GoPro 3 Has Arrived !

Bill Patterson November 26, 2012 at 4:11pm

Video test of the current Hero Competition.

Bill Patterson November 10, 2012 at 3:35pm

I think us CMOS haters are older than you, and when we transitioned from video tape to digital, CMOS sucked and I mean really sucked bad. Worse, much worse than video tape. CMOS was forever associated with cheap crap bad video for so long, I don't know if I'll ever feel good about using it. To old to change I guess. CCD on the other hand, was always the gold standard. Google "Astrophotography". All the Astronomy camera's are CCD to this day for their superior light sensitivity and lower noise level. CMOS isn't even on the map. Also CCD was doing ISO 10,000 5 years ago. http://www.dpreview.com/news/2007/1/25/olympusfe250 Like Scott said; it's money thing. CMOS is cheaper, so it's being pushed by marketing people to make more profits. It's might only be a nickle cheaper, but when you're selling 5 million phones per model, then that's alot of nickels and they'll say what ever they got to say to justify it.

Luke Olson November 7, 2012 at 8:53pm

Crasher, we're kind of getting off topic since this post was about the GoPro. If you want we can continue the discussion after this we can do it in private messages?

In my experience CCD cameras don't do good in low light situations. They get hot (because they use a lot of power relatively speaking) which means more noise and they have problems with blooming (vertical lines coming from bright areas like street lamps). A direct comparison now would be difficult because I'm not aware of any modern CCD cameras to even compare with. Here's a modern CMOS example with no discernible noise at ISO 10,000. If you're not into photography that's a pretty impressive feat. I've never seen a CCD come even close to anything like that.

Obviously that's not a GoPro. It still illustrates the point though. I don't get all the CMOS haters out there. I'd take rolling shutter over all the crap that comes with a CCD in a heartbeat. So would a lot of other folks. In fact if you've seen a movie in the last five years it was probably shot on a CMOS sensor, that's just one cinema camera and there are a lot of CMOS cinema cameras out there. If I could have all the advantages of a CMOS sensor and a global shutter that would be awesome but given one or the other the decision is easy. I guess we can't have the cake and eat it too.

Bill, back to the topic of the GoPro. If you're really adamant about a CCD camera like the HERO series then ask GoPro about it. They might tell you they've already looked into it or they might make one if enough people ask about it. You never know.

Bill Patterson November 7, 2012 at 4:59pm

@Luke - While those facts can certainly be proven in a test environment, the bread and butter of an "Action Cam" is enduring high vibration in broad daylight, whether it's strapped to a bike, motorcycle, skateboard, dog or kayak. And at $400, the fact that you are going to get jello video out of it, regardless of it's technology, is inexcusable. We can tune it (vibration) out of our aircraft pretty easy. Not so easy for Motorcycles and Skateboards. Anyways, I think we agree (for different reasons) that $400 is waaay to much.

Scott Berfield November 7, 2012 at 4:35pm

I worked on camera stuff in the late 90s and the main reason companies pushed into CMOS instead of CCD was actually cost more than anything else. CMOS can be manufactured using the same sorts of techniques as any other sort of IC, but CCD requires a very different set of tools and processes. Now that CMOS has been the focus for years, the quality is way up there, but when the switch first started happening, it was very much NOT about quality.

Crasher November 7, 2012 at 4:15pm

@Luke low light comparison?

Luke Olson November 7, 2012 at 3:58pm

Bill, there's a reason why all modern cameras use CMOS sensors. They outperform CCD sensors in virtually every regard (noise, power consumption, dynamic range, frame rate, resolution). When setup properly the only discernible rolling shutter artifact will be the props but anyone that seriously concerned about the quality of the video wouldn't have the props in the frame anyway. Long story short the rolling shutter doesn't really matter. My only complaint about the new camera from GoPro is the price, $400 without any kind of mount or harness is too much in my opinion.

Bill Patterson October 27, 2012 at 6:28am

http://sanyo.com/xacti/english/products/vpc_hd700/

Bill Patterson October 27, 2012 at 6:21am

My Sanyo HD700 has one.

Developer

John Arne Birkeland October 27, 2012 at 3:32am

Bill, I think you will find that no consumer camera including $$$$ models have global shutter.

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