Piousbox

Is it just me, or go-pro's are very difficult? Let's look at them step-by-step. The many go-pro upgrades and changes mean that you can't change the batteries around. Not a very big deal, since I can just stay on the same type of a go-pro. For example, Almost all mine are hero 8, and all my batteries are interchangable. Thank god there are replaceable batteries! With that said, the battery runs out in no time, and is very very expensive. After-market batteries somehow don't hold the charge at all. Maybe the gopro itself requires such high voltage, that any battery disintegrates under load?

Why is it that when I turn the gopro on, and it says 89%, and I turn it off, and I turn it back on, it will say 85%? Where is the energy going? What is the gopro doing that is so important, between turning itself on and off, without recording anything? This reminds me of the energy consumption of the uber app. I'm sensitive to battery drain, I would charge the phone only every 4 days or so. I don't use the phone. But when calling uber yesterday, I noted that 5% of the battery were gone in 10 minutes. Uber just drains the battery with their telemetry and constant network chatter. Is gopro doing the same thing, somehow? It may be news for some but, a camcorder needs to just record video. Not so some bs on the side. The battery drain of gopro's in almost impermissible.

And what's with the video quality and video formats?! It records two files - one very high quality that I have to delete every time (at the cost of my battery!) and one that I have to rename from their stupid extension to .mp4, in order to even watch the video. You will say, oh just write a script to bulk-rename, and I'll do that the next time I use my gopros, but seriously, how difficult would it be for the camcorder itself to let me decide, what quality I record at? I don't need their absurd resolution.

According to the stock price... the market agrees that the company is not doing a good job. Maybe action cameras can't be improved all that much, maybe old is good, no changes necessary, technology cannot be any better (but can certainly be worse) and if they hired a bunch of staff, designers and all, to "improve" what cannot be improved, maybe they are just burning cash with nothing to show for it. In fact, maybe they are making it worse. If gopro the company hired designers and told them to "improve" the camera that cannot be improved, maybe the designers are making changes (not improvements!) only in order to keep their jobs. And those changes... are making the camcorder worse. And someone still have to pay for it. So now the camcorder is worse and more expensive. That is the outcome of spinning the wheels, doing the unnecessary work. And the market price reflects that.

I have my favorite camcorders and they are not gopros. I have bought several old Canon Vixens and they work just find for me. I like that I can turn the screen to point forward, so I can see what I am recording. You will say gopros, the latest ones, have that too: they have a screen on the front and a screen on the back. But I say, that's not an improvement, that's just stupid. So I'm paying for the two sceens but I can only use one at a time, and I have to lug it around (more weight), AND it drains the battery even more. I stopped upgrading my gopros at the version that does not have the front-facing screen. I think the weight and battery drain are impermissible - apart from the cost and having to change all my batteries again. So while the swiveling screen is great on old camcorders, I think two screens on a gopro is a stupid idea.

I like old Canon camcorders more and more. I had one in storage for a year or so and I used it yesterday - the battery was still good! Batteries are cheap and widely available. The battery is not encased so after-market ones can be really, really fat.

And as for wide-angle lenses, for every camcorder that I have I bought a wide-angle adapter. Wide angle is required for recording action, and old camcorders actually allow it. It's true that you sacrifice some video quality for it. The wide-angle adapters are cheap at around $50 and do not have great glass. But that's a trade-off that has worked out well for me.

The quality of the glass in gopros is good. And they are generally useable, and you can do some nifty things with them like chest-mount or hat-mount them. My old camcorders offer worse quality and are meant to be used in a studio setting or be hand-held. That's the trade-off that I'm making.

I'm not going to throw out my fleet of gopros, I have about half a dozen of them. Still, after using an old camcorder yesterday, I wanted to vent my frustration with them, because I liked using the old camcorder much better. It just goes to show that newer is not always better, and even technology, not just the society, seems to be going backwards. But for now, I'll just keep using both and strive to produce outstanding content.