it still worked fine. The battery life was poor, however, and it was limited to 1080 HD when it came to the picture quality. With cycling the Baltic this coming summer in mind, I have just bought a replacement GoPro – the Hero 10 – and things have moved on somewhat…
I purchased what GoPro refer to as the ‘creator edition’; basically a bundle of products that are heavily discounted (although I suspect GoPro products, a bit like sofas from DFS, are rarely sold at their list price…). Here’s the blurb from the company, under the headline ‘Hollywood in your hand”(!):
“Introducing HERO10 Black Creator Edition. 5K image quality and Emmyยฎ award-winning stabilization. Integrated battery grip, tripod, remote, audio mic, and LED light put ultimate creative power in the palm of your hand.”
GoPro.com
Yesterday, the box of equipment arrived. It was time to make one of these…
Curious how my mind told me I had previously owned either a Hero 3 or Hero 5 when, in fact, it was the average of the two – the Hero 4. Upon reading the booklet that came with the camera, I learnt that the Hero 10 isn’t waterproof – hence the on-screen correction – although the camera does appear to be much more robust than its predecessor from 2014.
UPDATE: According to online videos that Iโve been watching tonight, the Hero 10 is waterproof to 30 metresโฆ #ffs
The proof of the pudding is in the eating; the proof of a video camera is in the making of a film. Below is a short one that I have put together today after clamping the Hero 10 to the bike this morning for my morning cycle to feed my brother’s cats. I chose the ‘time lapse’ mode and recorded a five-minute film, edited down to two minutes for the sections of the route that are off road. This is where you would expect considerable camera shake. Did I get any? Take a look:
That, I would argue, is astonishing. Image stabilisation is nothing new – modern iPhones do it very well for example – but I have yet to see it done quite as well as the Hero 10. It’s interesting to compare the up and down movement of the top of the front wheel (that is visible at the bottom of the picture) and the rest of the image which is rock-steady.
It’s a cycle that I am repeating daily over a period of three weeks while my brother and his wife are visiting their daughter in Australia. The perfect opportunity to make a film combining iPhone, DJI Mini 2 drone and now GoPro footage recorded over several days and seamlessly edited together to tell the story of just one ride. The cats will, of course, be featured: the ultimate cycling-cat film…
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