GoPro Hero 3 (black) First Day Review

[Jiggles]

Alrighty then, I got my new GoPro today and I was very excited. I'll take you through everything I've experienced with it today from opening the package to editing the videos.

So, I get my gopro 3 and first things first I have to say, **** GOPRO PACKAGING. It looks all pretty but **** this thing is a total bitch to open. If you want to keep your packaging all neat and tidy then I hope to god you are a patient well caffeinated surgeon. srsly gopro?

Alright, so I open up my packaging and get my camera out and the first thing I want to do is set it up and test it out. Unfortunately gopro put two gigantic middle fingers on the box telling me to go **** myself



Wait one goddamn donkey ****ing second, not only does it not come with the manual so that I can set it up, but I can't even goddamn ****ing use this piece of **** until I update it? ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME!? If I buy this goddamn camera before a hiking trip or something, I need a ****ing computer just to goddamn use it!? **** you gopro, seriously. Your other cameras came with manuals why not this one? WHY ISNT THIS THING UPDATED!? Did you spend all your goddamn money on butt ****ing packaging? For real? You didn't include a manual so that you could include a buncha goddamn bullshit I'm just going to ****ing throw away? **** that, **** you, that is gay.

So ****, I go to the gopro website to download the update and.... I have to install ****ing java? What the **** really? I don't want that ****** software on my system but its the only goddamn way you will ****ing update it? Jesus **** use flash or better ****ing idea, don't auto ****ing detect the camera. God ****ing stupid ****! Jesus banana crackers! ARG!

Ok ****, so I install piss ass java and I let it run its ****, I haven't bothered with the manual yet since it needs this stupid update and then this bullshit happens....

"Before using your HERO3 camera, an update is required"

"an update is required"

"update... required"



....



At this point I'm ready to take the camera outside smear it in dog **** and light it on fire. But I didn't do that, any other product and I'd have done that. But this is an amazeballs gopro. It gets another chance

Don't you ****ing blow it

I set the camera up, time date, resolution, sync the wifi remote. I tried the app, it doesn't ****ing work. Spent a good goddamn mother ****ing HALF A FICK FACK ****ING HOUR TO GODAAMA:LDNG:OAIBEGPOAEBNG:ASDLFkhLAHSDF

But the app won't work until december 14th

Well gee, thanks for ****ing telling me

**** you
****
everything

balls

Ok wifi remote, sure its pretty cool but idk what the hell I'm ever going to use it for. It's neat that it will sync to 50 cameras so I guess its cool that you can start them all at the same time but really, I couldn't care for it that much, meh, maybe if I get a second one.

I then tested out my accessories on the gopro. I'm happy to report that yes indeed it is compatible with all previous accessories. My HERO1 battery pack fits onto and charges the 3 even though they have different size batteries. The battery pack door also fits on the new hero3 case so as ridiculous as it looks, yes you can use it.





Ok so lets test this thing out! It can take some pretty amazing pictures but I couldn't give 2 shits about that. It will record up to 4k video but really, when the **** am I going to find that useful. What I want, is that sexy shmexy 1080p@60fps. Oh yeah baby, slather it on me, thats the good stuff.

I tested out the different angle modes, there is wide medium and narrow. Wide is super duper fisheye, pretty much what you will always want and then others. I figured narrow would be like a regular camera or something but its not, or it doesn't appear to be. It seems like it just sort of zooms in.

Here's my thinking behind it, the camera has this 4k ability right, so the narrow is just zoomed in on a center square of 1080 out of that 4k. It is still fish eye ish although the center of a 4k image is going to be the least fishy, so yea its less fishy but its also zoomed in and it doesn't look as great as the standard wide. Vid attached below of each

Link to original page on YouTube.

Alright well, that's a bit of a disappointment, but on the other hand, the video is goddamn ****ing amazing.

Ok so then I charged the camera up to see what I could get it to do. I was going for a night ride and wanted to see how the night footage does. The day looks amazing, all gopros do, but where gopro has failed before is dark night footage so let's see how it does. Now my windshield is dirty as **** but it still does a pretty damn good job but I ran into another problem

The battery life is ****ing atrocious. I got one hour of footage out of it and I don't even have the video enhancing software Protune enabled. (Protune has less compression and gives a better image and does all this fancy pants **** to make it look awesome) Nor do I have wifi on, nor any of the other cool options like take pics while recording video. Just standard 1080p @ 60fps video.

Maybe its the 60fps killing it? It does have to work twice as hard as my other gopro, but I didn't spend $200 more over the white version to NOT ****ing record 60 fps. Thats the whole goddamn point of the black edition. My other gopros will generally get me about 2 hours of footage, that's without the battery bacpac.

