CT-Rich
Contributor
My daughters and I went up to Newport for some diving last weekend. I tried out my replacement for my dearly departed Gopro. Its case leaked Early this season and saltwater vs. electronics....
I replaced it with a Chinese camera called the SJ4000 by SJCAM. Even though it costs only $87, it does a lot of the same things as the Gopro. Funny thing is being a chinese knock off you wouldn't think it would have problems with people knocking it off. But it does. It is so successful another company uses the same name (SJ4000) and looks identical, another company came out with the SJ5000 to make you think you were buying the latest model... Pretty funny reading while researching it. Anyway, you can judge it from the video.
It actually has a few features that I like more than the gopro. It automatically chunks out your video into smaller, overlapping files which makes continuous shooting and editing a lot simpler. It can charge and shoot at the same time so you can set up a time lapse video and it will run forever. you can stream video from the camera to your phone if you want to see what you've got.
Being a knock off it has a few fake features. 60fps is only 30 fps with two copies of each frame. The zoom is a really just in camera cropping of the image (aren't all electronic zooms). The video sensor is not as sophisticated as the Gopro, but it pretty good. There are plenty of side-by-side videos out there if you are interested.
Overall, a great camera for what it is. I am much more comfortable with losing or killing an $87 video camera every year or two than I am with $300-400 camera.
Back to the diving. It was a day trip and the girls went snorkeling while I was diving. The tide was falling when I got in the first dive (when this video was shot), Aside from getting pushed around by the surge and only 10 ft visibility (average for these parts), it was a pretty nice dive. We spent a couple of hours toodling around the Brenton Point and Newport before heading over to Jamestown for some more diving and a rice and chilli dinner cooked on a camp stove. I did a night dive and then a long drive home..... Driving at night is brutal after a day of diving.
Here is the video I shot with the new camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA" target="_blank">[video=youtube;ZGoz0PyUEbA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA[/video]
I replaced it with a Chinese camera called the SJ4000 by SJCAM. Even though it costs only $87, it does a lot of the same things as the Gopro. Funny thing is being a chinese knock off you wouldn't think it would have problems with people knocking it off. But it does. It is so successful another company uses the same name (SJ4000) and looks identical, another company came out with the SJ5000 to make you think you were buying the latest model... Pretty funny reading while researching it. Anyway, you can judge it from the video.
It actually has a few features that I like more than the gopro. It automatically chunks out your video into smaller, overlapping files which makes continuous shooting and editing a lot simpler. It can charge and shoot at the same time so you can set up a time lapse video and it will run forever. you can stream video from the camera to your phone if you want to see what you've got.
Being a knock off it has a few fake features. 60fps is only 30 fps with two copies of each frame. The zoom is a really just in camera cropping of the image (aren't all electronic zooms). The video sensor is not as sophisticated as the Gopro, but it pretty good. There are plenty of side-by-side videos out there if you are interested.
Overall, a great camera for what it is. I am much more comfortable with losing or killing an $87 video camera every year or two than I am with $300-400 camera.
Back to the diving. It was a day trip and the girls went snorkeling while I was diving. The tide was falling when I got in the first dive (when this video was shot), Aside from getting pushed around by the surge and only 10 ft visibility (average for these parts), it was a pretty nice dive. We spent a couple of hours toodling around the Brenton Point and Newport before heading over to Jamestown for some more diving and a rice and chilli dinner cooked on a camp stove. I did a night dive and then a long drive home..... Driving at night is brutal after a day of diving.
Here is the video I shot with the new camera:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA" target="_blank">[video=youtube;ZGoz0PyUEbA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGoz0PyUEbA[/video]
