GoPro Hero 4 Silver: Hands on with the newest action camera

By Siddharth Aalambayan The GoPro launched in India in June this year. Hands on, the Hero 4 is like any older model of the GoPro action camera series, except, it comes with an inbuilt screen for preview. This is a great upgrade, since we all needed it. Earlier in the day, you’d need an external screen, which would then end up eating a lot of battery and making the whole rig heavy. Now, the screen, being a touchscreen one, enables, an auto lock, lets you change the settings with a simple interface and helps you understand what the frame looks like. Speaking of the frame and your mis-en-scene, for a filmmaker and us at Tech 2 the fish eye perspective, still feels jarring. Before you pass judgment to that, let me also introduce you to the 4K(4 times that of HD) at 30 frames, 2.7K at 60 and 1080 – Full HD at a decent 120 frames per second. That means, if you were to render an output in 1080 you’d have literally 2 times of the frame you shot. What that means in simple terms is that you’d be able to zoom in a good 50% without worrying about quality loss. Well, having said that, I wouldn’t advice going beyond 25%; you want to respect that Director Of Photography who’d have shot your video. The higher resolution, makes you feel like you have the power in your hands, but wait, how many people watch a video in 4K on YouTube, hell, how many videos exist on the web which are 4K? For a theatre viewing, how many theatres have 4K projection anyway? Having been the skeptical person there, let me warn you about the heating in the hero4. It rolls(shoots) a good 40 minutes of video at 1080, 25FPS before heating up. In an air-conditioned car, with about 76% humidity in the air and drizzly monsoons, our camera heated to about a warm pan, which you could use to re-heat some naan-bread on. Let’s consider this setting while shooting a 360-degree video. The setup includes 7 GoPro’s attached to a rig, such that, it helps you capture the 360-degree action, with spaces to edit/stitch. At least one of the 7 cameras, would shut during the shoot. This was annoying after a point, because we were trying to film drama, which was choreographed. But, how many of you out there, shoot 360-degree, is then the question? Whats in the box The Camera, A waterproof housing, two adhesive mounts, quick release buckles and a cable to charge the camera with. The Micro SD card is sold separately. This again serves as an issue because having a separate charger always helps. Getting the camera attached to a computer or using one of your phone’s chargers can be irritating when you are on a shoot. The rigs that you own from before don’t have to be thrown away since the size is exactly the same as the GoPro Hero 3 and 3+. If you are okay blocking the screen then GoPro gives you the option of the GoPro Bacpac which enables a little extra battery life. It also comes with what they call the highlight button. How this works is that, when you are filming, you click the button and it tags the video. On the edit table or during a preview, this is then easier to find. At an idle time, the button allows you to navigate through the settings and is easy to use. A humongous set of options that you get to explore and are on point. Multiple resolutions and frame rates plus time-lapse options will benefit you in more than one way. Get some rigs and get shooting folks, the GoPro just got better.