Go Pro Hero Camera (Surf Camera) - Review
by Rob [June 16, 2009]
 On a recent surf trip to the Northern Atolls of the Maldives I took a Go Pro Hero camera along for a bit of fun. I attached the camera to an old mini-mal using a FCS plug on the top deck. The camera takes both stills and video. I managed only to try out the video function before I broke the board.
This review is written from a practical perspective based on my experiences and is aimed at giving a general overview of the features and usability of Go Pro Hero Camera. I will focus on the suitability of using this camera in the surf.
Features
This camera is tiny, only measuring 4.45cm x 5.84cm x 3.18cm. It has a small LCD screen and comes with it’s own water proof housing. There are a wide range of fittings available that allow the housing to be easily fitted surf boards and helmets. Making it ideal for making your own action sports videos.
The camera has 3 modes of operation; single photo, continuous photo, and video. The video quality is quite good for such a small camera, having a resolution of 512 x 384 at 30 frames per second. The camera comes standard with a 2GB memory card which stores approx. 60 mins of video. The video is stored as an .avi file.
Board Attachment
The surf expansion kit that is available for the camera allows you to attach the camera to a surf board in one of two ways. The first is using specially designed pad that sticks to the top deck using double sided tape. The other way is to have a FCS plug mounted in the top deck by your local shaper or ding repair guy. I went for the second option. This worked really well. The camera was never going to come off the board, even when I was nailed by a good sized set.
Ease of Use
Starting and stopping the recording while in the water was easy, with only needing to hit the shutter button once to start and once to stop. Starting the recording before a wave initially threw out my timing and I missed a few waves, but I eventually compensated for this.
If using the camera in a warm humid climate you may get some condensation inside the water housing when you put the Go Pro into the water. I noticed this during the session, however it didn’t have too much of an effect on the video footage. I have heard of others flushing the housing with dry air or nitrogen before closing, but that might be a little extreme.
When watching the footage from the Maldives you will notice that I have managed to have my head outside of the frame. I was using a Go Pro camera with the normal focal length lens; this would be suitable for mounting on the front of long boards. For the shorter boards the wide angle lens would be more suitable.
I believe the Go Pro Surf Hero now comes with the wide angle lens as standard.
You can see some of the footage at;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wImKN_DSDZs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zMYNJ2BNeE
Note that the footage quality is better than it appears on You Tube.
Summary
This is a great little camera. It’s ideal for making your own extreme action videos. With the availability of the expansion kits you could attach this camera to just about anything.
More info here:
http://www.goprosport.com.au/
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