Yesterday, I saw GoPro announcing the 12th version of their venerable action camera. The first thing that pops to my mind: “Do they still overheat and malfunction easily?” I’ve a friend who uses a GoPro for his video blogs, and that thing is effectively useless when he takes it to the heat of Southeast Asia. It’s hilarious and sad to see when he says in his videos that his GoPro died, necessitating a switch to the bigger Sony camera to finish filming.
As an owner of a GoPro HERO 7 myself (five years old, if you’re counting), I can sympathize with my friend’s predicament. Even on just warm days (read: not hot at all) the unit cannot last more than half an hour of continuous shooting. GoPros have been overheat-prone since they’ve combined the waterproofing-function into the same housing. In the early days, the GoPro unit and the waterproof housing was separate. Simple laws of physics: water not getting in also means air not getting in. No airflow means the processor runs hotter. Ergo, overheating.
The GoPro HERO 12 promises double the recording runtime of the 11, which sounds good on paper. I will need to see reviews that really put it under stress testing in hot environments. Otherwise, I am completely fine to continuing using my HERO 7.
Not that I would call myself a videographer - far from it. I’m first and only a photographer. Making videos is a whole other art in it of itself. The storage and processing horsepower needed for videography is exponentially more than just pictures. One minute of 4K60 video off an iPhone - not even that high a bit-rate compared to dedicated cameras - is about 400 megabytes. If you’re still counting, that space requirement adds up very quickly. Not to mention the hours of work just to make a video in the minutes. At this point, that’s not something I want to invest in.
Here in the dark.