GoPro image stabilization

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

broncobowsher

Contributor
Messages
3,683
Reaction score
3,587
Location
Arizona
Having friends showing off the mountain biking trips it is clear the latest crop of GoPro image stabilization is pretty amazing. And horrifying when you get the old non-stabilized videos. At least for what they are shooting. Looking at some of my old GoPro underwater video I could see where image stabilization could be a good thing.

So I have to ask, does it work as good underwater as it does on a mountain bike? This is the internal to the camera stuff, not an external gimble.
 
It works quite well. I have both the 8 Black and 9 Black. 9 Black works better. Like you, I watch my videos shot with the 5,6 and even 7. They don't compare with the optics, color depth or stabilization.
 
I went from a 3 silver to an 8 black. There really is no comparison between the 2 for image quality and stabilization. The 8 is in a fully different league and even with the same settings takes much better video.
 
OMG.... Yes trade up to the 9 Black. You can get good prices. Get the safety suit cover for depth and get the Backscatter filters. You wan't be disappointed. The 4 is not even in the same league.
 
Apparently the 8, probably 7 & 9 too, needs the moisture inserts as the camera gets very warm. Blowing dry air from a tank worked great on my 3 with no fogging 200'/60m down in 39f/4c waters. My 8 fogs up, even with the dry air, 25'/7m down in 55f/13c water. Even with fogging the 8 takes better video with much more clarity and more vibrant colors.
 
I have 7, 9 and 10 gopros.

I don't particularly like the software stabilization (vs mechanical), as it kills details. Say you are shooting at 5K. The footage after being stabilized by the camera is no longer crisp on the sides of the video. It becomes kind of 720p stretched to 5K. The center is fine but further away you are from the center, more loss occurs.

Example, in the video below, set to full screen and explicitly select 5K stream. When the video is moved from side to side, do you see how the motion blurs the details? Is it not magical at all. If you don't settle the camera, the footage would look in total like it was out of focus.

Shot in 5K@60fps on GoPro 10 Black.


I have another video where I am at a convention center going around with my camera. I am always on the move, not too fast, panning, approaching tables, moving away to their neighbors. Overall the footage looks bad as the details not in the center are lost and it is hard to make sense of a full scene and all the objects I thought I captured but got softened instead.

Shot in GoPro 7 Black long time ago but I see that GoPro 10 is not much better:

 
What are you using to hold the camera? Looks like something with a little more mass to it would buffer the motions letting the stabilization to run without banging off the limits as much.
 
What are you using to hold the camera? Looks like something with a little more mass to it would buffer the motions letting the stabilization to run without banging off the limits as much.
It is like a pistol grip type of a handle.
 
Even if there is some degradation in quality with the stabilization, the GoPro 10 looks light years ahead of my 4 Silver. My PC is only setup for 1080 as that is the limit of the displays I have. I may change my primary (32" curved) it out to a 4k when the prices come down further. But for now I'm in a 1080p world.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom