GoPro is finally announcing the new 4 Silver and Black:
It , of course has the new 30fps 4K and - not surprisingly costs $100.00 more than the last one so now $499.00.
Probably using the new Ambarella 9 chip, but no mention made of built in electronic image stabilization which is a feature of the Ambarella 9 chip.
http://www.ambarella.com/uploads/docs/A9%20Product%20Brief%20120813-2.pdf
The new Silver is also $100.00 more and has the nifty built in color touch screen.
Nice, but not earth shaking and a bit disappointing.
Why no stabilization (My Sony AS100V does remarkably well even on a quad with no gimbal) and why didn't they include the touch screen on the Black, you'd have thought they could have afforded it.
Sadly seems more notable for what they didn't do than what they did.
Still 4K at 30fps is more important than ever and that will certainly drive "pro" sales.
Here is the GoPro site: http://shop.gopro.com/cameras
The reason I said "sort of" is that the announcement says coming soon.
Our local hobby shop has been told they can start selling on October 5th.
Best Regards,
Gary
Comments
Have been reading early reviews and sadly the fidelity of the 30 fps 4K does not seem to be what people (especially pros) were hoping for.
Maybe they can fix it in firmware, but right now their big seller seems to be coming up a bit short.
Please understand I was truly hoping the new GoPros would be a significant improvement.
As it stands now I will be likely to get one of the GoPro Heros and if reviews seem up to snuff and even one of the new Silvers - in a couple months after they have had a chance to work out the assorted bugs and inadequacies.
Right now the Black which I had the greatest hopes for seems to be the one with the least to offer.
GoPro is definitely a glass half empty or half full kind of a thing.
Praised for the stuff they do do and condemned for the stuff they don't.
As I said at the start, personally I'm a bit dissapointed by their offerings, from a feature standpoint they seem to be trying to extract more money from less product.
The Silver and Black pretty much have to be using the same Ambarella A9 chip with exactly the same capabilities.
This really means that the Silver is pretty much the same camera as the Black, but with 30fps 4K turned off.
And the Silver has the nifty color display (which may or may not be an asset depending on what you are doing with it (like sticking it on a Gimbal)), but which is certainly potentially useful for most other applications.
They didn't put it on the black because (from what they have said) the heat generated by 4K at 30 FPS was too high for the display which would wash out.
Net result the $100.00 less expensive Silver is simply a Black with 30fps turned off and the color touch screen display added.
Sounds like the Silver from a hardware standpoint anyway is a lot more camera for less money to me.
And the Black which always used to come with the $80.00 WiFi remote now doesn't.
I never thought much of the remote anyway and definitely preferred using my Nexus with (laggy) preview, but at least it was something.
They have gone to a lot of work to make it clear they are charging you a lot more and actually giving you less.
I would have thought their huge profit structure might have encouraged the opposite approach.
And then there is image stabilization, I definitely didn't intend for this thread to become so pro or anti image stabilization, that wasn't the point.
The Ambarella A9 chip has image stabilization built in (As An Option) and that is the way it should have been given to us.
GoPro has always been really good about allowing the implementation or suppression of options and I expected no less here.
This wasn't a capability they had to add any hardware to implement, it was simply a firmware and menu thing to allow people enable (or disable) it as an option.
They didn't do it - yet anyway.
Maybe it didn't work well enough for them to bother, or as has often seen to be the case, their inadequate programming staff wasn't up to the job of getting it to work for the release (which by all accounts they have been working on since 6 months before the 3+ came out).
Their firmware programming has always seemed to be buggy, slow, poorly supported and getting fixed after a given cameras release based on negative customer feedback.
GoPro is a really big company worth billions at this point, you'd really think they could afford a few decent software and hardware engineers.
The new little GoPro is nifty and if it proves rugged and as good as it looks, it does sound like in the case it should be a straight drop in in the existing GoPro gimbals (if a mounting solution can be cooked up).
So great as a second or third copter or plane camera.
