The GoPro 3 (& 3+) Repository, everything (eventually) you'll need to know!

[Cra-Z-1]

I like the link you put up for those filters Kloner. Did you happen to find a 3-pack for a naked Gopro. It looks like all I can see is that for the water proof housing.

Also interesting is the info you just posted on the GoPro focus. I guess that would stand to reason WHY I don't seem to be having the focus issues that I have read so much about with the 3+

 

[kloner]

http://www.polarprofilters.com/shop/venture3-three-pack-hero3/

all you need is the polarizer if you fly glare and want a really blue sky, 2 or 3 stop nd for the rest of what you could do, the 3 pack has a macro magnifier, no idea what that works like, but not very aerial orentated. I never liked there 4 stop, made the picture worse.... at one point they sent me a 2 stop that i really liked

for some reason they missed the mark focussing hero3+.... a lot of them are fine, but a lot of them are drastically out of focus.

I'm gonna break out my disco soon and get after some comparisons between a stock 3+ and a lens modded 3+. The biggest advantage between 3 and 3+ is the low light cpability and now with the latest firmware upgrade you get to control alot of the cameras settings manually, i remember seeing iso, exposure, iso limit, raw white balance, raw footage, theres a couple other things too slipping my mind

hero 4 is rumored to release early may, 4k 30fps, 1080 240 fps

 

[Cra-Z-1]

http://www.polarprofilters.com/shop/venture3-three-pack-hero3/

all you need is the polarizer if you fly glare and want a really blue sky, 2 or 3 stop nd for the rest of what you could do, the 3 pack has a macro magnifier, no idea what that works like, but not very aerial orentated. I never liked there 4 stop, made the picture worse.... at one point they sent me a 2 stop that i really liked

for some reason they missed the mark focussing hero3+.... a lot of them are fine, but a lot of them are drastically out of focus.

I'm gonna break out my disco soon and get after some comparisons between a stock 3+ and a lens modded 3+. The biggest advantage between 3 and 3+ is the low light cpability and now with the latest firmware upgrade you get to control alot of the cameras settings manually, i remember seeing iso, exposure, iso limit, raw white balance, raw footage, theres a couple other things too slipping my mind

hero 4 is rumored to release early may, 4k 30fps, 1080 240 fps

Yeah...I kind of didn't plan on using the Macro for aerials, but since they were offering a 3 for 2 deal, I thought I might get it anyway, if they have the set for Naked Gopro. I may want to do some other things with my GoPro at some point is all. Kind of looks like the Polarizer will be the ticket most of the time. I can't stand blurriness in my footage, so I'm kind of wondering if the ND will drive me nuts; at least is my impression of how it works from what I read. 2 or 3, or 4 stop..What all does that mean?

Kind of funny about the LOW Light capability..I was flying with it on all the time and didn't realize it since they come with that ON by default. I was wondering for awhile why the hell my pics were changing color...BUT...I didn't get the camera glare that I get with it off. Seems like alot of stuff with these things to learn about what gets you best quality, from Fish Eye, Filters, Color tones, Frame rates....ugh! I"m so new at it all. Just glad I don't have focus problems too. I was following that link posted from above that talks about those settings you mention. Pretty good to have that flexibility, IF you know what your doing with it.

Thing driving me nuts right now, is that if I switch over to anything 1080, I get black bars on my LCD and can't seem to change it. Maybe its time to try 2.7 or something...SOOO many settings.

 

[kloner]

that is the naked set..... ND help make color, not so much blur,,, imagine walking out into the sun and looking around, you want to squint, the nd helps like a set of sunglasses.... helps alot.... it creates a jello filter, makes the color richer. I've never seen the heros with nd make motion blur, that only hapens when the shutter speed is slowed down enough like we do manualy on dslr type cams....

The best way to deal with a hero,,,, raw white balance, raw recordings, import them into go pro studio and apply pro tune settings, bring up the saturation there then either export it to apple cine or .mov and take to an app like premier to make the edit..... or you can export from go pro studio to an mp4 and make your movie in go pro studio.... it has most things you'd need.... this was done in that with that method

the only time i wished i hadn't ran the filter was this clip,,,, it was really dark and shoulda known better

in a real camera, photos you can run the shutter speeds at crazy numbers cause it's a still, but when you get to video, you need to be consience of it. Go pro runs screaming high app values, that's why you can pause almost and frame taken and any speed and it's crystal clear, but that's not industry standard. ideal you want double the shutter speed than your frame rate.... 30 fps - shutter 60 (optimal) and you want the lens in what we call it's sweet spot, usually double the lenses fastest speed.... 1.2 is usually sweet spot at 2.4, etc. when you do those two things, you just made the exposure horribly blown out, the way we get control of the exposure is by putting on nd filters till that locks in right..... staking too many can cause some weird stuff to so you want o be consience to the quality and how much nd you aply, we often stack cp over nd and have a pile of filters hanging of the lenses..... this is the main difference between still guys and video guys and how they approach the same camera......at night it goes the other way and speed is everything... a still guy can pull a 10 second apperature in bulb shot or whatever and get ful lighting form lesser speed lenses. in video we can't do that, were still stuck chassing double the frame rate with shutter so we need really really fast lenses.... my fastest lens for a gh3 is .95f and no lenses makes daylight at video settings. a 2.4 lens is already too slow to pull that off, 1.2 barely gets it done especialy if we still chase the sweet spot..... sweet spot controls the sharpness we get

 

[Quinton]

..... sweet spot controls the sharpness we get

Problem is here for people that do not know about shooting wide open is depth of field.
Yes a stop above a lenses widest opening will be its sharpest, but it will be pretty sharp down to at least f8
Once you start going wide open then you come into other problems like focus.
It wont be noticeable if we are flying 100ft up, but if there is a subject a few feet away and you are trying to shoot at f2.8 , it will be almost impossible to have it in focus unless you have got someone pulling focus for you, (which you may well have kloner)

The bigger the cameras' sensor and longer the lens, the harder it will be.
Don't even think of shooting something 10ft away with an 85mm lens at f2.8 as you will only have a few inches in focus.
Something for normal users to also consider if they want to shoot wide open.

