The above video is a test we did with the GoPro Motorsports HERO Wide camera. It was mounted on the hood of a car
while we were scouting out the track for the first time. Overall, we at GTChannel are pretty satisfied with the footage we got from this camera. There are additional shots we took with the camera coming up in our 370Z video feature but here's a quick review on the camera.
As you can notice there is very little vibration despite mounting the camera on the hood. We have to get
a little more familiar with the different configurations of the mount
pieces and how it works best to get the shots we want. It comes with a whole bunch of tiny pieces and adhesives which can be used to mount on your car, helmet or whatever part of you body you want eyes on.
The sound quality is not bad either although the volume is pretty low.
It comes with a water proof case which we use to attach to the
mount. Perhaps the case cuts most of the wind noise and the reason for the low volume. In other words its sealed pretty tight.
We were also impressed with the 170 degress wide angle. After this shot we actually had a car drive in front of the camera. The wide angle captures the car in front on almost any tight turn. Although it is so wide that if the car in front speeds up too far away, it quickly becomes a small speck on screen. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to mount the camera inside the car as an onboard cam. The 170 degree angle maybe a little too wide for an on-board camera but we'll have
to test that next time. Do these guys have a camera with less angle? Actually they do have a Motorsports HERO Standard camera that comes with a 54 degree lens for $179.99. The auto focus works nicely too even when going in and out of direct sun light.
The camera takes videos and still too. For stills it has a "photo every 2 seconds" mode which is kind of cool if you are looking for that kind of shot. It also has a triple shot sequence mode where it takes 3x photos in a single sequence. I accidently pushed the shutter button which controls all of these modes so I have a bunch of photos of myself looking into the camera. There's my Facebook profile image for you.
Downloading the images and videos onto your computer is a no brainer. It comes with a standard USB cable that attaches to the PC(or Mac) and camera, press power and just open up the "Removable Disk" icon that appears on your screen. Just copy and paste the AVI videos files or JPEG image files and they are all yours. One thing we still have not done is editing these video files. Still unknown at this point is how smoothly they will work with standard video editing software like Final Cut which is what we usually use. Uploading them on to GTChannel.com was no problem. Just select the raw AVI file and off it goes. Youtube and other sites shouldn't be a problem either.
One request would be to be able to see what we are actually shooting. Since the camera does not have a view finder we can't really see what exactly the camera is capturing so we have to make a VERY good guess.
Bring a lap top to the tracks? Yes that's an option but something I would like to avoid. If you are getting paid to shoot like GTChannel, we still can't use this camera as the money shot since 1. GoPro does not shoot in HD and 2. we haven't figured out how to check what the camera is capturing before we start. What we can do is use it for additional insert shots or effect shots.
But we can't ask too much for just $199.99. It is a pretty simple and robust little camera. So
in terms of cost performance it does an execellent job. If you are the weekend track day guy this is the way to go for sure. It only
accepts SD cards up to 2GB so watch out not to shoot too
much if you are out for the entire day. Just bring an extra 2gig card like we did. At Best Buy you can get a set of two cards
for 25 bucks. Batteries are not included also so you also need to pick
up 2 AAA lithium batteries while you are at the store too.
All in all GTChannel gives the GoPro HERO Motorsports Wide camera two thumbs up. - Taro Koki
