I did find one killer use-case for it though: cleaning gutters. the house I was living in at the time was designed in a way that made cleaning gutters very dangerous. I used the drone to see which parts actually needed cleaning, then my roommate would clear them using a long pole with a hook while looking at the camera feed. awkward, but much safer.
Some entrepreneurial person now does drone deliveries of booze within a 5km radius of his home.
For my curiosity, would you mind sharing where this is? It contrasts with my experience in the US, where I know a few states made it easier to sell alcohol.
I can't imagine trying to get through this quarantine without at least some booze, and I rarely drink. How are they handling all the bonafide alcoholics that would go into DTs with this?
Virginia/West Virginia/Ohio's are still open, I'm pretty sure across the whole U.S they're still open.
Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.
well, just let everybody know who broken the deliveries and thus made the whole neighborhood gone dry :)
as an example:
> Launching, landing, or operating an unmanned aircraft from or on lands and waters administered by the National Park Service within the boundaries of [insert name of park] is prohibited except as approved in writing by the superintendent.
depending on how you interpret "operating", it might be legal to launch your drone just outside the park limits, stand there with the controller, and then fly it all over the park to your heart's content (provided you land it back outside the park). if an official actually saw you doing this, they might hassle you without regard for the nuance of the law.
It's not always perfect, but, it's damn useful.
One time I was traveling along a particular trail which started to get very, very rough. Not 100 feet away was a parallel trail which was well travelled. It would have been impossible to see without the drone.
if you care about following all the FAA rules, this may limit the usefulness of a "scouting" drone, as you need to be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes at all times. if you're in a wooded area, this might not be very far.
Recording yourself doing sport only makes sense if you are really good!
It's like any other complex tool, garbage in garbage out.
Check out on the roofs, the guys who break into sky scraper construction sites and scale the buildings. Go Pros work perfectly for their use case:
Then, I started mounting it to my dirt bike helmet, just for video evidence if I were to wreck and die. What I didn't realize was just how painfully slow it feels to watch a video of me (barely an amateur rider) on a track. The silver lining being, watching that video has helped me improve quite a bit.
My problem with GoPro was that it became apparent that they relied on a yearly upgrade cycle. I'm willing to do that for an iPhone that I use daily, but not a camera that I use a few weekends a year. After they released a 1080p camera and the remote that let you operate the camera without constantly removing your helmet, I stopped upgrading. I occasionally watch their product launch videos but I just don't want to spend any more on this product space. I think the image stabilization has potential, but the 3D / 360' camera is a gimmick until there are better ways to consume and edit that content.
Another big problem out on the slopes is that phone batteries drain quickly in the cold and operating phones with gloves on is still a chore. Any app-based improvements that GoPro has introduced feel like a non-starter to me in many of the environments that GoPro is useful.
My GoPro videos are wipeout compilations, action packed and fun to watch.
They are great for bicyclists and motorcyclists who need a camera that will survive a direct impact with the ground.
I feel like they have all the tech components to offer a dash product with minimal work.
I bought a GoPro several years back as well, after using it on one of my camping trips and a trip to a water park with the kids, I realized I don't really have the kind of adventurous, outdoorsy life I was aspiring to. The GoPro sits in a drawer.
You actually have to be pursuing activities that you think are worth capturing on a GoPro or a drone, and then you have to have an interest in capturing/editing those pursuits.
Longer term, there is a legitimate niche for their products. It is the intersection of people interested (personally or professionally) in photography/videography who have adventurous/outdoorsy pursuits and hobbies. Whether that niche is large enough to support a company of their size (and their competitors) is still an open question.
1. I think the underlying problem has been the lack of innovation from GoPro. I find that while the number of cameras in our daily life has increased, the use-case for something like a GoPro is marginal at best. Apple and other vendors have done an excellent job of improving camera technology on the iphone11 that today, I no longer carry a GoPro or even an SLR camera on holidays.
2. Another amazing shenanigan from GoPro was their accessories business. When I got my only go-pro in 2014, it required me to spend another $200-300 on some really basic accessories like an LCD screen. It just felt like the company added barriers that stopped you from actually using the product.
