Can a GoPro Take Better Photos Than Your iPhone?

We all know GoPro cameras are great for capturing action packed videos, but did you know you can also take great 12 megapixel photos, even in RAW format with the Hero 8?…or can you?

I bought the GoPro Hero 8 because I thought it was ridiculous that I was holding my iPhone with my bare cold hands on the ski slopes while trying to take videos and photos. So a GoPro had to be better than my iPhone, no?

Last “ski week” I got another chance to test that out in Park City. Unfortunately, like my last ski trip, the voice activation is still buggy, not always turning on when you expect. And the same was/is true for the command “GoPro Take a Photo.”

“Why would you need to use voice activation to take a photo? Can’t you just press the shutter release like a normal camera?”

Yes, you can. But not so easily when you’ve got the camera strapped on to your “chesty” mount and it’s 10 degrees out and you don’t want to take off your gloves to press the shutter release. Or, when you’re actually skiing and you simply want to capture an action still.

Testy the Chesty

“Wait, what the hell’s a ‘chesty’?”

It’s that contraption you see me wearing on my chest in this ski lift shot below. Of course, in this photo, I have the GoPro on my “3-way” selfie stick.

To take photos like this, you could yell out “Go Pro Take a Photo” or, you could set the self-timer on the camera to 10, press the shutter release, get the camera in position, get your subjects all ready to go, and watch the countdown on the face of the camera go 10, 9, 8 until it clicks and you get the shot.

Family selfie shot with a GoPro 3-way mount using the 10 second timer. I felt more confident using my GoPro on the ski lift versus futzing with my iPhone and potentially dropping it down on the slopes below.

Voice Aggravation

But back to taking voice activated photos. As hopeful as I was at capturing some great “in action” shots, many times the voice activation failed. This could have been due to wind noise, the sound of the skis in the snow, or just a big miss by the camera mic.

Below you can see one time where the voice activation did work while skiing with the GoPro on the chesty mount. I believe this shot was taken in the wide angle setting.

You can see a fair amount of fish eye distortion (some like that effect) and an un-level horizon in the unedited, original version (I may have been skiing at an angle when the shot was taken.) With some cropping in the edited version you can see a level horizon and the action being brought closer.

Either way, I didn’t love the results of the in action shots from the chesty mount. It’s really an act of faith to be yelling out “Go Pro take a photo” and not be able to see what the camera will be shooting and/or even know if it took a picture.

So did I get any good pictures with the chesty mount? (“You like saying ‘chesty mount,’ don’t you Rob?)

Yes I did, and yes I do. With a catch…

I got the best results with the chesty mount when I was standing still.

“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?”

Not necessarily. It was still pretty cool to be able to “hands free” say “GoPro take a photo” and have whatever was in front of me captured “on film.” Check out the great results below.

Point and Shoot

So what if you don’t want to wear that ridiculous mount on your chest? Or annoy your family with your insidious “GoPro do this, GoPro do that." Can you simply hold the little cam in your hand a press the button to take a photo?

Of course you can.

Here are some additional great photos taken via the 3-way mount and timer and/or by simply pressing the shutter…

Raw Deal

One “bug” or snafu I haven’t figured out yet was how to default the voice activated photo to shoot in my custom RAW setting. You can select many different custom photo settings (as you can for video too), but for some reason the camera defaulted to shooting JPEGs versus RAW files. I am sure there is a way to change/address that if I do a little research on it.

Better Than an iPhone?

So is the Hero8 better than using an iPhone on the slopes in these elements? To answer that question, we’ll have to take a look at those iPhone photos…in the next blog entry :-)

Useful Links

Park City Mountain Resort

The Eating Establishment - a great place to eat breakfast in downtown Park City

"GoPro Start Recording..."

So while I continue to have angst over the Z6 versus Sony A7iii decision (with this Friday being the deadline for potentially returning the Nikon), one purchase I made back in December that I am feeling pretty, pretty good about is the GoPro Hero 8.

I’ve never owed an action camera before, but after surviving frostbite from bare handling my iPhone on the frozen tundra of the ski slope, I thought it would make sense to explore the action cam market.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the pros and cons of purchasing the Hero 8 versus the Hero 7 (in short, the Hero 7 has a replaceable lens (that’s good), the Hero 8 does not (that’s bad, but I can live with it given the upgraded functionality and improved UI.) Instead, I’ll share some initial thoughts of my first month+ of using it.

First Use Case - Sierra at Tahoe

Back in December, I took it with me to the slopes of Sierra at Tahoe, strapping in to myself on the “chesty mount” to gain that POV skiing angle that I’ve seen in so many great GoPro videos.

On day one, I used the wrong “buckle mount” which left me getting nothing but a POV of snow on the ground…and not much else . A big fail!

After attaching the right “J mount” at the right angle, I was able to get the POV footage I wanted as you can see from this video below.

Uploaded by robatpark10 on 2019-12-27.

One of the great enhancements of the Hero 8 is the new UI and ease of changing your video recording settings/pre-sets, including changing the quality/definition (4K, 2K, 1080p), the lens angle (narrow, linear, wide, superview) , and the frame rates (24, 30, 60, 120). For this video shown above, I shot in 4K wide at 24 frames per second for a cinematic style.

New GoPro Hero 8 Menu

On the other hand, one of the spotty features of the GoPro is the voice activation – and specifically being able to tell the Go Pro to “start recording” and “stop recording.”

When you’ve got the camera strapped to your body on the ski slopes, you don’t want to take your gloves off and fuss with the touchscreen of the camera to turn it on. So in theory, you should be able to yell out “GoPro start recording” when you want to start recording and “GoPro stop recording” to turn it off.

Trouble is, the GoPro doesn’t always “hear you” or turn on and off when you use the voice command. You are supposed to hear a “beep” when it turns on and off recording, but with your ski helmet on and the camera attached to your body, it’s not so easy to hear, even when the camera is set to its highest volume. That led to either missing video footage I wanted to capture (didn’t turn on), or recording more than I wanted (didn’t turn off).

What’s more, you sound like somewhat of an idiot constantly blabbering “GoPro start recording” and “GoPro stop recording” – and it will likely annoy others around you, and most definitely annoy your wife and kids who have to endure my saying it over and over again for a week. But it was worth it!

I’ll share more ski footage and what the camera can do with other mounts, including the handhelds and selfie grips when I have time to get around to editing those videos - and photos too (it can take some cool photos!)

second Use Case - underwater in florida

Next stop, Florida. We traveled to visit my parents earlier this month and I wanted to see what the camera was capable of in its waterproof casing.

Of course, my kids were really excited about the underwater opportunities for selfie shots, jumps into the pool, and other tumbling under water footage.

I was really amazed at the clarity! Below is a video I compiled for my daughter who had a “big share” project that she had to present yesterday to her classmates. She wanted to show off her stunts in the pool and photos of her ceramic trip to Picasso’s Creative Workshop in Lake Worth, Florida.

One important lesson we learned: do not remove the camera from its waterproof case to watch the video footage while at the pool. This led to condensation getting inside the case and fogging up the lens and compromising some of the footage.

Like the video footage you saw? I normally edit my videos using iMovie, but his time I challenged myself to use Davinci Resolve, a free, more professional platform for video editing. It was a relatively steep learning curve, and it probably has more functionality than I need at most times, but in time I can see the value in learning how to use it and leverage its editing power to create even better videos.

On the whole, I really enjoyed using the GoPro and see great potential for using it on ziplines, snorkeling, and of course for future ski trips.

Learn More

Want to learn more about purchasing and/or using a GoPro and/or the accessories? I recommend checking out the these two YouTube vloggers for great insights: