DreamRider85

I know things are weird right now. Anyways my fb friends have said that like looking at my pics but would like videos so they feel they’re doing the ride with me. I would like to know what a good go pro would be. I don’t want to spend thousands. Is the cheapest one still good?

Im not sure what the differences are between silver and gold and all these different versions. And how do transfer the recordings to your phone?

See if I could just record it from my phone I wouldn’t have to worry about transferring. I think it would be cool to record some of my rides but at the same time I don’t want this to be too much of a chore. You have to somehow transfer it computer, phone and then make sure it’s always charged, etc..

leob1

I bought a knock off for $79-ish. The video quality is ok, not good enough for Discovery channel but good enough for me.
The first time I put it on my bike, clamped to the handle bar, it fell off, and of course, right under the wheel. It scratched the case pretty good, but that was the extent of the damage.
If it was a $300+ GoPro i'd have been a lot more upset.
It depends on what you want to do with it, what you want from it, and how much you can stand too lose.
Good Luck.

SlvrDragon50

If you don't need motion stabilization, the GoPro 6 will be fine. Otherwise, Hero7 Black and Hero 8 black had massive improvements to stabilization.

atwl77

Sounds like you have to first decide if video recording is something you want to do, before you go out and buy new hardware. Record with your phone first. See if you like doing video editing -- which is the actual biggest "chore" afterwards; the transferring is just the small bits. Then uploading. Then see if all that time and effort is worth it, and deciding if your phone is good enough for the job, or if something is lacking. Then seeing if a GoPro will in fact deal with the parts that your videos are lacking.

sdmc530

Don’t its not worth the tine and effort. I have the original gopro for my bike rides and very seldom use it. At first i did and will get it out for events but wish I hadn’t spent the money at all. If you’re into this type of thing then its worth it but I just found it for me to be not worth it.

canklecat

There are at least a dozen GoPro knockoffs on Amazon, ebay and elsewhere for well under $100. I have a VanTop Moment 4 that's not bad for around $50. HD, image stabilization, decent rear screen, easy to use, fair life per battery and it comes with two batteries. Weakness: mounts and the weatherproof case that's basically essential for proper mounting. Every mount cracked within a month of using them. But they're generic and easily replaceable.

But I needed a traffic/ride documentation camera that will run for hours without attention, not an action cam and most GoPros and knockoffs aren't well suited to that mundane task.

I switched to a pair of Drift Ghost X, front and rear. HD, 5 hour runtime per charge (with optional 8 hour battery pack), more streamlined than the boxy GoPros and knockoffs. Less than $100 each, usually available with discount code or coupon on Amazon.

Highly recommended for mundane ride/traffic documentation. I use 'em every ride on my road bike. For my hybrid I don't want to bother with swapping the mounts over, so I have a mount on one helmet and us it for hybrid casual cruises. But I don't like the extra weight on my head for road bike rides, so they're mounted to the stem and seat post.

Moe Zhoost

How well does the Drift Ghost capture license plates? My Sony action cam has such a wide field of view that it's tough to read a plate unless I'm right behind a car stopped at a light.

alloo

I'm in the market for a adventure camera also. What are some of the knock offs that you would recommend? Midlevel camera.
I want to use the camera to record my commute and share with friends. Not necessarily for professional use. Just for fun, reliable, no issues. I have tried recording with the cell phone, I want to do more handsfree and wide angle lens. What are your thoughts? Thank You

hillyman

Buy plenty of batteries too.
I was riding in Little Bighorn Battlefield Park and came upon a pack of horses beside road. They took off with me riding in the middle of the pack. Coolest riding experience I ever had. Later anxiously went to download to laptop to find battery died right before it happened.

tagaproject6

I really dislike the short battery life.

Lemond1985

I know the Cycliq cameras are much-maligned here, but I get 4-5 hours of battery out of my Fly12 CE, but more importantly, there is an audible sound every 10 minutes that tells me (approximately) how much battery life I have by the number of beeps. There is also a flashing light that turns from green to yellow to red as the battery drains. I think if you are like most people and want a "set and forget" camera, this is the one. Just get the right SD card, I think many people's problems with these cameras is a result of that one thing alone.

I am very tempted by some of the knockoffs, $100 for a basic front-facing HD bike camera, with 4-5 hour battery life sounds very reasonable. However, I have seen footage from a few of the knockoffs posted on Amazon, and the stuff I saw looked like a "party video" taken at a rave. Massive video artifacts and halos everywhere, it was a joke. Very trippy-looking, but not something you would want to use to document a crash in a personal injury lawsuit, or show to LE. These seem mainly for fun.

So until I actually see some footage, I will withhold judgment. And I realize that getting video footage posted here is a lot of work, so that may not happen soon. Also I am concerned about the lack of image stabilization, when I turn that off with my Cycliq, the video becomes pretty much unwatchable.

canklecat

I haven't found any HD video camera using a wide angle lens that reliably captures US license plates. That includes my digital still cameras in video mode.

It's as if our plates were deliberately designed to thwart surveillance. They're half the size of those used in other countries. Extremely reflective so they tend to blow out highlights in digital cameras with mediocre dynamic range at night. And Texas plates are often white, making it even worse.

And some states, including Texas, don't require front plates so a vehicle can plow into us from behind and leaving few or no means of identification. That's why I often half-way joke the easiest way to get away with murder in the US is to hit someone with a car and invoke the magic get out of jail free mantra: "I never saw the cyclist/pedestrian. He/she/it came out of nowhere."

The most I hope for is to capture a few recognizable characters from the plates, and identifying characteristics of the vehicle.

hillyman

Phil_gretz

The FBI and NSA have great software for extracting that type of information, should the need arise...

Lemond1985

Probably OT, but I agree mostly. I may have pretty good percentages of picking out every plate character of passing vehicles in my video footage, but it's pretty hit and miss. There are some plates (paraphrasing "Cool Hand Luke") you just can't read. Maybe as many as 1/2 during the daytime, and virtually all of them at night go unrecorded. We are very much at the mercy of lighting conditions.

You just have to hope that the person who hits you, commutes on the road regularly and can be ID'ed that way. But still, a grainy picture of the "suspect vehicle", with no plate, is 100X better than just a vague memory, that may or may not be accurate. Here are some examples taken with my Fly12 CE, decent character recognition, but still not 100% perfect. I dunno whether 4k will solve that or not, my guess is "not".








Lots of faded plates out there, plus people use covers. Many people have no plates at all and no one bothers them. Fortunately, a plate number is not everything, doesn't even tell you who was driving the car, but it's a start.

SlvrDragon50

Experiment with your camera settings. Turn down the resolution and turn up the FPS. Mess around with the ISOs and shutter speed to minimize overexposure. You can also change FOV on a lot of these cameras. 178* FOV really not necessary.

Lemond1985

I have settings for image stabilization, resolution, and FPS, that's about it. I'm at my max frame rate and max resolution, 1920x1080 at 60 frames per second. I could go down to 720p, but would have the same frames per second (60) so I don't see any advantage to that.

This could change the field of view though, so I might try that out, thanks.

FWIW, I read somewhere that these cameras have what sounds like a rattling ball inside them, because they actually shoot in 4k, but the bouncing ball controls image stabilization, and "tells" the camera where to crop off the edge of the picture, in each frame, so that it appears stable.

Moe Zhoost

I've had a hard enough time convincing the local PD to review my videos.

SlvrDragon50

Gotcha. Yea that is what really separates the cheaper cameras from GoPro. Hypersmooth on GoPro was an absolute gamechanger and allowed for such smooth video processing.