2a. Minor nitpick - Their packaging in 2015 was a piece of work. It took me forever to get it unpacked and even get hold of the device.
3. Mgmt focus - I live in San Mateo and the stink of constant GoPro layoffs made it an undesirable company to even consider working for. The people I knew that worked there all quickly bailed and went to work for Google or Apple. It also didn't help that I only remembered about my GoPro when I saw Mr Woodman show-up on Shark-Tank. I just felt he didn't focus on a struggling company and wanted to find other things to do.
They're priced way out of the budget of idle curiosity for me though. Sure 500 dollars isn't a lot for a camera, but it's way out of the range for something I"m going to goof around with.
Hey, I have that adventurous, outdoorsy life life! Wanna send that GoPro over? I'll make sure it's properly utilized ;)
In addition to many of the things noted here (looks slow as hell due to wide-angle lens and the fact that you are, also, slow as hell)... the video editing is just a nightmare.
It's easy to capture a couple hours of footage of your hobby, but unless you ALSO have the hobby of WATCHING a couple hours of something you already did, the value is just not there.
I've watched almost none of the videos I've shot. Also, I'm still able to use my ancient Hero2. I thought of buying a newer model to get the "latest and greatest" as an impulse buy once; I can afford it, that's fine. I looked up a product matrix of the Session, Hero 5, Hero 6, black, silver, whatever products were available at the time. I just stared at the product matrix for awhile, gave up, and closed the browser window.
Honestly, if their product line had less overlap or fewer products or just.. made it easier to decide camera to buy, they'd have another $400 of my money.
shrug
They keep improving their products, but there are no real innovations or killer reasons to buy some new model. And they all basically work good enough.
Drones and helmet cams actually seem like they have pretty niche applications when an iPhone will do great for 95% of people, 95% of the time. The need for that particular lens and shot just isn't usually called for in whatever you're trying to create.
The 120 degree FOV makes it seem like they're sprinting while the 40 degree FOV looks like a slow walk in comparison. Also pay attention to the little box the person walks past halfway through the below video. Imagine you're skateboarding and that is a parked car. The difference in speed and perceived danger is huge.
I think you are on to something with the amount of stimulus though. I ride a One Wheel which... has one wheel, and the nearer I get to top speed the less speed it has to balance me.
The sensation is different. The wind is blowing harder on my face, I have to scan and process each ridge and change in the road, my balance is different, is that car opening it's door? is it going to turn, that drain cover is bad need to lean to avoid it, car behind me can't go left, does my front foot have too much force, intersection coming up slow down, speed up no cars, turn signal are they going to cut my lane... etc.
Meanwhile if I'm sitting in a car, well... 20mph is nothing, I'd barely notice it. The wind sensation is gone, I'll go straight if I don't touch anything, people respect my area since I weigh 2000 plus pounds.
The perspective is different, the level of sensation is different. It's similar how a go kart feels a lot different then a car in regards to speed despite the fact both are four wheeled motorized vehicles.
Who cares about the random video you took down a mountain, it's fun in the moment and no one can take that away from you. To an external observer though, why should that be interesting?
The lack of speed is one thing, the lack of context is another. They don't know about the ice patch you're watching out for, the sensation you get when you hit the powder just right, or even that you are going 10% faster then normal (sorry I'm a blue square skier and don't really know what goes through the head of people who are actually good).
Editing and uploading from a phone is nice, but it stays on the boat when you drop in.
It's also huge to have a screen as big as the phone's, and being able to slip the whole rig into my thigh pocket meant I took it on every dive, not just camera specific ones. I can't imagine a better setup for me.
Edit: You mentioned video. The Paralenz is a much better diving camera than a GoPro. It has a tubular form factor, making it easy to attach to a mask strap. It also is natively pressure resistant and can add depth numbers to your video, GoPros require a case. Here's a dive filmed with my Paralenz: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MEynCKlhk
The paralenz can't shoot high frame rate, so slo-mo looks choppy and requires serious post processing. It's stabilization is a joke compared to the GoPro, it doesn't shoot flat color so color grading is painful, it has no screen for checking your framing, and it costs roughly twice as much.
