Which GoPro ?

[Frogmogman]

Any advice on which GoPro to buy ?

I’m thinking of the GoPro Max, with a view to attaching it to my radar mast on the starboard quarter.

I understand that the max shoots 360 degree videos, which one can then pan and zoom around in whilst editing, giving the effect if having multiple cameras.

Any views ?

 

[Northern Star]

They are fab cameras and used in broadcast a lot too as the ability to do what you say in the edit makes them very flexible. They were used on the BBC walking with ser produced by Cy Chadwick.

I personally just went cheap and cheerful and got a couple of Veho Muvi K2 4k as I didn't want anything expensive clamped to my boat:

 

[Frogmogman]

Thanks for the advice.

I’m not planning on clamping it permanently to the boat (which already appears to have plenty of expensive kit attached to it). ?.

 

[Ink]

I got a Hero 5 Black for my birthday. Used it a few times but editing was way above my ability so lies in a drawer. Plenty of videos taking up space on my hard drive.

Bought a £40 Chinese copy for my grandson (13) which also lies in a drawer.

"I've got a camera on my phone, Grandad".

Ink

 

[Adios]

Gopro Max has an extremely wide angle lens, very distorted view. They are great for extreme sports and filming things quite close to the camera but the video footage you get from it does not work great for general use. Even the regular gopro has a quite distorted view. The Max does one type of shot well but isn't very versatile.

 

[Frank Holden]

I have SJcams, relatively cheap but work well for me.
Last one I bought was an SJ10Pro Dual Screen
SJ10 Pro Dual Screen • SJCAM Official Website
First one I owned was an SJ4000.

 

[Concerto]

My question is what sort of video do you want to take. Having a camera fixed to a pole on a yacht will not give you good video, except in benign conditions. You will really need a gimble device to get steady images with the horizons level and a lot of the motion of the boat removed. I used to use a small GoPro type camera but it now lies disused. For my Round Britain trip all I am using is my iPhone SE. I am the gimble and in rough weather the motion is acceptable. My phone is waterproof and has a shockproof case. Whilst sailing it lives under the sprayhood ready to be grabbed when needed and I have a charging cable that reaches the cockpit to ensure it has plenty of charge.

When I first started taking videos for my own enjoyment, I never intended to to edit them into short films. Eventually I did start as I had so much footage. Editting is very time consuming. As a rough idea a 10 minute video will take me about 11 hours to edit. I do use lots of very short clips to keep things interesting, but you have to watch every video carefully to decide exactly what you want to use and then cut it accordingly. So if you have plenty of spare time, then spend on a GoPro, if not use you phone. The phone has the advantage of being able to be take videos from many positions, whereas a GoPro on a pole becomes very boring. Have a look at the video in my signature and some of the others I have taken to see what I mean. Please note I am an amateurat video shooting and editing, but a professional sailing video chap saw one of my videos on my boat and complimented what I was doing. His main comment was I should add music and speach, both of which I find boring on many sailing videos.

 

[flaming]

I've been using GoPro, and knock offs, for about 15 years now. There's a lot of solid advice already said, but also some stuff that is outdated.

The absolute first thing that needs saying is that before you go buy any camera, work out who is going to watch the videos. Are you making them just for you to watch, or are you expecting other people to view them?

For me I have 2 main uses for the GoPro - skiing and sailing, and if I didn't have the skiing use, then I wouldn't have bothered with the gopro...

I started off with a gopro, can't remember the designation, but it was the first one that did 1080 HD. It was great for what it did, and I made some good ski vids with it, but sailing wise it was very limited. After a while I decided to buy a new camera, and balked at the price gopro were charging so bought a MUVI. Mistake... It was decent, but it wasn't really up to what GoPro could do, and let me down on a couple of occasions. I'd stopped using it long before I replaced it.
When I was off on a big ski trip last December, I treated myself to a Hero 10. And despite the price I definitely do not regret that... The thing is amazing.

When I started using it for sailing, I played around with the mount points, and actually started using it a lot more than I expected. I quite like this one on the end of the boom....

Then I bought the "Max Mod" lens, which replaces the standard lens on the camera. This allows the camera to self gimbal as well as really stabalise the footage. This opened up the option of mounting it on our (dynema) backstay for fully gimballed and stabilised footage, no heavy gimballed mount required. The only disadvantage is that the horizon shows some fisheye lens effects. For example.

If you concentrate on the horizon and the sky, you can see the effect of the horizon lock. Looks a bit odd at very fast speed as the boat is obviously pitching a bit, even in the light, but the stabilisation really is very good.

Note that the 1st video is about as long a clip as you'd want of sailing at full speed... The second clip is I think 12x speed. Neither clip has been anywhere near a computer, both were transferred wirelessly to my phone and edited with the GoPro app, which is surprisingly user friendly, and perfect for this sort of use, short clips to send to the crew or stick on social media. Or in the second case to the owner (who wasn't on board) to show that we'd found a nice upwind mode against our main rivals! I think each took about 5 min to create, no longer. (second is fairly low quality deliberately as I originally only intended it to be sent by whatsapp - I only uploaded it to youtube to link here as a demo)

I can't see me creating longer sailing videos any more... Maybe I might do one for Cowes this year, but they are a massive pain... My ski trip one is 7 minutes long took me the best part of a week to put together. And 7 days of 3-4 hour races is a huge amount of footage to sort through... Mostly I will run the camera to have the footage in case of a protest (not that it's often useful....) and then clip out nice little bits like above to either send to the crew or stick on social media. Maybe I'll make something of all the little clips.... Dunno.... The biggest issue with sailing and just "having it running" is battery life. I now have a case thing that incorporates a big battery that I think will do about 4-5 hours of continuous recording. Will probably clip out a few minutes of footage each day then clear the memory card.

 

[sailorbenji]

Any advice on which GoPro to buy ?

I’m thinking of the GoPro Max, with a view to attaching it to my radar mast on the starboard quarter.

I understand that the max shoots 360 degree videos, which one can then pan and zoom around in whilst editing, giving the effect if having multiple cameras.

Any views ?

If considering 360 camera, which is great on a yacht for all the reasons you mention, then the Insa360 range well outperforms the GoPro Max nowadays. The One RS has just launched and is by far the sharpest 360 footage I've seen.

 

[matt1]

If considering 360 camera, which is great on a yacht for all the reasons you mention, then the Insa360 range well outperforms the GoPro Max nowadays. The One RS has just launched and is by far the sharpest 360 footage I've seen.

I love my insta 360. This was my first rodeo with it so it’s a bit all over the place as I was figuring out which aspects / angles work and which are too distorted, but you get the idea. Someone half competent could get some really nice footage

 

[Frank Holden]

I like single axis stabilizers although they are thin on the ground.
They give a good result either on the boat to hold the horizon steady or ashore in my ute driving through creeks and gullies and bouncing across plowed paddocks.
One of mine is a Wenpod which I picked up for far fewer $$$$ than this one WenPod X1+ Wearable Digital Gimbal Stabilizer For GoPro

Works OK on the SJcams.

My other one is a Quark Quark
More expensive but works well.
Typically I mount them on the corner of the dodger looking aft or on the taffrail looking forward.