Go Pro Hero 3? Camera Talk

[Marcus]

Just seen yummi r6 with his setup and his camera is sweet as fuck, he runs a go pro hero 3 and it looks amazing for £200 considering the drift ghost s is £320.
Do you guys have a specific thought on go pros? im really considering one now ive seen the price, quality, and all the attachments i can buy?

 

[Lurch]

Consensus (loosely) is GoPro has the edge on picture, Drift has helmet mount win hands down (bar chin mount).

You need to really decide on what you want, true picture or nice picture. The HD Ghost makes nicer looking pictures than the Ghost S, but to me, the colours on the S are much more faithful.

 

[SwissMotard]

Consensus (loosely) is GoPro has the edge on picture, Drift has helmet mount win hands down (bar chin mount).

You need to really decide on what you want, true picture or nice picture. The HD Ghost makes nicer looking pictures than the Ghost S, but to me, the colours on the S are much more faithful.

Lurch is spot on, although chin mount is easily the best mounting position

 

[Lurch]

I have to say the problem with comparing cams via YT is that while X has the same camera as Y, the different edit processes show results poles apart.

 

[SwissMotard]

Once again I agree with Lurch, also YouTube cripples camera quality no matter what you do, unless you have a mostly stationary shot.

If you're never going to use your footage outside of YouTube, you can save a lot of money by just getting any camera that supports 1080p60 and not worrying too much about the PQ.

 

[Arctic Pride]

most peoples problems with video quality is in editing and rendering...

 

[Lurch]

Wondering what YT would do if I shoved it a ProRes422 file

 

[Arctic Pride]

probably compress it even worse, seems YT looks for very specific details in the files...

 

[AstroCycle]

My only comment is that I the Go Pro being a little fisheye makes you look like your going faster and makes everything look further away. So when I point something out it is a little hard to see on the playback.

 

[SwissMotard]

Just change your field of view to medium/narrow.

 

[RideLondon]

Changing FOV just zooms in on the image, so it's just like cropping it later in post-production.

If it looks like a fishbowl, you're probably using Superview? Use 1080/60fps with wide FOV. Works well for most

 

[SwissMotard]

Incorrect.

 

[RideLondon]

Sorry, which part is incorrect?

 

[RideLondon]

Reducing the FOV means that the camera uses a smaller area of the sensor, meaning that it uses fewer pixels before compressing the image. I challenge you to find a visible difference between doing that, and simply cropping a wide FOV image in post-production.

 

[SwissMotard]

Haha Lurch, you make me laugh

Back to the topic, taking a 1080p image and cropping it is obviously going to result in a sub-1080p image (let's say 720p), while taking a crop from a 4kx4k sensor (as long as you don't go below a 1080p crop, which is what "narrow" gives you) will obviously result in having a 1080p image.

The differences will be very obvious, just like the difference between 720p and 1080p is huge.

You are correct saying that cropping the image from the sensor has the potential to look worse than using the full sensor (depending on the sub pixel blending method, which GoPro have not released any details of), but according to /r/GoPro the only differences visible are due to the cheap lens. In any case it will be far, far, far better to crop at the sensor than in post.

FYI I record at 1080p60/wide myself too, but AstroCycle doesn't like that view and he won't lose any quality switching to medium/narrow.

 

[Lurch]

There was an article on FOV narrowing and image cropping and why you shouldn't do it. Ill try and find it later.

 

[WhiteNinja]

At the OP the bulk of people have given you more in depth opinions and differences which I imagine will help you immensely. That being said for the price difference epecially for someone starting out I think the gopro would be a better bang for your buck. Could use the "saved" money for additional items in your set up.

I record 720/60 because I don't feel a need personally for the 1080. It goes up on YouTube and when I watch videos I never change the quality to 1080.

So for vlogging purposes both cameras will get the job done mounting/look/interface will be personal preference.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but I heard the audio is better from a gopro compared to the drift? Confirmation on that would be nice.

 

[ShadowBoxer]

I use GoPro and have always mounted it to my chin guard.
Except when the camera is on the dash and pointing at the helmet.