by Hollis Easter, December 2010.
Image from GoPro website
GoPro Camera, a subsidiary of Woodman Labs, Inc., has become well known for developing small, light, tough video cameras for the outdoor market. They take a small camera with a wide-angle lens and a CMOS sensor that’s capable of high resolution (up to 1080p), and they pair it with a shock-resistant housing that’s also waterproof down to 180 feet. The housings have replaceable lenses, which is nice given the rough use wearable cameras tend to receive.
One thing that sets GoPro cameras apart from some of the other offerings on the market is the profusion of mounting options for the cameras. You can stick a GoPro camera on just about anything that can move, whether it’s your body, your helmet, your car, your surfboard, your airplane, your bike, or your special tricked-out carbon fiber shopping cart. If you can imagine wanting to film from it, GoPro probably makes a mount for it–and a great assortment of mounts is included in the base kit.
Image from GoPro website.
The Helmet Hero HD, $299 USD, is what’s often called a “POV” camera–standing for “Point of View”. The idea is to use it to give viewers a taste of the action, and the sensation of really being there. As such, the design focuses on small size, portability, ease of use, and durability–it isn’t intended to give perfect reproduction of a Beethoven symphony or allow a future Fellini to control every aspect of filming. The Helmet Hero HD is designed to help outdoors folks document their fun, giving them tangible proof of sticking that big landing… or missing it, going for an epic wipeout.
Since the Helmet Hero HD has a lot of parts, I’ve chosen to introduce it by video, to show you how the pieces fit together.
I’ll be stepping back from 4AllOutdoors.org for a while, so the camera is on its way to another reviewer now that my report is done. It’s a neat piece of kit, and I had fun using it!
– Hollis
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