Hero3 Black testing underwater

[billt4sf]

Marty. How do you get that red filter? Does it come with the Hero3?

 

[yarik83]

Here is my question to gopro community.

Gopro offers dozens of mounts all equipped with joints that allow you to control pitch (up and down) and yaw (horizontal alignment). One thing it does not have is ability to control left right alignment... something that is usually possible with ball joint mounts. Ball joint mounts usually cost an arm and a leg.

My main camera (bonica hddv) is obviously controlled with how I hold the camera using my 2 hander tray. My gopro cameras will have to be jerry rigged.

#1 I am about to JBWeld 2 mounts that came with both my gopros to my main and reserve dive masks. I do not want to drill either mask and I think JBweld is a less invasive way. Before I do any of that I will have to research whether it might melt my mask so I will proceed with caution. That will take care of camera #1. I always wanted to have a hands free option so this should take care of it.

#2 I am considering where to mount my second gopro camera. Every option I have considered so far looks like a very solid choice but one aspect I am running into is inability to rotate camera by about 5-10 degrees. so reaching out to you guys. I am sure some of you have ran into same issues. How did you solve rotation issue without ball joint mounts? My only solution so far is to use a tripod mount and adapt it.

What do you think?

 

[sharksdelight]

GoPRO's tech support is very good as well should someone have a problem.
Steve

 

[Marty Cerven]

Hey Marty,

Thanks for all the info you have provided. While I shoot a larger L&M system, I have just ordered the 3 Black Edition for my wife. You may have mentioned this in other threads but if you were going to set-up your 3 for basic tropical type diving with the red filter, what have you found the best overall setting to be?

Personally I prefer the 2.7k30 mode as it gets a little more detail and gives me a bit of room to change fov by cropping or scaling to fit in post. For most people I think the 1080p modes will be the best option and in regular the awb does an OK job. I haven't used it as much though because I like using pro tune and cam raw wb but that's not recommended for most unless they want to do some colour grading.

Next dives I will try all the 1080p modes in 30p and 60p to give them a proper try out, the image quality in 1080p is great and a step up from the hero2, 60p looks so smooth with all my land tests but surprisingly I haven't used that uw yet having been fairly stuck with the 2.7k and 1080p30 modes.

Marty. How do you get that red filter? Does it come with the Hero3?

The ones I am using are from Snake River Prototyping or better known as just SRP, these are all 55mm urpro filters that thread into their new blurfix3 SO adapter. They sent me a few of the new ones to test out as I have done with a few of their recent products. This new adapter should be for sale quite soon I think and I have found it a really good filter option, easy to use and I can use all the quality filters I had in the past plus the new dome cy filter that also screws into it.

Edit: I think I fixed all my typos, sorry but my phone has some weird auto correct choices lol.

 

[BDSC]

The ones I am using are from Snake River Prototyping or better known as just SRP, these are all 55mm urpro filters that thread into their new blurfix3 SO adapter. They sent me a few of the new ones to test out as I have done with a few of their recent products. This new adapter should be for sale quite soon I think and I have found it a really good filter option, easy to use and I can use all the quality filters I had in the past plus the new dome cy filter that also screws into it.

I was at DEMA last week and looked at pretty much all the mounts that were out there for the GoPro's. Several companies make them. IMO the tray made by SRP was the best of the bunch and that's what I will buy. I think you have a video link somewhere Marty on SB that shows your set-up and it's just like what they had at DEMA. As soon as they have the new filter attachment for the GoPro 3 I'll order the set-up.

Thanks for answering my question by the way!

BDSC

 

[yarik83]

I ran into a bit of an issue... not sure if its me not doing something wrong or what.

SD card records in FAT32... which from my understanding is limited to 4gb continuous file size... so it splits video into filename### blocks. But err... why does it take my 8gb card and create duplicate file size? Here is an example...
F:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR0008.MP4 = 3.66gb file size
F:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GP010008.MP4 = 3.64gb file size.

