I finally sorted through and uploaded the photos from the GoPro. I have to say, building the time lapse video was a bigger pain than I expected. I expected to be able to download something from the internet and just plop in the pictures and tell it go. And while I did that, the software was a trial and the output resolution was limited to standard definition, so the videos aren't HD. I also picked too large an interval for the photos. I used one picture every 5s resulting in a 150x speedup. That was a bit much, and it can be hard to tell what is going on in the video as a result. I think they still convey what I wanted to convey though. If I continue to do this, I will definitely need to iron out the process beforehand. Sorting through tens of thousands of photos was kind of a pain too, so I need to keep that in mind going forward. Maybe I just bump it to 4k and use the time lapse video on the camera (similar to the video from Palo Duro Canyon).
Here is the drive to Texas. I lumped both days together since there really wasn't much there.
Here is the scenic drive through Palo Duro Canyon.
Here is the drive to Sunset reef in New Mexico.
Here is the drive to Rainbow Ranch.
It failed to connect when I was driving to Prescott National Forest, and I didn't fix it. The next GoPro usage was on the scenic drive from Sedona to Jerome.
I also ran it on my way back from the failed excursion to the ghost town.
Next up is the drive to Williams, where I stayed near the Grand Canyon.
I also used it when I traveled to the northern excursions, which included Horseshoe Bend, Glen Canyon Dam, the Chains overlook (other side of the dam), Wahweap overlook (which had the views to Lake Powell), and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.
Horsehoe Bend - https://photos.app.goo.gl/ji3b3AEZBNfxUUdd6
Glen Canyon Dam - https://photos.app.goo.gl/bACmpYNgkPHRSgTJ7
The Chains - https://photos.app.goo.gl/AoUv29c5qkzKR4zdA
Wahweap I didn't save anything from it.
Vermilion Cliffs - https://photos.app.goo.gl/VPTtL4EJXyS4EfAb7
I fired it up after the Desert View scenic drive, though I apparently stopped for gas (shocker) and for some reason turned it off (probably with my butt) and didn't turn it back on afterwards.
Lastly was the drive home. I split the drive home into a few major chunks. The video of the entire first day is at: https://photos.app.goo.gl/FwcA4NtKRSYJEDg27
The first chunk was 89A in Arizona.
Next up was Monument Valley.
Then the Utah part of the trip.
Part of Utah was Moab (where Arches National Park is located).
Just some generic I70 photos from Utah and Colorado. I stayed overnight in Colorado at a rest area.
Colorado (second day). I didn't run the GoPro for Kansas (mostly because the eastern end of Colorado is boring enough, I didn't need to relive Kansas too).
Here is my review/thoughts on the GoPro.
Pros:
+ Rugged. Cameras that can be left outdoors in the snow and rain (and dust in my case) are uncommon. It was on top of my truck in the snow in the Grand Canyon, it was running in the rain for the trip to TX, it survived the dust storm and the dust trip back from the Ghost Town, and it got through all that unscathed.
+ While it doesn't use standard camera mounts, it has a fairly well developed ecosystem, and most kinds of mounts and stuff are widely available. I had no problems finding the needed adapters to build my car mount.
+ Likewise, despite feeling like cheap plastic, I had no issues with the mounts holding up to >80mph with headwind. They are stronger than they look.
+ When it works (see my cons about their app) their app is actually really nice and gives full control.
+ The image stabilization when doing video is top notch.
+ The sun being in the video didn't immediately blow the whole frame out.
Cons:
- Picture quality is poor. Like possibly worse than my circa 2011 Moto X smartphone poor. The images are also horribly overcompressed. I did not see a setting to change this without changing to RAW mode, which would have meant postprocessing all the pictures. I might have do that next time and put Heather to work doing batch exports.
- Likewise their lens correction post processing is either non-existent or exceptionally bad. Edges of photos are badly warped, and not just the corners. It is basically like they think everyone loves fisheye effect photos and there is no way that I found to change/fix it.
- Video quality results were better than the photos, but still not great. It still takes worse video than my phone, despite being ~3 years newer than my phone.
- This isn't atypical for this kind of thing because of the CPU requirements to do it well, but video compression is poor. The 5 minute Palo Duro Canyon video was over 3GB. One pass through Handbrake and it came down to ~725MB.
- In low light it tried too hard to overexpose the image. Since mine was mounted to a moving vehicle, this meant anything at or after sunset was worthless unless the vehicle was stopped. This looked like a result of poor light metering, it looks like it used whole frame average light metering, instead of the more typical center-weighted average where the edges are allowed to be dark.
- Battery life is terrible. Just going in and playing with the settings for a few minutes drained the battery down to ~85%. Using a photo interval for a half hour drained most of the battery.
- Some of the settings are in weird places. Like interval photos are under time lapse video, not under photo mode.
- Doesn't come with an external battery charger.
- Expensive in the world of point and shoot cameras. Especially if you include the mounts and stuff since they aren't standard.
- Their app needs work. The interface in the app is quite nice as noted above. It frequently wouldn't connect to my GoPro though (I had a roughly 50% success rate). Likewise the "camera found" thing was wrong a lot of the time (a fair chunk of my successful connections it told me the camera couldn't be found).
- Their live preview in the app only worked the first time you connected since it was powered on. After that, it would never work again until the GoPro power was cycled.
- Even when the app did connect, it takes minutes to make that connection. I don't know what kind of handshaking they are doing, but that is bad, even in the slow embedded world. That is why a lot of the videos of driving on my trip start with me already on the interstate, because it took that long to connect.
Other Thoughts:
If I am being honest, there really aren't many good alternatives to a GoPro (that I know of anyways). The photo quality, while surprisingly poor for 2021 (when the Hero9 Black was released), isn't so bad that the pictures can't be viewed on a monitor. I can still see poor compression artifacts even zoomed out so that the picture fits on my screen (viewing it at roughly 20%) , but I also know to look for them. You just can't zoom in to read signs and stuff like that.
If you are using it to take outdoor action videos (which is their niche) it does that at acceptable quality; the Palo Duro Canyon video was nice and smooth and quite watchable. If you are looking for a replacement for a point and shoot and are looking for something rugged/waterproof, I would not recommend it. If all you have is a not-top-of-the-line phone and want something to take skiing videos or whatever, it does that pretty well.
In my case, I was looking for something rugged to take scenic photos. My use case doesn't fit into their niche, and it didn't do it well. I pretty clearly overestimated the capabilities of the GoPro. For me, it feels like it was not the right tool for the job. I think I would have been better suited getting a waterproof digital camera instead of a GoPro, similar to what I rented for scuba diving. Given how expensive the GoPro is, that likely would have been cheaper too.
I will post my update from the weekend tomorrow.
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