GoPro HD Hero mini-review

After pining away for one for ages, I finally bought a GoPro HD HERO camera:

It’s a tiny little HD camera with an amazing wide angle lens (170 degrees @ 720p!) that comes with a myriad of attachment options.

One of the first things I shot with it was the Thrill the World event and was blown away by the results:

A few days later, I was fortunate enough to be on a tour of the Thompson Okanagan and got to witness the Adam’s River Salmon run near Chase, BC.

Using a camera extension, I was able to get a unique view of the fish in the river:

I’ve been messing around with it and mostly just getting used to all the options it has:

I haven’t shot anything worth posting yet but another great feature of the GoPro is that it can shoot 5 megapixel stills and timelapse photos. The intervals can go down to one shot every 2 seconds and the test results have been better than I imagined. I’ll hopefully have some footage to post soon.

My only issues so far with it is that it doesn’t do well in low light at all and the battery life. My battery actually died about 45 seconds after I started shooting the salmon and I didn’t have an extra one with me (totally poor planning on my part – I’ve since picked up a second battery).

To give you an idea of the potential of this camera, here’s a little video from the GoPro homepage that showcases some of the more extreme uses for it:

There are lots of places to get a GoPro…I bought mine in person from Launch Helmet Cams in North Vancouver. I bought the GoPro HD Hero Naked and added a bunch of accessories. For my purposes, it was cheaper than buying one of the kits that are for more specific uses like Helmet or Motorcycle purposes.

Update (Dec 2010): Here’s a zipline video from my recent trip to Whistler:

See also my mini-review of the LCD BacPac for the GoPro