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GoPro for Beginners by Papercut Ltd

This guide book is the first and only choice if you are a new adopter and want to learn everything you'll need to get started with your new action camera. This independent manual is crammed with helpful guides and step-by-step fully illustrated tutorials, written in plain easy to follow English. Over the pages of this new user guide you will clearly learn all you need to know about out of the box set up, getting to grips with the more advanced features and discover a huge array of amazing add-ons. With this unofficial instruction manual at your side no problem will be unsolvable, no question unanswered as you learn, explore and enhance your user experience.

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The GoPro story begins here

All the major manufactures produce action cameras of one sort or another. Canon has the PowerShot D30, Nikon the Coolpix W100 and Olympus the Tough. They can all take stills that range from around 8MP up to 16MP and can shoot HD and Ultra HD video. Even SatNav company TomTom have an action camera called the Bandit capable of 4K video and 16MP stills. There is however, one brand that has become synonymous with recording outdoor action and sports. GoPro, with its action camera range. It would seem that it has become the daddy of them all, beloved by anyone who likes to climb on a bike, scale a mountain and hit the powder on a snowboard. It was the brainchild of Nick Woodman, who on a surfing trip to Australia in 2002, was frustrated that

he couldn't get quality up-close photos of the surfing action. He couldn't afford the prices of professional photographic equipment that would allow him to do so either. His desire to have more professional equipment and get those top-level pro shots is what inspired him to create the name 'GoPro'.

The vision

At first, Nick Woodman developed a wrist strap that was capable of securing an existing camera to the wrist of a surfer. This concept was tested with a number of 35mm film cameras on trips to Australia and Indonesia. It was apparent that the strap, camera and a waterproof housing should be sold as complete unit. Late in 2002 Nick Woodman created Woodman Labs which is the parent company to GoPro. After a period of development, the GoPro HERO was born. It was a 35mm reusable film camera with a fixed lens, and although it was developed for the surfing community, it soon branched out into other areas such as snowboarding and other popular action sports.

Going digital

In 2006 the GoPro HERO went digital. It had a camera capable of 640x480 pixel stills and a ten second burst of 320x240 pixel video. Since then the range has developed and become an extremely popular action camera. The HERO2 was released in 2011. It had an 11MP sensor and could shoot 1080p video at 30 frames per second. 2012 saw the launch of the HERO3 which came in three different specifications called the Black, Silver and White. The White had a 5MP sensor, the Silver the same 11MP sensor as the HERO2 and the Black used a 12MP sensor that captured 4K video at 15FPS and 2.7K video at 30FPS. The HERO generation was updated in 2013 with the HERO3+ range with improved image quality and better low light performance. Then, in 2014 the HERO4 range was launched. The bar was raised even higher with this iteration of the product line, with the HERO4 Black being able to record 4K video at a much more usable 30FPS. It still shot stills at a 12MP resolution of 4000x3000 pixels, and captured a burst of images at 30FPS. The latest versions in the range are the HERO5 and the new HERO6 Black and the smaller, more compact cousin, the HERO5 Session. The HERO5 and HERO6 Black now boast waterproofing without the need for a housing and has an LCD touchscreen mounted on the back so you can now view and review shots and video without either linking it to your phone, or having to download it to your computer. It also has GPS location capture and voice activated controls. Stills capture remains 12MP and 4K video at 30FPS for the HERO5 and 60FPS for the HERO6, but 1080p video can be captured at a frame rate of up to 240FPS, which is great for slow motion action sequences.

The big question

If you have already invested in a digital camera and you have a smartphone capable of taking some good quality photos, the question is do you need an action cam? Well, we will explore some of the attributes that have made the GoPro range so popular. There are going to be pros and cons but we'll see if we can arrive at a balanced conclusion. First things first though, let's introduce you to the GoPro range.