Gopro question

[The Ranger]

G'day everyone, I was wondering if anyone owns and uses a GoPro while out hunting? I was thinking of getting one, either a silver or black edition, and attaching it to my bow while out hunting. Any information re: usability and quality of video would be much appreciated.

Stuart

[Muz1970]

Hey Ranger, I looked into getting a Gopro and talked to the boys at work as they use them for snowboarding. They are limited in there record time, don't have the ability to play back and view in the field. I have bought myself a DRIFT HD Ghost. There affordable, have a 3 hour record time, have a 3" screen to playback and comes as a kit will all the accessories. It has a wrist strap remote control and the lens angle is rotatable, its waterproof to 3m. It has the function that it continually records and deletes at 5 minute time frames. If it was recording and say a Deer appeared and you wished you had captured that moment, you simply just save that time frame that's in the past.

I use mine with the detachable goggle strap. I have used safety pins to attach to my bonnie hat and carry the camera in a bum bag with my SLR camera. I did use the remote for a while but try to conserve battery life. So now I grab it out of my bum bag, turn it on, start recording the clip it onto my hat. When finished I remove, stop and turn off and put back in bum bag. Went on a 3 day goat trip recently and only used 1 battery and 50% of the 32GB card and I used it heaps. When in the NT in a few months time we're doing a 10 day back pack trip so was trying to prolong the cameras record time.

All these type of cameras aren't much good unless your up close. So I use a Panasonic bridge camera with 18x zoom as well.

Cheers

[The Ranger]

Thanks Muz, I'll have a look at it. The GoPro is a lot of money to spend if it isn't the best option.

[indie]

Hi Stuart,

A lot of the guys I kayak fish use them and I do have one but not as experienced at using it. It's very applicable to yak fishing as all the action is at the kayak and the extreme wide angle captures everything. For bow hunting I'm not sure the extreme wide angle is as good as much of what you want to capture is at a longer distance. You can reduce the 170deg field of vision to 127deg or in some cases 90deg which would make it better and bring the action closer.

As to the amount of recording time, a problem when kayak fishing is a lot of the excitement is in catching the fish strike and you never know when that's going to happen so you turn it on and hope for the best. With bow hunting I think you have much better scope for turning the unit on when you think it's time. So battery life and card memory capacity shouldn't be an issue.

The GoPro's are pretty bombproof and you'll work hard to break it. Image quality is amazing, many examples around if you look. I use the fully waterproof case which isn't good for the sound quality but there is a back (supplied) which isn't waterproof and the sound is much better.

I think it would work better if you mounted the camera either on your head or somewhere where you could see the bow being drawn rather than on the bow itself where you won't see any of the action of drawing etc. If you could work it out I am sure you could get some amazing footage.

If you get onto youtube and search for kayak fishing palm beach you'll find heaps of stuff all filmed with GoPro's.

Good luck with it. Hope that helps.

EDIT: Another option to look at is an Optrix case with an iPhone. If you already have an iPhone then this is a much cheaper way to go. A friend of mine lost his off his kayak and it was found several weeks later washed up on the beach. Charged the phone and it was absolutely perfect except for sand scratches on the case.

[GrahameA]

Morning All.

My biased comments. I am not a Go-Pro Fan. Not because there is anything wring with them rather because it has not done what I wanted.

What the Go-Pro does have in its favour is a large range of mounts - and the stick-on mounts stay on in some extreme conditions. If you cannot find a mount for your use you are not trying. They appear to be rugged- well they survived being abused by me. Be aware that they are small and light and sometimes that is not what you want.

In the bigger scheme of things they are just one of a plethora of solutions available.