GoPro Hero3 annouced

Agreed. WiFi is buggy. I need it, like when driving, mostly due to the lousy battery life even with BacPac.

Note: Do NOT leave the charged BacPac connected to the charged camera....they drain each other overnight.

Also, regarding the WiFi - something that screwed me up time and time again today (sometimes it does this, other times not): Camera goes into record, then stops. Sometimes at 10 sec, others at about 30, sometimes at 59 or so. Other times? Well, it goes into record by itself too.

It's funny like that, but I was not laughing....and yes, my firmware is up to date.

Good luck in Africa!

Also: As Jason recommends: Using Spot mode does seem to help a lot with the flicker/exposure stepping. Helps, but does not cure.

My GoPro is stuck in customs, already 4 weeks. They want permit from the Ministry of Communications for the Wi-Fi and permit from the Institute of Standards for the power adapters (both car and wall). The bureaucratic does not make it easy for me.

Just returned from a three week shoot in Kruger National Park, South Africa. We bought the GoPro Black specifically for this shoot and these are our observations:

Day One - Camera mounted onto a vehicle that we drove down a white sandy riverbed at 2pm with an outside temperature of 37degrees Celsius. The camera stopped rolling about 7-mins in and we could not get it to work for another hour. It was extremely hot and just would not switch on. An hour later we mounted it to the chesty and put it on a vet who was working on some sedated wild animals in the shade of the riverbed. By this time it was just after 3pm and the temp was still 37degrees. The camera would switch on but not record. Terribly disappointing as we were excited about getting this unique footage of vets hands-on with wild animals.

Day Two - Despite working the night before when we transferred footage, the camera would not switch on, no matter how many times I removed the charged battery pack and the separately charged extended battery pack.

Sometime in the next week we returned the camera back in Johannesburg, but the South African sellers were not happy about exchanging the camera.

Day Three - The new camera worked in cooler temperatures of 32degrees Celsius but would switch off at anywhere from 8-12min intervals. Sometimes it would not roll for longer than two minutes. And many times it would just not switch on until we removed the internal battery. We did not use the extended battery pack on this day. We had tested the camera extensively in Joburg (cooler temps of 22degrees Celsius) and it had worked fine.

Day Four and Five - Better behaved camera! It rolled for 12-minute increments and then would carry on rolling making new video files that look seamless (need to check in the edit suite). We used the extended battery pack on these two days and didn't have to take out the internal battery at all.

Not sure why the camera behaved as expected on the last shoot days, but it is a real pain to get working properly. A camera like this should be switched on and left to roll… we shouldn't have to baby it. We are thinking of taking it back and getting the Sony which is a real shame.

God damn it! I am really disappointed. More and more people are finding flaws in this little "marvel" ranging from the things you just brought up to too much jelly movement and disgusting rolling shutter. I will think twice before i buy a small POV camera.
Sonys solution sounds nice.

WOW, I've never had problems of not turning on or stopping. As with all cheaper or even many high cost cmos sensor, jello is bad especially when attached to a vibration such as a vehicle. When I've talked to GoPro they do a lot of processing and selection. They also capture at the highest frame rate then slow it down to help slow the movement. I've turned mine on in sub-freezing weather when snowmobiling and let it run for well over an hour with no problems. I treat mine pretty hard, cold water, dropping, shooting etc and so far ok.

Just sold another GoPro HD 3 Black clip from a few weeks ago.

Believe it or not, I've got something nice to say. Despite the damn thing turning off randomly when it mattered, and other aforementioned issues, I'm actually enjoying going through some of my footage from my recent trip.

The camera was mounted on a custom mag-mount (CB antenna magnet epoxied to the flat plate mount the camera shipped on) and was located on the front hood for most of the shots, which was a little low, and only until the end did I start tilting it up far enough, and also on the roof just over the windshield, and finally, on the trunk facing rearwards.

I was shooting at 2.7k, 30fps, Spot mode, ProTune on, WB set to Camera RAW.

Then I got this lovely idea that I'd try a timelapse while driving...sunset driving t/l, straight desert roads, into the setting sun, dig? Well, it's kinda cool, and I thought that the exposure lock present in the timelapse function would do me good, but I had to drive too fast for it to really work. The 0.5 second interval yields shots that result in a "way too fast" effect...I shoulda just kept shooting in video mode.

Anyway, except for the washed-out shots into the sun, and the botched POrtland city timelapse driving that will be cool on a psychedelic level (check the Just Uploaded thread) I'm finding more usable footage than I expected.

Even the bumpier roads...I thought I'd lose more to the bumps, but maybe it's driving a Chevy Cruze instead of a 1960 VW bus....a little smoother, eh?

http://www.awsm.com/13883/now-this-is-how-you-use-a-go-pro/

Brilliant!