Edit: the quality of the glass in the paralenz is also pretty painful, the vignetting in that video and dynamic range are pretty unfortunate.
That doesn't mean that niche markets aren't real. It it not going to make any sense to mount an iPhone to my helmet any time soon.
I've been doing photography semi-seriously for a long time and have a couple different camera systems (DSLR and mirrorless) and, to be honest, if I'm on a trip where I know I'm mostly just shooting casually I'll often just bring my phone.
Apple doesn't sell DSLR, I think. Not cannibalism.
I enjoyed doing it for a bit with backcountry skiing but kids meant reduced trips and no real energy to sit down and edit.
Carnage videos of people swimming can also be fun/terrifying to watch from their pov.
I've seen footage of hard mountain bike trails and class V kayak runs that I have done, and also seen non-first-person footage of the same drops, and it's pretty impressive how much the GoPro footage makes a 25 foot waterfall seem inconsequential relative to a 3rd person perspective (i.e. someone on the bank).
I wonder if having a stereoscopic camera could improve this situation. I pay no attention to VR or whatever so I don't know if this is the venue in which stereoscopic/3D movies would be viewed but it could be cool. Harder to share I suppose, and if your goal is to impress others on social media then it probably wouldn't work unless people start bringing those helmets to look at their phones while they poop.
When I did some white water kayaking and rafting my camera would have water spots or a terrible angle.
When you start pondering the optical clarity of Tupperware, perhaps it's time to just buy a proper camera. So I did.
Since then, it's been stuck to CNC machines, laser cutters, car bumpers, car wheelwells, car suspensions, toy cars, Power Wheels cars, drones, rockets, and kites. It's been nestled into the sand between the launcher tubes of a fireworks show. It's produced documentation of countless projects, produced a record of machine assembly in case of warranty problems, and taken timelapses of packing and moving several houses and offices. I've used the wifi viewfinder as a "periscope" to keep an eye on the birthday boy's arrival for a surprise party. I'm about to buy my fourth battery for it, because those do wear out.
People who buy a camera and let it gather dust lack imagination.
I'm surprised GoPro hasn't formed partnerships for success in other markets. High school sports, and even younger, are often filming competitions and performing automated or manual analysis to rank players and provide feedback. Schools and Boosters are paying crazy amounts of money for these services, but it could be so much better aggregating videos of ~10 mounted GoPros together to get "on the field" perspectives. Then there's the whole professional sports media market. People LOVE hearing audio from NFL quarterbacks, imagine a first person view.
GoPro have made some efforts in that area - including employees working on special products for the professional broadcast market, "a partnership to enable GoPro HERO4 cameras with a professional grade, live, HD wireless broadcast solution" [1] and a partnership with the NHL [2] with the players wearing helmet cams.
They laid off the people working on it internally and it's gone from their product pages (although you can still buy a kit... for $7,500 [3]) so I'm guessing they didn't find the market as lucrative as they'd hoped.
[1] https://gopro.com/en/us/news/gopro-partners-with-vislink-for... [2] https://gopro.com/en/lu/news/gopro-and-nhl-new-partnership-w... [3] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1198311-REG/vislink_9...
I've bumped tons of fellow travelers that use them just for raw convenience when making travel videos. I.e. I don't just use it that one time a year I snowboard, it also comes with me to the beach, when I try kayaking, trying to get cool sakura shots, etc.
Then there's bicyclists and motorcyclists (again, me) that use it as a "dash cam."
Thing is I'm all of the above... and I'll probably never buy another gopro. I have a gopro. It works extremely well. Best in class. The only time I'll buy another is if I lose this one or it breaks. Sometimes I buy batteries and the like but those are maybe 30, 40 bucks. And I have no interest in their moonshot cloud whatever bullshit. So I'm not sure how businesses like that continue to make money.
