GoPro Hero 4 Silver – An Aspiring Technical Pro Users Review
3. Zooming or Framing control
With the Hero 4 Silver being an action cam, Zoom control is definitely out. This was more of a wish list I am reserving for if I ever get enough funds to buy a Canon 5D Mark III (or newer model)
However the camera does have some useful framing modes to frame your shot at Wide Angle, Medium angle and Narrow in some of the Videos modes (not all however). The key 1080p modes have these except for Superview which has only a Wide mode (after all it is a wide mode specialty view to being with) and is itself wider then Wide mode.
The differences are mainly that “Wide” is the regular action and wide-angle shooting mode, Medium is good for closer framed view or cropped shots and Narrow is more for portrait, interviewing or looking at something pretty tight framed. I almost never use narrow with this camera.
Keep in mind that these framed shots are achieved by digitally scaling and/or cropping out useful pixel information from the sensor. Depending on your shots and how you need them to be set up you should choose wisely. Practice with these. Its been my experience that the more “cropped” a frame mode or shot on the camera you choose, the less of the image sensor you are using and the more artifacts or distortion can show up. This isn’t always the case but especially in dimly lit shots, you want more surface area of the sensor being used. After all, these cameras are made for Wide angle and extreme sports wide-angle shooting.
This is actually one major downfalls of all action cameras. The lack of ability to zoom, frame and crop the shot within the camera equipment effectively. Part of the reason why is the physical small size of the actual lens itself. A major decision on part of GoPro to go with a lens that is a complete Wide angle lens. There are no options for lens replacements or addons from GoPro.
Custom Options: You can go the custom route and using some of the really neat 16mm lens customizations that I’ve seen out there however.
For Example, for most of these photos I took for this article, I had to use my old Original trusty Canon Rebel to frame my shots properly. I typically will use a combination of both the GoPro for wide-angle shots and the Canon for close up or portrait shots.
+1 for DLSR shooting -1 for GoPro for those scenes where you need zoom control.
4. Camera Media
GoPro’s use MicroSD Cards for their interchangeable memory. Good news is that now we are using reusable memory and don’t accumulate as many media cases like the old MiniDV tapes I can’t do anything with… Bad news is that you must have a good set up and lots of space on your Computer to Offload them as you will be taking lots of video!
MicroSD cards are commonly available but buyer beware, to use the correct media with the performance you need check GoPro’s MicroSD compatibility charts to determine your requirements. The Hero 4 Silver requires a bit less of requirements that the Hero 4 Black does but don’t be fooled, the best cards are still fairly expensive and if you want to shoot using Protune mode (explained in #12) you’ll need the best card your money can buy. anything less and you won’t be happy with the results. Class 10 UHS-1 or 3 compatibility and a minimum sustained Write speed (with Read speeds higher of course) of 45 MegaBytes per second recommended. Sometimes they go on sale and amazon occasionally has deals on memory cards.
My preference is the Sandisk Extreme Plus Cards but there are some High end Lexar, Kingston and Sony Cards that will work.
Here is GoPros official compatibility list:
https://gopro.com/support/articles/software-update-release
5. A Camera and Gear that will fit nicely together in one Case
This one took a bit of research and planning but the GoPro and accessories can fit into one case. The hard part is fitting all the accessories, but i guess that depends on what all you need to take with you. Here is my solution, as per the last page, these Nanuk 915 Cases really work well. Pick and pluck foam may take some work but it turns out relatively good.
The only real challenging accessory would be a full sized tripod. There are compact ones available however (for a price). I recommend checking Amazon or your local camera store.
6. Interchangeable Lenses
This one unfortunately is a no go on the GoPro from the factory. Action cameras have a fixed F2.8 wide angle lens. Software compensates for various light issues. They settled on the f2.8 to be a sweet spot, for shooting low light but also not to drown out any image in high intensity light.
However there are some custom really cool options out there for affixing C mount Lenses (16 mm Security type lenses) as well as others with adapters which some serious pros might consider !
This implies that the GoPro itself would have to be modified to accept this companies “kit” in order to mount lenses on it.
As most of us will use this as an action camera (and for the cost) I can’t justify potentially killing my GoPro just yet. there are apparently ways in which to order these “pre-fixed” for you as well.
Check out the link below for more details:
http://www.back-bone.ca/product/ribcage-hero4-mod/