 

[kloner]

very true on the depth of field,,, it really gets touchy.... we run the 17.5 on gh3 so it's like 35mm on full sensor cams.... i was farting around the other day with it and this was inner infinity, you can see off in the distance was blurry but up close till really close was really focused and sharp... this was in the 2.8 range, really fast shutter speed cause i don't have any filters, it's my night lens

I'm revamping my disco/hero setup to be more friendly with the long hero lenses, i'll come refresh this thread with some different footage. one of the heros is this lens http://stuntcams.com/shop/gopro-54m....html?osCsid=dadc4a9d59b493d65d21c0db1affd27e

another is this one

 

[Av8Chuck]

The lens at that link is pretty pricey. I got a similar lens for the Hero1 and I remember thinking it was expensive at about $65.

What's the lens in the picture?

I think everyone should own a GoPro but I don't think I've ever charged money for footage from a GoPro. When you consider how inexpensive and that their not that much heavier, the GH2/3 or even a T2i are a greta alternative. I stopped trying to figure out how to make the GoPro footage look better.

What camera did you crash?

 

[kloner]

gh3..... voigtlander glass,,,,, the lens is fine, but the body is a yard sale. Something to be said for a metal bodied lens

That hero lens is money, 10mp glass, makes a hero photo look insane. Since wiping out my play rig i'm gonna revert back to these for a while. For what i'm using it for, its gonna be fine. That lens bailed all the fisheye.... got really clear, got really closeup looking like a prime.

 

[Bartman]

The lens at that link is pretty pricey. I got a similar lens for the Hero1 and I remember thinking it was expensive at about $65.

What's the lens in the picture?

I think everyone should own a GoPro but I don't think I've ever charged money for footage from a GoPro. When you consider how inexpensive and that their not that much heavier, the GH2/3 or even a T2i are a greta alternative. I stopped trying to figure out how to make the GoPro footage look better.

What camera did you crash?

i'm so intrigued by the GoPro and what it can do but when I try to work with it alongside my T2i I just can't get very realistic colors and balance from it. just getting started with a GH3/zenmuse so spending time with it at the moment but continuing to try to decipher what it takes to get better results from my GoPro.

 

[Av8Chuck]

That's been my experience too. Even with ProTune I can get the colors better but still not as good as I'd like.

GoPro's a great little cameras for what they are, but there's just that GoPro look and I have not figured out a way to make it better.

 

[kloner]

What i'd say is the craziest part is this is the largest sector of footage we all watch on tv as aerials go... discovery channel uses the crap out of them.. aerial, first person, various spots around fishing boats, etc... there everywhere. Guys with phantoms are most likely busier than us trying to serve a higher end market that almost looks like a dead end from where i'm standing because of the don't care society that watches chows made with it

I bet hero4 steps up the compatibility between cameras...

 

[Bartman]

.............I bet hero4 steps up the compatibility between cameras...

i bet you're right.

i get some fantastic clarity and really interesting colors with my GoPro but it's almost unreal it's so unique. i'm not an expert in processing GoPro images so part of the shortcoming is probably my own fault.

FWIW, the latest update to DXO Optics Pro has a GoPro preset so that may help with stills.....haven't tried it yet but it's installed and waiting on some images to crunch.

 

[kloner]

heres a handheld focus check,,,, this looks just like it does to my eyes... the white to blue in the shy is dead on. 1080p 30fps all auto. latest firmware on a hero 3 with the 5.4mm lens. it also replaces the stock ir cut filter, makes pro tune useless, looks purple

 

[Cra-Z-1]

ND help make color, not so much blur,,,

Thanks for taking the time to explain some of that stuff, Kloner. Still trying to wrap my head around some of it.

You got some really neat stuff. That motocross and ATV stuff gets me all giddy.. LOVE IT! So neat seeing them flying through the air from in front or on top. No way else your going to get that stuff, that I can see.

I guess the description of those ND lenses from the site that was linked, is what got me hung up on the blurring. I was going to quote it here, but I can't get to the website right now.

Sure wish I knew about all this stuff better, I might be dangerous.

In the context of "stops", can I assume that the higher the number, the darker the filter?

I shy-ed away from the Gopro Studio software at first because I like to super-impose the OSD screen on top of my videos, and I didn't see a way to do that in GP Studio. I am interested in the fish-eye removal, so maybe next step is like your saying and get it through that software then finish up in my editor. Do ya lose integrity in the video going from format to format or even mp4 to mp4, software to software?

 

[Cra-Z-1]

gh3..... voigtlander glass,,,,, the lens is fine, but the body is a yard sale. Something to be said for a metal bodied lens

That hero lens is money, 10mp glass, makes a hero photo look insane. Since wiping out my play rig i'm gonna revert back to these for a while. For what i'm using it for, its gonna be fine. That lens bailed all the fisheye.... got really clear, got really closeup looking like a prime.

Lovin' the lack of fish-eye effect in that last video!