So this is a point of lameness. I ordered the hero 3 bacpac which will double the battery life to 2 hours and it makes it about the same size as the original gopro, well thats not really a big deal to me, but it is more goddamn money I have to spend. I'd have been happier if they kept the camera bigger and left the awesome battery life it had before. But the video is nice, so, consolation prize, get that stuffed horsey.

Oh another thing, the camera now transfers video faster through its mini B cable. The older gopros went slow as ****, the new one is about 2-3x faster. I'm also glad they kept the mini B, I know that **** is outdated but it is so much easier that ALL the gopros use the same cables, so I only need one. That's actually a really awesome point. EVERY goddamn accessory is compatible. ALL the mounts ALL the accessories, ****ing everything. For real, good ****ing job on that ****, don't be like apple those ****ing pansies. Lightning cable ooooooh its faster. **** yo lightning cable, that **** is gayer than watching straight up ass pounding gay porn.

I have 3 gopros and all their accessories and all their mounts and EVERY ****ing thing I have for these cameras fits perfectly in my RollPro 3. Boom check this **** its ****ing awesome, all the doors, batteries, mounts, cameras, ****ING EVERYTHING FITS ****ING PERFECT IN HERE. HELL TO THE **** YEA MUTHER ****ER



And then it rolls up and I carry that **** and I look like a ****ing badass and no one ****s with me cuz I got all these ****ing cameras all organized and people are like **** I wish I was that guy cuz that **** is legit.

Alright so time for the actual footage, the night stuff is great, the day stuff is great, this camera has a ton of features, unfortunately it is lacking out of the box and lacking battery life. Do yourself a favor and pick up the bacpac or run it in a lower resolution which should extend the battery.

Link to original page on YouTube.

Who likes holy ****ing **** that is so ****ing slow and smooth what the **** I can't look away this is ****ing awesome... mo?

Link to original page on YouTube.

Here's my face at 240fps

Link to original page on YouTube.

Doggie Slomo

Link to original page on YouTube.

Here's 5 minutes of dogs catching food at 1/10 speed

Link to original page on YouTube.

Link to original page on YouTube.

Any requests for footage of certain things I'll be happy to do. Just let me know what you want me to test and where to test it.

[JELY1990]

Nice review, I'm planning on getting a black edition soon. Good to know I'm gonna need a battery pack or a couple extra batteries with this thing... 1 hour is pretty bad.
And I actually like that they don't include a manual anymore. Almost anyone that's going to get a gopro has internet so including a manual is a waste of paper.

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by JELY1990

Nice review, I'm planning on getting a black edition soon. Good to know I'm gonna need a battery pack or a couple extra batteries with this thing... 1 hour is pretty bad.
And I actually like that they don't include a manual anymore. Almost anyone that's going to get a gopro has internet so including a manual is a waste of paper.

You don't understand, you will have no idea what those symbols and letters mean, its extremely convenient to have a small manual that tells you what they are so you can set up your camera easily. It's extremely inconvenient to have to google it on your smart phone and download the pdf and then look through it

[CZroe]

Ugh. Talk about anti-climactic. Date-limited features? Misleading and pointlessly complicated first-time setup? At least the video quality is there. Think you can power it from one of those USB battery packs like that Chinese rubber Lithium-Ion battery bracelet? I wanted to glue a few snaps on my helmet to mount that when I want extended battery life.

I think I'm going for the Sony WiFi Action Cam as soon as I can find a good price. Fry's advertises it for $300 this week, but that's MSRP, right?

[Jiggles]

Ugh sony fail cam, I'd take a gopro any day

[JELY1990]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

You don't understand, you will have no idea what those symbols and letters mean, its extremely convenient to have a small manual that tells you what they are so you can set up your camera easily. It's extremely inconvenient to have to google it on your smart phone and download the pdf and then look through it

Oh okay well I generally look at a manual once and then don't look at it again. But I do have a really good memory so maybe I'm not the norm. Like I'm the guy who will remember a friend of a friend's birth date after not seeing them for 2 years.

[csmith12]

GoPro trolled you with the update. hahahahahahahah

Cool review but that is quite the potty mouth you have there. lol

[n4mwd]

Looks like they really suck for night riding.

Can it at least be permanently mounted to the bike, wired to the battery, come on automatically when the bike is started, overwrite old video to make room and be retrievable and watchable from a smart phone with wifi?

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

Looks like they really suck for night riding.

Can it at least be permanently mounted to the bike, wired to the battery, come on automatically when the bike is started, overwrite old video to make room and be retrievable and watchable from a smart phone with wifi?

Are u kidding? The night shots were awesome

[alex.s]

damnit jiggles. its a hero 3. use it for what it is meant to be used for, 4K!!!

