One of the big things GoPro has going for it is viral marketing: people — including the world’s best daredevils — are constantly producing never-before-seen footage using the company’s tiny HD cameras, and it seems every week a new GoPro video goes viral on the web. The company isn’t bad at creating their own videos either — the above is an amazing promo video showing off the capabilities of the new Hero2 camera announced yesterday. 100% of the footage was captured using the camera, which can shoot 10mp stills at 11fps and 1080p video at 30fps.
GoPro has unveiled the HD Hero2, the followup to the highly popular HD Hero from 2009 that has been adopted by daredevils around the world. The new camera is similar in design but offers major upgrades: more angles of view (90°, 127°, and 170°), 11-megapixel still photos (up from 5MP) at 10fps, a helpful LCD display instead of a single character code system, a mini-HDMI port, and a faster sensor that allows for faster frame rates (e.g. 960p at 48fps, up from 30).
The Hero2 is available in three different kits (outdoor, motorsports, and surf) for $300, and the price of the old Hero has been reduced to $200.
Forget sending cameras up to the edges of space on a weather balloon: rockets are much, much cooler (and faster). A man named Derek Deville created a homemade rocket in an effort to win The Carmack Prize, which offers $10K to anyone who can launch a rocket to above 100K feet, take a GPS reading, and then recover the vehicle. Although he failed to take a GPS reading, Deville’s rocket managed to reach 121,000ft (~23 miles) in 84 seconds.
What’s awesome is that he also attached two HD cameras to the rocket to document what the journey looks like. The side view captured by a FlipHD starts at 2:49, while footage from a GoPro pointed straight down starts at 5:15.
If you have a GoPro or any other compact camera with a constantly exposed lens, you can protect the lens from scratches when it’s not in use by making a cheap DIY lens cap out of a ping pong ball and a rubber band.
Melbourne-based design studio Betty Wants In is at it again. They’ve created this stunning slow-mo video of BASE jumpers doing their thing — a perfect followup to the skydiving one they shared back in April. The footage was captured with GoPro cameras and then slowed down using Twixtor, just like the crazy wingsuit video we shared yesterday.
Earlier this year, daredevil BASE jumper Jeb Corliss leaped off a cliff in Switzerland in a wingsuit and wearing 5 separate GoPro cameras. One of the things Corliss did afterward was create this ethereal slow-motion video with the footage using Twixtor, the artificial slowmo program that has become quite popular as of late. Read more…
Reddit user rocketchef strapped a GoPro video camera to a bike helmet and had their two-year-old daughter wear it during a trip to the playground. The resulting footage is a fun look at what the world looks like to a two-year-old. Read more…
How do you get a silverback gorilla to put a GoPro HD camera up to its face? Stuff the case full of raisins, of course!
This cheeky ape turned photographer for a day after being handed a high-definition camera by his keepers. Silverback gorilla Ya Kwanza, 27, happily snapped away at himself and his surroundings in his compound in Durrell Wildlife Park in Jersey. The gorilla even took a number of close-up shots before returning the camera to his keepers by throwing it over the wall of his enclosure. Staff at the park also captured the gorilla photographing himself with the indestructible camera, which was covered in honey and oats. [#]
Lesson learned: if you ever lose your camera to a silverback gorilla, ask nicely and they’ll throw it back.
Street photographer Eric Kim wanted to capture what it’s like to roam around on the streets and shoot photographs of complete strangers (without their permission), so he mounted a GoPro HD 960 video camera to the top of his Leica M9 and then walked the streets of LA. You can see some of the resulting photos over on Kim’s blog.
YouTube user opica1983 was in Cannes, France recording some footage at night with his GoPro camera when a seagull suddenly strolled over to it, grabbed it in its beak, and flew off. Luckily he was able to find the camera after scaling a castle wall, and uploaded the footage to give us a glimpse into what it looks like to be stolen by a seagull. Now there’s a perspective you don’t see every day.