Exactly what good is it creating same file twice? I can see how by splitting my videos it would split them into blocks... but why does it ALSO create a "final" corrupt file? That seems a little counter productive if you ask me... How can I expect to get lets say 45 minutes if it does not utilize storage properly? I am going to try and do this in 10-20 minute segments and hope that it might fix issue?!

 

[Marty Cerven]

I was at DEMA last week and looked at pretty much all the mounts that were out there for the GoPro's. Several companies make them. IMO the tray made by SRP was the best of the bunch and that's what I will buy. I think you have a video link somewhere Marty on SB that shows your set-up and it's just like what they had at DEMA. As soon as they have the new filter attachment for the GoPro 3 I'll order the set-up.

Thanks for answering my question by the way!

BDSC

Here is another post of my setup showing it all in action

[video=youtube;u73BNgs8U6c]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u73BNgs8U6c[/video]

I ran into a bit of an issue... not sure if its me not doing something wrong or what.

SD card records in FAT32... which from my understanding is limited to 4gb continuous file size... so it splits video into filename### blocks. But err... why does it take my 8gb card and create duplicate file size? Here is an example...
F:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR0008.MP4 = 3.66gb file size
F:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GP010008.MP4 = 3.64gb file size.

Exactly what good is it creating same file twice? I can see how by splitting my videos it would split them into blocks... but why does it ALSO create a "final" corrupt file? That seems a little counter productive if you ask me... How can I expect to get lets say 45 minutes if it does not utilize storage properly? I am going to try and do this in 10-20 minute segments and hope that it might fix issue?!

Fat32 has a 4GB file size limitation, the GoPro records continuously until either the battery runs out or you are out of SD space. This seamlessly splits your footage into 4GB chunks and if you put it into a sequence in your video editor it will just play as one long clip. The file naming is a little odd at times so its best to set file order by date created so they show up in the proper sequence.

Its possible your second file was corrupted, for some reason. This has been a bit of a bug with the current firmware for some people. I have never had that issue come up but on the net a few times with some people reporting this. I suspect it could be something to do with recording til your card is full and possibly not finalizing the last file properly, I am using a 64GB card so it has never filled the card entirely for me yet and could be why I haven't had that issue. You should go to the gopro website and make sure you have the latest firmware as there were a few updates in the first week since the black came out.

Though the black is a great little camera there have been some people have issues with them. SRP had one that was playing up too when they were testing it out, most issues have been fixed with the most recent firmware but there are still a few odd bugs for some people. I think the finalizing of files when running out of battery or memory has been effecting a few people, not sure if the latest firmware has fixed that fully though.

 

[yarik83]

I have researched this a little bit and some people recommend putting card back into gopro. Well I just ran a second test and it did exactly the same thing. It corrupted second file. I put the card back in and now there is a plus sign and a piece of paper with bicycle on it... I guess its doing something?!

 

[Marty Cerven]

I have researched this a little bit and some people recommend putting card back into gopro. Well I just ran a second test and it did exactly the same thing. It corrupted second file. I put the card back in and now there is a plus sign and a piece of paper with bicycle on it... I guess its doing something?!

I had a look around the net too about that issue, the symbol your seeing is showing the last file may be corrupted I think you just press any button and it will try to finalise the file to fix it. Don't quote me on the any button as that's just what I saw elsewhere as this is not documented by goro directly from what I can see. I will take another look at the manual as it may be mentioned there but didn't notice it which is quite possible.

 

[yarik83]

Just came back from the store and got myself 2 32gb sticks... but running into another issue. Maybe I am not reading into wording right... but "status indicator light" is not on when camera is charging.

Front of camera I see USB symbol with a battery symbol going 1...2...3 bars. Back of the battery pack I see 1 bar somewhat blink. Granted I completely drained this battery during benchmarking so I am not as concerned about that issue as I am about not seeing "indicator light on" am I suppose to see an led light of sorts? I do not see it in either camera. Oddly enough when I plug camera into my computer and or electrical outlet it beeps 3 times and flashes a few times with red color but light does not stay on.

In my bonica camera I get a red led as camera is charging and green led when its done charging. I guess I am spoiled so was hoping to see same from gopro