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
4k era in aerial filming has begun, but how many people have such panels for see it beauty ...
Chim - there's a photo on the gopro site with the base hero case open; I assume therefore it can be removed.
If the glass (image quality) identical across all three models, the base 4 will be perfectly good for quad use. One failing of the clones such as the SJ4000 is the glass quality affecting overall quality.
1080p@120fps is awesome!!! Finally we have the ability to create proper slow mo at high definition.
4k@30fps might allow for some powerful post stabilization (extracting a stabilized 1080p from the 4k file).
What about 720p@240fps? The H3B did 800x480@240fps, so one would expect that 1280x720@240fps is possible with the H4B.
I bought Gopro Hero3 BE with remote for 300, from Gopro website.
It is funny! Many people say "Price is too high" and so-on.. on the end GoPro can't keep-up with demand on highest price cameras. I remember GP 3 Black were never in-stock at local Best Buy store, I had to wait for a month for my pre-order to arrive from B&H Photo.
GoPro can set any price nowdays and can't fulfill the orders for the first 6 months, and that's the reality.
GoPro 3+ Black now $350 in stores, including the remote. New DG 4 Black is $500 without remote - do your math:
GP 3+ Black + $80 remote is $350 making it $270 for the camera
New GP 4 Black is $500 - difference is $230, almost twice the price.
I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up yet, but one of the main things I do with my GoPro is take aerial still shots. The current GoPros (3+ BE) is mysteriously gimped in still image mode because you can't adjust any settings (can't adjust exposure, white balance, color, anything), but you CAN with video, which makes no sense at all. It's pure laziness on GoPro's part that they chose to have these "Protune" controls for video, but not still images. I can buy a $100 cheapo digicam and be able to control those things.
But now with the GoPro 4, low and behold, now we can adjust those things for still images?! Unless they do the right thing and produce a software update for the now old 3+ BE and give it the same controls, the only way to describe this is thoroughly disappointing and a slap in the face.
I'm sorry, but $500 for all of that with minimal tangible updates is just not good enough. I'm just baffled that with the billions GoPro made from their IPO, this is their big new announcement. 4K at 30fps is great and all, but if you don't support a really high bitrate, all that detail is just going to get crushed from compression anyway, so then what's the point in 4k?? GoPro needs some serious competition because it just feels like they've stopped trying and instead just upped the prices because they can.
Hi Chim,
Good call.
I was one of the first purchasers of the Hero 3 Black, entirely a dismal experience.
The battery overheated and turning the camera off didn't stop it, you had to remove the battery.
Their customer service wasted a huge amount of my time getting me to reload the firmware which made no more difference the fifth time than the first time.
I finally returned it and likewise made a decision to never get a GoPro when it was first released - at least a two month wait.
Here is my Blog about it:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/gopro-hero-3-cameras-for-planes...
I am looking at the deals on used Black 3 and 3+ on EBay right now to see if anything worthwhile might go by there.
Best Regards,
Gary
Just noticed they also don't include the smart remote with the Black anymore and the smart remote is $80.00 so for an equivalent system it is actually $180.00 more for the new black versus the old black.
Except for 4K 30 FPS and 1080P 120 FPS the Silver which is actually noticeably superior to the old black (at the old black price) plus has the color touch display seems like a much better deal for most of us.
I do not fly helis I fly fixed wing. Have GP 3 Black and shooting 1080P 60fps fixed (no gimbal). Had a bit of jello on powered flight and then I put a bit of rubber around camera - jello is gone forever. Check The Black Sheep videos - do you see any jello? And they fly a lot!
I also shoot videos with my Canon DSLRs without IS (I never bought IS lenses). When I had DV cams - never used IS as well. All my videos are quite stable, no jerks or jello.
By adding had-coded IS without off switch on GoPro, company will effectively remove me from their client list. That's one of the reason I do not buy Sony - they think for me without consideration. Their IS suck 99% of the time.
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