GoPro generation: the ultimate guide to action cameras

What is (a) GoPro?GoPro has become synonymous with extreme sports, action and adventure videography, but GoPro is a specific brand, not a type of camera – but it's become so successful and so strongly associated with this kind of video that it's now a household name.But there are plenty of other makers too in a rapidly growing market. GoPro, Contour, Drift, iON , HTC and others all make cameras that fall into the Point of view (POV) camera category. These a camera for the 'doers' rather than the 'watchers', whether you're skittering down a muddy track on your mountain bike or creating a timelapse of your daily life.Within this POV category you can break cameras down into two main divisions, 'action' and 'lifestyle', according to the ruggedness of the camera and the conditions in which they can be used and still expected to work. There's more on in this in the 'What is a POV/Lifestyle/Action camera?' section later.The GoPro phenomenonGoPro is the company, Hero is the name of the camera range. They're small, rectangular boxes which don't look much like a regular camera at all. On the front is a fixed, extra-wideangle lens, and the camera itself clips into a waterproof case . The camera is designed to go just about anywhere and can be attached to almost anything with the use of mounts. You can get mounts for helmets, skateboards, handlebars – even a dog harness.This lets you capture a first-person POV (point of view) perspective of the action, rather than the more traditional observational style. Formula One coverage on TV, for example, can now switch between trackside cameras and car-mounted POV footage.• See our GoPro Hero4 Black review (hands on).GoPro Hero cameras first appeared back in January 2010, although the company itself has been around since the 1990s. What made the Hero different from what came before was the ability to capture 1080p footage in a small and relatively cheap case not much larger than a matchbox. It wasn't just the technology, but the practicality too. This case could be quickly attached to almost anything, and this versatility was part of the reason why the GoPro brand became so popular.• See our Top 10 GoPro Accessories list.Prior to the Hero there was already a selection of POV cameras on the market that were in frequent use by the TV and film industry as well as by the military.GoPro simply managed to tap into a popular market that quickly made them not only a household name and the cool must-have accessory for any extreme sports enthusiasts. Clever marketing and getting the world's extreme sports stars on board has done the rest. It's how we got to watch the likes of Mathis Giraud ski off the edge of a cliff to avoid an avalanche and see Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space and plummet towards the Earth, and all from their own viewpoint rather than that of a static camera at a distance.Tough competitionUnlike more traditional cameras that have been designed to be handheld and carried on a strap or in a bag, action cameras have been designed for action, so dropping them, soaking them in water or exposing them to extreme conditions is all part of the design. Currently there are three GoPro models: GoPro Hero4 Black, GoPro Hero4 Silver and the base model Hero. The Black and Silver are also available in different editions; Standard, Surf and Music, each with different accessories. But while GoPro might be the best-known brand of action camera, it's just one of a large selection on the market right now. Other key players include Drift, Contour, iON, Garmin, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba.POV action vs lifestyle camerasPoint of view (POV) cameras capture the world from the viewpoint of the user, so they need to be tough, small and simple.Unlike regular cameras, there is often no screen to preview or review the composition of the shot. Instead, the camera's lens has a large field of view – in the case of the GoPro, the field of view is 170 degrees – so you capture almost everything that you'd see through your own eyes across your whole field of vision. This means that as long as the camera is roughly pointed in the right direction you should capture the event or action you're trying to film. These cameras fall into two distinct groups: action vs lifestyle. These two types have many things in common, including a fixed wideangle lens, mobile device connection, a range of mounts and 'wearable' mounts. The main differences are in the ruggedness of the design and the kinds of thing you want to shoot.The Autographer is a good example of a less robust 'lifestyle' camera designed to be worn around town in normal day to day life, and not submerged in water, attached to a kite or bonnet of a track bike.• See our Autographer review (hands on).The difference between action and lifestyle POV cameras starts to blur with cameras like the HTC Re, which is waterproof and tough, so it could be used as an action camera, but it's mostly designed for shooting and sharing social activities. Look at it this way – if you need to wear any type of safety equipment such as a helmet or harness to do an activity, then you need an action camera. For everything else a lifestyle camera will be fine. • HTC Re review (hands on).Action cameras and Lifestyle POV's are designed to be simple, so while many models do offer scope for adjustment over the quality and shooting settings the main focus for these cameras is to simply record and capture as simply as possible.Who uses them?This simplicity is what has made these cameras so popular with the extreme sports market – the users probably have other things on their mind, so all they really want to do is attach the camera, hit Record and go! Although primarily adopted by the extreme sports enthusiast, these cameras are quickly becoming popular with a wide spectrum of users. The no fuss approach to video capture means they can be used by anyone with no prior experience of capturing video, and the fixed wideangle lens (and the lack of a screen to fuss over composition) means you can concentrate on what you're doing, not the camera.The wideangle lens means there's no need for focusing, and everything from the foreground to the background will be sharp. If there is any softness, it's usually covered by movement, so will go pretty much unnoticed anyway. Wideangle lens do introduce some distortion, but for action cameras that all a welcome part of the 'POV' look.The small size, low weight, simplicity and relatively low price make these cameras ideal for all kinds of film productions, including home video and commercial productions. You can fix these cameras to places and things that in the past were impossible. Action cameras have been used by the award-winning filmmakers of the BBC natural history department, and Guy Martin's production team in the Speed