Used by extreme sports fans of all types, the Go Pro camera has been everywhere from surfing to skydiving. Designed to be tough enough to take almost anything, the GoPro certainly lives up to its name.
The latest version is the GoPro Hero 3+. We took the black edition out to one of Ireland’s toughest challenges – Hell and Back. For those who haven’t experienced this particular event, it’s 10km obstacle course in Co Wicklow that pits participants against mud, water, obstacles and even snipers armed with airsoft guns. It’s brilliantly evil, and from the number of people who sign up every time it’s on, just the right side of fun to keep people coming back for more.
What better test for GoPro than that?
We strapped the camera to a not-so-reluctant volunteer, caked him in mud, threw him into some freezing water and sent him up the side of the mini Sugar Loaf carrying a few sandbags for good measure. The results can be seen on the video here.
A few things to note. The Hero 3+ comes with two included mounts, an adhesive and a curved mount, so if you want to fit it to your head or check, you’ll need to invest in a few accessories. The chest strap costs up to €45, but if you shop around you can find it a bit cheaper.
You may also want to invest in a higher capacity battery than the standard option. You’ll get a couple of hours footage from the standard battery but anything more than that and you’ll find yourself out of luck. That will be reduced further by having the wifi turned on, or shooting at higher frame rates, so keep that in mind.
The included waterproof housing will keep your camera safe at depths of up to 40m, instead of the previous 60m, and it will also keep out the mud and dirt you may come across on your travels. Which is a good thing, considering on a January weekend, Hell and Back was a veritable mudbath. Cleaning it is relatively easy afterwards, as you aren’t worried about damaging the rather expensive camera underneath.
There are plenty of modes on the Hero 3+. Apart from straightforward video and still images, the camera will take time lapse shots, burst photos for action sequences and simultaneous video and time lapse photos. The image quality is better than previous GoPro cameras too, and it’s even an improvement on the hero 3, with sharper images. There’s an auto lowlight mode too, which will give you some decent shots when the light starts to fail.
The Superview mode, new to the Hero 3+, makes the camera ultra wide angle so you can get more of your surroundings in the shot. You can only use this in 1080 or 720 mode though.
The video quality ranges from ultra high definition down to WVGA, and you’ll need a high capacity microSD card to store your footage. We opted for the 64MB option, but obviously the higher quality your footage, the more space it will take up. Stock up on some high capacity cards just in case.
The Hero 3+ black edition also comes with wifi built in. That can be used for the included wifi remote, which can control the starting and stopping of your recording, or to stream footage to your smartphone through the GoPro app. The latter is handy for seeing exactly what your GoPro can, especially because the camera as standard doesn’t have an LCD preview screen.
The good news is that not only did the GoPro survive the trip to Hell and Back, it delivered some great footage too. The bad news is that we still have to clean the mud off it.
€450
GoPro.com
