Hero 3 Advice

[JSun]

Sorry if this has all been discussed in another thread...

My wife just bought me a GoPro Hero 3+ Black for Christmas. A couple questions:

1. How long can I expect the battery to last (record time)? Is it worth it to buy the extra battery pack?

2. What "mode" do you shoot on? There are about 8 different options (it seems like) from 1080p wide to 1080p to oh I don't know... Any suggestions? It will be mounted on my helmet.

Any other advice for using the camera?

Thanks in advance.

Joe

 

[freak485]

I am in the same boat got a hero 3 black and wanted to know the same quetions. I did some recording in 1440 or whatever it is the setting above 1080p and its really nice image but dont know if its needed only about 30 min of vid and my 16g mem is full.

 

[TheHardWay]

I carry a spare battery, especially when out riding, because the cold air affects battery life. And if you use the WiFi remote/smartphone app, even more battery drain.

As for settings, I've been playing around with the different 1080 settings, and haven't quite decided what I like best. I finally got a computer fast enough to process and edit 1080, so now I just need to shoot the video to see what is the best for me.

 

[freak485]

i see on gorpos website it says you need a class 10 if you plan on recording in 4k and 2.7k do you still need a class 10 for 1080p or can you get away with a regular?

 

[TheHardWay]

You can use a regular HD type card as far as I know for 1080


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dartos]

Gizmodo article on GoPro Hero 3

This was taken from the article. It a good read.

The biggest ding against the Hero 3 Black was lousy battery life. GoPro has addressed this by swapping out the 1050mAh (3.885Wh) battery in the Hero 3, for an 1180mAh (4.37Wh) battery in the 3+, and doing some software optimization. We did an independent test, running both cameras at 1080p/24fps. The original Hero 3 Black went one hour and 37 minutes of continuous shooting, and the Hero 3+ Black went two hours and nine, which is a very respectable 25-percent improvement over its predecessor. (GoPro claims a 30-percent improvement. Maybe it depends on the mode you're in.) That's definitely better, but it's still about a half-hour shorter than the first edition of the Sony Action Cam.

 

[Minten]

I suggest using a UHS-1 card no matter what. I currently have two Sandisk Extreme SDXC cards (http://amzn.to/1dYJXrf). Sandisk DOES have a throttled bitrate and jumps around a bit.

I have yet to do any other testing on memory cards.

Hopefully I can find one that has fast write speeds and the sun comes out so I can get some good bright light testing footage.

 

[TheHardWay]

Here are a couple of dedicated Go Pro forums. Lots of info here on the cameras, cards, and anything else related to the Go Pro. I remember reading a thread about a series of tests a guy did on different memory cards, and what worked out best for him.

http://goprouser.freeforums.org

http://www.goproforums.com