They could have done better, but the 4k 30fps is definitely a significant and even mandatory capability for some that costs many times the price anywhere else.
The color display on the Silver is something my $200.00 JVC Adixxion had on it two years ago.
And the new little one at least provides a cheap backup GoPro that is compatible with it's existing mounts.
Not the impressive breakthroughs we were hoping for, but probably enough to secure significant Christmas sales for GoPro.
Ho, Ho, Ho,
Gary
More 120fps slow mo stuff here and here.
See this, this, this and this to see just how good 4k recording can look even when cut back down to 1080p.
John - You can edit 4k with a MacBook and Final Cut Pro and share via youtube. A mate of mine is also pro who does some really big jobs. His work is top shelf and he is pretty demanding of his gear. While Simon mostly works with higher grade equipment, he raves about the GoPro and is certainly of the opinion that it is capable of producing professional results. Admittedly the video linked above were shot with a Sony F5 rather than a GoPro, but they do go a long way towards demonstrating the creative power of recording video at a high frame rate.
I realize I was ranting a bit earlier (frustration is all), but am I the only one who takes stills with a GoPro? Is no one else ticked that GoPro deliberately gimped the 3+ by giving Protune options to video but not stills, but now is marketing Protune-for-stills as a "new feature", when it's merely a software update that could (and should) have been out already for the 3+?
As someone who takes as many stills with the GP as video, this is pushing me to much more quickly move to a larger platform. I don't necessarily need 4k, but I see benefit in it. But whatever video/photo options are there, I simply need them to be GREAT quality. For video this means better compression options and greater control (the latter, most of which protune addresses), and for stills this means much the same.
I hope they did something about the poor battery life.
Well, John, the last camera I bought that wasn't plastic crap at least in part was a TLR Rollie about 30 years ago. And customer service is a joke just about everywhere. But I mostly agree with you on the rest, except that the various high frame rates are really useful for laying down slow motion. In fact if the GP4 could crank out 240fps at 1080p I might be tempted.
4K at 30 eh? so tell me this what are you going to do with that video? Where are you going to put it for the millions people to watch it? Do you have a computer that will edit this without a hiccup? Gopro as a company is a joke. Terrible customer service and the product is way overpriced piece of plastic. I owned one and will never buy another period. When it works right its ok at best. You want to be a "professional" and produce good video/film? Don't use a gopro. Get a good DSLR, micro, etc etc and go from there. (or buy a different action cam) I laugh at people telling me, oh we shoot 60fps 1080P. You cannot burn a blu-ray at 60FPS. Who are you going to show it to in 60fps? You can only watch it on computer or playstation. Everyone should know what the max rates are for H.D. Blu Ray, Standard Def. Those are the media people will buy. Then you can go into you tube and or vimeo. I prefer vimeo but you still can only max out at 30fps. The only way you can watch a 60fps video on the internet is you need to host the video. And the only way to watch it at home is on your computer. As a side note you can watch it on a playstation but not everyone has a playstation.
Now on image stabilization... It works and depends on the situation. If you have to fast of pan or to much bounce no stabilization will help you in fact it will probably look worse. If you can fly smooth and not twitchy sure it will help but buy a decent gimbal and that is the only way to do a proper stabilization.
The above is my opinions and knowledge from doing all this for a living. I am not focusing in on anyone here its some general things I do see stated all the time that are poppycock and I thought I would put my 2 cents in.
Finally found the weight spec for the new basic Hero (which cannot be removed from its protective housing): 110 grams. Not too bad and only 33 grams,or a little over one ounce, more than my Black 3 without case. If we can balance and mount it to a normal brushless gimbal (which might require grinding off its mounting ears) it might make a pretty decent quad cam for the $130 price, especially in risky circumstances where flying an unprotected Black 3 (or 4) would be cringeworthy.
Oscar, use Protune and you'd be able to get better results. You can edit colors then. Codec they use is pretty good considering processor load and bus bandwidth while keeping components temperature in-check.
With 4K they had to make compromises, I guess.
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