series. The small size of most POV cameras, the relatively low cost and the ability to shoot full HD and record audio makes them an easy solution for both pro and novice filmmakers.How do action cameras work?The majority of action cameras are designed to be attached to something rather than handheld, so the shape and size reflects this, as does the fact that there is no viewfinder, ergonomic grip, touch screen or EVF. Instead the majority of action cameras simply have a Start/Stop button and a few options you can quickly scroll through using a combination of button clicks or sliders. So the first step is to attach the camera using a mount, and every manufacturer has their own system. The most widely supported is GoPro's but the principle is generally the same throughout the industry. Simply select what you want to attach the camera too, find the right mount and then bolt or clip on the camera. There's a huge selection including body harnesses, quadcopter, surfboard and bike mounts, and where there isn't a purpose-made mount you can often improvise with clamps and sticky pad mounts instead.The operation of the cameras is generally a one-button start/stop affair, with focus and exposure handled automatically. Options and settings can generally be changed through either a computer or by connecting through Wi-Fi to a mobile device. The GoPro Hero range all enable access to the settings directly on camera using a series of button clicks and using the small LCD panel on the front. Other cameras such as the iON Air only enable you switch between HD and Full HD, through a switch on the camera, and more advanced settings must be made through software.All these cameras shoot HD footage, which by its very nature requires a large amount of storage space and this generally comes in the form of MicroSD cards. The popularity of the action camera market has led all of the main card manufacturers to create fast MicroSD cards especially for these cameras. The MicroSD card format is already popular with the mobile phone industry, but the requirements are different. There are MicroSD cards with capacities as high as 32GB or 64GB, but the write speed isn't a major consideration for mobile devices – for HD video, however, write speed is crucial.So while there are cheap, large capacity cards out there, you need to look for high speed cards rated at class 10 or with speeds equal to or above 533x. It's really the write speed rather than the read speed that you're after. At the higher end of the action camera market, cameras like the GoPro Hero4 Black and iON Air Pro 3 feature Wi-Fi , BlueTooth connectivity and the Sony HDR-AZ1 comes with NFC. This enables these cameras to be connected to a mobile device. Depending on the camera and the app, you have various options for camera control. This includes viewing the footage and images that you've shot, adjusting camera settings and, most importantly, operating the camera's record feature remotely. Using the apps is generally far more intuitive and pleasurable than using the options and buttons directly on the cameras themselves. Once the footage has been captured it can then be imported into the your chosen software – in the case of the GoPro this is the GoPro Studio, which is free to download.GoPro Studio keeps things simple, but enables editors to quickly edit and upload their footage with relative ease. Most other manufacturers leave you to finding your own video editing package. Final Cut Pro X and iMovie on the Mac, or Adobe Premier/Elements on Windows, are great packages.What do you look for in an action camera?The market for action cameras is expanding rapidly, and while a large selection of new products are simply copycats of one or other of the larger manufacturers, the main players themselves are all bringing something new or innovative into the market. At the moment, action cameras come in two main designs: the 'box' type (GoPro) and the 'bullet' type (Contour, Drift and the iON Air range).Drift and Contour are often favoured by users who want the camera to be a little more discreet than the boxy GoPro style, so are often seen being used by drivers and motorcyclists as well as the military.The iON Air range takes a no-nonsense approach and uses the bullet camera style to make operation extremely simple. It's currently the official action camera for the NFL in the USA. The Garmin Virb appeared in 2013 and bought the GPS giant into this market with its own take on the action camera, adding GPS, a small LCD screen and stand out design.There's also a new batch of action/POV cameras that cross over with lifestyle and wearable devices. The HTC Re is not as tough as a true action cam, but it's still waterproof and shockproof. The Autographer, meanwhile, is a wearable camera that automatically captures key moments in your day. It's not an action cam as such, but it's still a POV camera for recording your life.If you want a camera that will attach to almost anything then GoPro has the edge with a huge and ever increasing range of mounts and accessories. But if you're mainly going to be using the camera on a cycle helmet or attached to a motorcycle or surfboard, then the sleeker and less wind resistant design of the iON Air, Drift or Contour might be better. If you want to record your route in-camera, then a GPS enabled action camera such as the Garmin Virb is probably the one for you. A screen might not be high on the list of features for the traditional users of action cameras, but this genre is starting to capture the imagination of mainstream photographers who want to see what they're filming. So if you do want a screen to compose your videos then you have two options, either a Wi-Fi connection so you can view and compose on a mobile device, a camera with a built-in screen, like the GoPro Hero4 Silver or Garmin Virb.Full HD video recording is a standard feature and for most users this resolution will be more than enough. However, some cameras can shoot at higher resolutions – the GoPro Hero4 black can shoot 4K video.This is probably a step too far for most users – 4K video takes up a lot of space, needs a lot of hardware power to edit and does not play back on every device. But the frame rate is important. The higher the frame rate, the slower you'll be able to playback the footage. So a good benchmark is the new GoPro Hero4, which can shoot full 1080p at 120fps – when this is slowed to normal playback speeds of 30fps, you're able to stretch one second of footage smoothly over four seconds for stunning slow motion. At the other end of the scale, if you simply want to upload to YouTube or share videos with your friends, then 720p is probably high enough resolution, in which case a less powerful camera such as the Drift Ghost-S will be fine – it shoots full HD at 30fps, but it can capture 720p at up to 120fps.

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