Be A Hero!

For a while now we’ve been anticipating the release of the GoPro Hero 4K. Well, we finally picked up a few of these little guys and decided to do a few quick tests to see how well it compares to the Hero 3 and 3+.

My longhaired compadre, Tim and I decided to plunk it into our DJI Phantom 2 and see how well it did in the air. For the second set-up, we built a little handheld rig with a Zacuto EVF so we could see what we were shooting. Mind you, Tim ran around with it like he was a high school cheerleader.

With the handheld rig we shot at 120 frames per second to see how well this little guy held up in post when we slowed it down. Even though the new hero will only shoot 120 fps at 1080 it did really well considering that this is a freaking GoPro! There is however, quite a bit of artifacting and aliasing. Under ideal lighting and little movement it did better, but the more details (lines, trees and patterns) it could get a little ugly.

In the air we shot at 4K. All we have to say is WOW! Certainly a far cry from the Hero 3 and definitely the 3+. The auto exposure on the new GP is a little better but we all know it’s still a GoPro. We were blown away at the 4K image this thing produces, and if you use it where its strengths are, it’s a huge upgrade from previous models. We used an ND filter to help control the shutter speed and reduce movement “jitter”.

This was a very short test but stay tuned as we’ll have a more comprehensive test to show.

Here is a download link to see some of the footage without compression: we.tl/vsFimFdtE1

Music: Capulet (The Rope River Blues Band) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0