As the world becomes ever more socially connected, text based status updates and blog no longer seem to cut the mustard. The old adage that 'a picture paints a thousand words' couldn't be more relevant today than it's first use in the early part of the 20th century. In this context, traditional film and photography techniques have a key weakness - they either require a second person behind the camera. Persuading someone to stand behind the lens being sandblasted on a windy, and often wet, beach is not easy. Inevitably, any action shots are taken in the minutes after derigging before quickly seeking shelter and a cup of warm tea in the van. Point-Of-View (POV) Cameras solve this problem by recording the scene from a particular viewpoint without the need for human intervention. Other POV cameras exist, but for now the adoption curve is led by GoPro. The GoPro Hero3 is the latest incarnation bringing together a 12 MegaPixel camera with high defintion video capabilites in a wearable, mountable package about the size of your hand.

Video

With this background in mind, let's have a look at the various gopro modes:

Here's what GoPro have to say:

For windsurfing, we'd recommend shooting video in the 2.7K at 30fps mode as long as you have an editing system that can handle it. The exception for this is where you're looking for slow-motion shots when the higher frame rates of the 1080p@60fps or even WVGA@240fps modes will be best.

Photos

Until recently, using the GoPro for photos used to present a dilemma, the timelapse mode sounded great but at anything less that 2 seconds the exposure was fixed based on the first image. Fortunately, the latest software update fixes this and now we'd always recommend shooting in timelapse mode with a 0.5 sec interval. If you're lucky enough to have the Black edition, you can experiment with the continuous shooting mode, but we find it's hard enough setting yourself up for a move without worrying about when to press the trigger!
What about photo resolution? Always shoot 12MP Wide. Why? The image below shows how the 7MP Med mode crops the image in the camera and the other modes are just lower resolution versions. Shoot at 12MP Wide and then you have plenty of space to crop later. If you're used to 35mm, you'll want to crop to a 3x2 aspect ratio rather than the 4x3 ratio out of the camera

Battery Life

Before we tried the Hero3, we were concerned about battery life reports. But the fact is your best sailing will be when you're fresh so take the 'hour of power' approach and use the time to pull those moves! The table below shows GoPro's estimated timings, we're yet to see how these stack up in the middle of winter with the lower temperatures but we'll let you know how we get on. Don't forget that if you're shooting stills with the recommended 0.5 second interval, you'll end up with 7,000 photos per hour to edit!

Keep an eye out for the next post in the series where we'll be looking at some of the various mounting options available, including building your own. In the meantime, what are your GoPro tips? Let us know in the comments