The GoPro11.
With the GoPro11, there is a new chapter in the GoPro family tree. The company changed their strategy. Talking about improved reliability in cold weather, longevity in battery life and an all-new sensor.
I sincerely hope GoPro now finally addresses the issue of reliability of the past. YouTube is full of videos of GoPro's failings, and as a motorbike traveller, you can't afford this since you have the camera on the front of your helmet. You can't see if the camera is on or off, if you have an error message, or if it's recording.
One solution was using the remote control, which gave a little bit of an indication that the camera was functioning.
I had trouble with both cameras switching off in the middle of filming at least two to three times a day, or it didn't even switch on when I activated the remote control. Both GoPro 9 and 10 have been affected by this phenomenon.
However, with the latest incarnation, something weird happened because GoPro is now advertising that with the new batteries, what we had in the older cameras, and a change of sensors and electronics, their reliability issues have finally been addressed.
Good News, right?
Now, I'm taking it with a pinch of salt. But I thought to myself, well can't get worse. Yes, you spend a lot of money on them. However, I still used version nine, which was the worst by a mile, so I decided, okay, take the plunge, got the 11, set it up to the most basic setting there, and give it a try.
The settings I use are the whole frame of 5.3 K and an aspect ratio of eight to seven, 25Fps, so it's a big old square image that I can use to resize and reframe it in my video app to a 16 x 9 Video.
There is plenty of room for reframing and zooming to get the best out of the footage.
These settings work best for my workflow. I don't need any other features as long as this works; I'm a happy man. The old number 10 functions now with my Volta Grip for B-Roll and Vlogging.
The Volta grip has its quirks and issues, but this is for another story.
I lost a lot of footage on my last trip to the Sahara Desert through Morocco because the camera didn't function. I couldn't switch the camera on or off. So I had to pull the Battery out of the camera to reset it. This killed my SD card, so I lost all the material stored on the card. I kept the card to one side to try to recover the files back home. But this was a total loss for me.
Back to the new GoPro 11
I've been out for three days travelling through Czechoslovakia. We had exciting weather from the fog, a freezing temperature, about five degrees seven degrees for four hours. The GoPro11 was working well. The remote control and the camera together didn't encounter a single blib.
So far, not a problem... touch wood.
Battery life seems to hold up better than in the past. The cold weather didn't make the setup unusable. The video Quality is better, and with the 10bit colour settings, post-production now has a little more headroom. You clearly see it in a low-light situation. A real improvement. Fewer artefacts and clearer images all around.
I'm not interested in any of the camera's advanced features. They are good to have, but I just asked for one thing, and one thing only whenever I hit the button. Start or Stop recording. That's all I'm asking for, so hopefully, with this version 11, the common problems have been resolved. So what I will do, is I will take the GpPro11 with me on my next trip. I'm going back to England.
Let's do some testing and shoot more videos and then see how we get along with it. Time will tell.
So far, not been a problem at all.
I'll keep you posted.
