GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition Camera – Taken with Nokia N8 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
An old friend recently pointed out to me a rather cool camera called the GoPro Hero 3, I have been wanting something to take better and more stable videos now I’m going out (I was getting complaints about people getting seasick watching my phone ones), so this seemed ideal. After a very little amount of persuasion from my friends I went ahead and ordered it.
I won’t go into great detail about the camera, it’s easy enough to look up on the website, it’s very lightweight, robust, weatherproof, has a remote control (smartphones can also control it with a free app) and comes with several clamps and mounts, basically ideal for attaching to my wheelchair and allowing me to actually take photos and videos myself (controlling a normal camera or camera-phone isn’t really possible for me).
First of all here are some still shots, the first is straight from the camera, you can see there’s a fair bit of distortion from the wide angle lens, it’s easy to fix using photoshop (which has a profile available for GoPro cameras) or another photo editing program. With about 2 minutes of time you can get great quality photos like the others below.
Peppa – Unprocessed wide angle – Taken with GoPro Hero 3 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
Peppa – Taken with GoPro Hero 3 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
Dexter – Taken with GoPro Hero 3 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
Kara & Mya – Taken with GoPro Hero 3 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
Of course I was desperate to take the camera out for a play so a walk in the park was on the agenda. I decided to leave the camera on standard settings for my first test, and just got my PA to attach it to my chest belt, I’ll try attaching it to the chair and alter the settings next time.
GoPro Camera Attached to chest belt – Taken with Nokia N8 – Copyright Bull’s Rambles 2013
In the video below you can see the iPhone app running (fixed on my tray using a car windshield phone holder), the app does drain the battery fairly quickly and the phone ran out of power before the camera. The video is slightly processed as I had to recompress it for YouTube, the original size was over 16GB, it does look amazing so well worth the size really. It was also a rather good test of my Frontier X5 power chair, the terrain wasn’t exactly smooth but the chair handled it with no problem, my neck was more of a limiting factor, surprised I didn’t get whiplash!
Overall it’s an amazing camera and I can’t wait to use it again, I need to move my phone though as I couldn’t reach to control the camera properly, maybe a stylus would help. Also next time I’ll get the camera fixed to the chair itself, looking forward to making lots more videos to bore everyone ;)
P.S. – For editing I used Avidemux, it’s free and simple to use but no fancy effects.
Thats fantastic will be great when its mounted on tray rather than on you.
Loved your video so much I’m going into Brighton to get one!
How is it mounted and did you get a wifi remote with it?
I use a leccy chhair and hope to control the camera via my phone or ipad as i don’t have finger movement.
All the best,
Harvey
Cool, it’s a great purchase, it comes with brackets attached to strong adhesive pads so I stuck one on my wheelchair tray, hasn’t budged yet, the other brackets didn’t quite fit on the bars on my chair but there are plenty and I imagine the bicycle bracket they sell would probably work too.
Yep I have the wifi remote but have found it easier to put the camera on time lapse when going out, it takes a photo every ten seconds so I just line the chair up and wait, if I want video I get my PA to switch modes and leave it recording, then edit it at home.
Let me know how you go and share some photos/video, it obviously wasn’t designed for people with physical impairments but it really does fit a gap in the market, maybe with more users like us they will realise and make it even better :)