[rojoracing53]

Sorry but what's 4k?
What was the k on the old cameras?

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by rojoracing53

Sorry but what's 4k?
What was the k on the old cameras?

Sorry, 4k or 4000p is the resolution it can record at, like 1080p

[rojoracing53]

Night shot done on ninja1000?

[Jiggles]

Yep

[rojoracing53]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Sorry, 4k or 4000p is the resolution it can record at, like 1080p

Sounds cool but I don't have a 4000p tv so what would I use that for besides shortening the already none existent battery life?

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by rojoracing53

Sounds cool but I don't have a 4000p tv so what would I use that for besides shortening the already none existent battery life?

Actually it contains the same amount of information as 1080p@60fps so I imagine the battery life would be the same. And all I can imagine you would want it for is for a projector, or, if you wanted to be sure to capture a license plate in the event of an accident, 4k would be far clearer that 1080

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Are u kidding? The night shots were awesome

I went back and looked at it again. The word "awesome" is not the one I would have chosen. Maybe "fair" or "Better than some". I'm looking at the exposure level and not the resolution. The resolution is good. The camera did OK under the street lights, but then flopped when you were in a dark area with just the bikes headlights.

Its still an all around good camera I think. I don't think it would work for me though unless it has a continuous power function. The wifi is nice.

I'm not sure why the black and white versions of the Hero 3 are so radically different. The black has the 4K and the white doesn't. The white can only do 60fps in 720p or lower mode and 1080 is the highest res mode.

[Alex]

Jason (rojoracing) has his gopro wired up to power on the bike, via a USB adapter, and the camera does have a Looping Video mode. Here's a link to the manual; it's on page 35. There is a one-button mode so that when it powers up, one button starts the recording in your preferred settings right away. But it doesn't look like there is a straightforward way to have it power on and start recording automatically without at least that one-button interaction.

[rojoracing53]

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

I went back and looked at it again. The word "awesome" is not the one I would have chosen. Maybe "fair" or "Better than some". I'm looking at the exposure level and not the resolution. The resolution is good. The camera did OK under the street lights, but then flopped when you were in a dark area with just the bikes headlights.

Its still an all around good camera I think. I don't think it would work for me though unless it has a continuous power function. The wifi is nice.

I'm not sure why the black and white versions of the Hero 3 are so radically different. The black has the 4K and the white doesn't. The white can only do 60fps in 720p or lower mode and 1080 is the highest res mode.

I'm not sure what you would expect when the only light source is the stock headlight from a motorcycle. It's not a night vision camera and it does very well with night shots

[Jiggles]

Here is a night shot with the gopro 1, its time lapsed (from original raw video) but you get the idea

Link to original page on YouTube.

[n4mwd]

They are getting really close, but I want something that I can mount candidly on the bike and have it run all the time that the bike is running. And preferably record telemetry such as speed and GPS location. I've seen some low res cameras that will do that and I may have to go that route. I would naturally prefer a hires camera. It might be possible to crack open a gopro3 and hotwire the power button and hook it to a little startup circuit.

The "4K" rate is just specsmanship. They mean 2160p which is twice the lines of 1080p. Still, that's pretty impressive, but I guess they think "4K" sounds better. The 2160p is roughly equivalent to 35mm snapshot film and a little less than 70mm cinematic film in terms of average resolution. It blows away 35mm cinematic motion picture film. And the old 16mm cinematic film is laying in the dust somewhere back in the 1990's.

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Here is a night shot with the gopro 1, its time lapsed (from original raw video) but you get the idea

That just proves that the Hero 3 is better than the Hero 1. The Hero 1 night shot exposure level is totally unacceptable. The Hero3 is passable, but by no means "good". I am also assuming that the blurriness of the video is due to the time lapsing and wasn't on the original video.

I did look up the specs a little and it said that the Hero 3 doesn't have image stabilization which really puzzles me. Seems like on a camera that is designed to be worn or stuck to things that image stabilization would be a standard option.

But don't misunderstand me, the Hero 3 looks like a great little camera.

[Jiggles]

Oh well thats annoying, just call it 2160p, stupid

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

That just proves that the Hero 3 is better than the Hero 1. The Hero 1 night shot exposure level is totally unacceptable. The Hero3 is passable, but by no means "good". I am also assuming that the blurriness of the video is due to the time lapsing and wasn't on the original video.

I did look up the specs a little and it said that the Hero 3 doesn't have image stabilization which really puzzles me. Seems like on a camera that is designed to be worn or stuck to things that image stabilization would be a standard option.

But don't misunderstand me, the Hero 3 looks like a great little camera.

Image stabilization is a bit of a joke, its all software run. It's really unnecessary and can be fixed post production

[Jiggles]

Also, I don't get what you want out of a camera. What camera has a good enough night shot for you?

This is certainly better than any camera I've seen

[jpbear]

I have been using the white edition. It has only a single mode shooting (Wide - no medium or narrow). doesnt have Protune mode (sucks!). The only killer feature it has over the Hero2 is the built in Wifi and the phone app..

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by jpbear

I have been using the white edition. It has only a single mode shooting (Wide - no medium or narrow). doesnt have Protune mode (sucks!). The only killer feature it has over the Hero2 is the built in Wifi and the phone app..

And its smaller. And I looked in the manual, it states that it does have protune, perhaps with an update?

[Jiggles]

Ok guys, who likes slo mo?

Who likes super slo mo?

Who likes holy ****ing **** that is so ****ing slow and smooth what the **** I can't look away this is ****ing awesome... mo?

Link to original page on YouTube.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

The "4K" rate is just specsmanship. They mean 2160p which is twice the lines of 1080p. Still, that's pretty impressive, but I guess they think "4K" sounds better.

"4K" isn't a GoPro creation, it is the next level of resolution above 1080p for high-end home projectors and similar equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
http://www.4kdownload.com/faq/faq-what-is-4k-video

[Jiggles]

4k shmore k. Here's my face at 240fps

Link to original page on YouTube.

[n4mwd]

You are right that the image can be stabilized post production, but it costs you resolution. If the camera does it right, it shoots the video a little bigger (say 1200p) and then crops it to keep the image stable at 1080p. I've seen cinematic cameras designed for motorcycle use that can be tilted 45 degrees and still produce a flat untilted picture. I'm pretty sure they cost a bit more than a GoPro.

As far as what I want in a Ninjacam, the Hero3 is pretty close, but not there yet. Looks like some people have figured out to power it from the bike, but not automatically start it. I want a concealed, permanent mount camera, powered from the bike, with wifi, gps, and another one in the rear.

[Jiggles]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

You are right that the image can be stabilized post production, but it costs you resolution. If the camera does it right, it shoots the video a little bigger (say 1200p) and then crops it to keep the image stable at 1080p. I've seen cinematic cameras designed for motorcycle use that can be tilted 45 degrees and still produce a flat untilted picture. I'm pretty sure they cost a bit more than a GoPro.

As far as what I want in a Ninjacam, the Hero3 is pretty close, but not there yet. Looks like some people have figured out to power it from the bike, but not automatically start it. I want a concealed, permanent mount camera, powered from the bike, with wifi, gps, and another one in the rear.

Why don't you just mount a computer?

[alex.s]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Why don't you just mount a computer?

millions of teenage nerds have asked themselves the same question.

[Jiggles]

lulz

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by Alex

"4K" isn't a GoPro creation, it is the next level of resolution above 1080p for high-end home projectors and similar equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
http://www.4kdownload.com/faq/faq-what-is-4k-video

Yeah, but its still pretty stupid to switch from horizontal line to vertical line counts. Its still specsmanship no matter who started it. Since with a 16x9 aspect ratio, the vertical lines will always greatly outnumber the horizontal ones. Just saying 2160p as an extension of 1080p isn't good enough for them I guess.

Originally Posted by Jiggles

4k shmore k. Here's my face at 240fps

Jiggles, your pool needs cleaning. You have also proven that the Hero3 doesn't float. BTW, is the face one going to be your new avatar?

EDIT: Looks like the answer to the last one is YES.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

I want a concealed, permanent mount camera, powered from the bike, with wifi, gps, and another one in the rear.

All possible with today's technology. But not available anywhere near the $300 - $400 price point.

Originally Posted by n4mwd

Yeah, but its still pretty stupid to switch from horizontal line to vertical line counts. Its still specsmanship no matter who started it. Since with a 16x9 aspect ratio, the vertical lines will always greatly outnumber the horizontal ones. Just saying 2160p as an extension of 1080p isn't good enough for them I guess.

Read the second link, and it goes into a little more detail. 4K encompasses a couple of different resolutions that are all within that same class.

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

Why don't you just mount a computer?

Tempting. I actually did look at the picoITX systems. Which are complete computers running Windows XP that are the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Unless GoPro can come through for me, that's probably how I'm going to do it.

[DennyV]

just mount a Nikon DSLR such as the d600 with a VR lens onto your bike then if you guys want amazing night shots and to be really clear, just don't wreck with it

[jpbear]

Originally Posted by Jiggles

And its smaller. And I looked in the manual, it states that it does have protune, perhaps with an update?

I remember reading it in the Manual but it doesnt have it yet. The option in the wifi app shows it as disabled as well.

Still I am happy that it was 200$ below the price point for the Black..