This is common for durable goods. You get a spike of initial sales and steady stream after that, the difference is microwaves spiked decades ago and GoPros’s peaked more recently.
I bought GoPro thinking that I'll use it for my "adventures", however, it is mostly unused at home. So we just let our son play with it.
However, on travels, we really love having GoPro with us as it is small enough, and easier to use than phones. With phones, if we are out all day, we are a bit worried about battery life. We also have a bigger camera, X100F, but that is a bit too big to carry all the time on a vacation. So we leave it in the hotel unless we plan to do a photography. So most of our vacation photos and videos are evenly split between GoPro and phone cameras.
The button is too hard for him to push but that's where voice commands come in. I can say "GoPro take a photo" while he is holding it. We have captured some fun shots like this.
No.
I see these comments a lot here but... what exactly is wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets? E.g. your Hegels, Ferraris, Tag Heuers, etc.? Companies that specialize to fit some people exactly as opposed to mass appeal companies that make products that try to appeal to everyone but then slightly suck for everyone as well?
Can someone explain this viewpoint?
I think the reason people knock on GoPro is because they raised VC money and went to market. By taking on VC, they signaled (imo) that there was a huge market opportunity ($XXB) for them beyond a highly specialized niche market.
Climbing equipment is relatively niche as well. But manufacturers don't really try to pull in a broader audience. (Though climbing gyms do, in part, aim for casual climbers.)
But I fully agree with you. It doesn't have to be this way, and it's (IMHO) incredibly harmful.
I don't even think that GoPro should be classified as part of the adventure usage category anymore, as most of the GoPro usage I have seen has more to do with the fact that it's a compact camera that's relatively durable or sacrificial depending on your application. What I've been seeing over the last few years is that GoPro cameras are less handy than a smartphones whose recording capabilities just keep enhancing from the last few generations of improvements seemingly primarily focused on that, especially as more people have been streaming video directly to viewers from their phone compared to a recording, edit, and then upload workflow. A few years ago I felt like I saw GoPro's being used for most of the content in a particular edited video but nowadays I see them used for one or two shots where the camera was more at risk. If anything I just see them getting pushed from mass appeal to a niche compact camera market because there's just better competition in this space and the middle to high end of the GoPro line competes with some of the entry level/second hand Canon and Nikon cameras for recording video and unless you have those space and durability requirements in the niche where GoPro shines.
I’ve also carried it with me when documenting something like going for a walk in my daily spot and going to mundane places. I usually do this before I move to a new place to capture those simple things I want to remember about the old one.
Again no one reacts the same way as if you’re walking towards them holding a phone in the record position and I like the video I get from it.
But I also used it on a hiking trip to big bend and it was nice to capture the hike passively and enjoy it without feeling the need to constantly stop and take pictures.
I have to wade through thousands of videos before I find something interesting enough to post online, but each of those videos has value. The worse the performance the higher the value.
Sometimes I feel like for HN everything that is not in the bubble is a fad.
Go Pro has a market, and that's why it's a company of this size that has released many instance of their product.
When planning to go on vacation for instance, a GoPro is ideal for kids to shoot whatever they want without having to borrow parent's phone/camera or some expensive point and shoot.
Same for people playing Pokemon GO, a super small side camera that is completely point and shoot, can take some rough handling and is mostly weather proof is ideal.
This fraud isn’t big enough in the US, but maybe if they market it the right way or get the OEMs to install at the factory even better.
Otherwise the will end up like the Cisco flip cameras... a nice niche that can live on if managed well but not going to grow big and should be private.
But it's too expansive for such a hobby and I'd feel stupid with it on my ski helmet ;)
I suspect a fair number of people buy GoPros for their association with adventure sports and, after taking video of doing a few runs down some blues at the local ski area, come to the realization that they don't in fact base jump or kayak off waterfalls.
As for drones, I've thought about them from time to time. But after taking some video around my house, I'm honestly not sure what I would do with one. They're sort of obnoxious in wilderness settings and are often banned in any case.