Educate me on Go Pro cameras

[Hollow Grind]

I'm thinking this might be a great tool to record games to send out game speed clips to schools of interest, but I'm clueless on what to look for.

Are there other brands of similar cameras to consider? What features are essential? I would think battery life and memory would be at the top of the list.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated.

[NumeroUno]

I do not know much about them but I have a friend who someone in his family married into the family that started go pro. Aperently the go pro owner bought stock for his surrounding family. My buddy didn't real know them but gets a call one day that a 3 million dollar check was on the way. No joke

[Hollow Grind]

Maybe your buddy can send me a refurb?

[DonnieS]

I do not know much about them but I have a friend who someone in his family married into the family that started go pro. Aperently the go pro owner bought stock for his surrounding family. My buddy didn't real know them but gets a call one day that a 3 million dollar check was on the way. No joke

One less thing .

[Fastpitchdaddy]

Check out this mount for the fence, it also has a section that has there suggested cameras, batteries, and cables. I use it with a GoPro Hero 4 Black. http://www.lynkspyder.com/

[MrGeek]

I use this mount. http://www.view-thru.com/ Works pretty well unless you have a backstop that doesn't use a standard chain link size. Also bought the Brunton All Day battery. Get about 5 games on a single charge. Its a lifesaver.

[BB2830]

The GoPro is a great tool to help your DD get recruited. The field of view lends itself best for pitching/catching, batting and the infield. The software makes it easy to edit and create clips that can be sent to prospective college coaches. For my DD, a pitcher, I feel this was instrumental to getting colleges out to her games and ultimately her college commitment. I would also look into Fastpitch Scout as an easy way to get emails out to prospective colleges with minimal effort and be able to see who has visited your DD's site. You can also upload your GoPro videos and see how much time was spent looking at each area of the site (profile, videos, schedule, etc). Lower cost than other bigger name recruiting options like Captain U that I would not recommend and confirmed by posts on heybucket. Much positive feedback from college coaches. For my DD's journey playing for a high quality but not "top of the top" team at the time it did the trick. Another piece of advice...starting Freshman year of HS we consistently updated colleges on her HS season and successes rather than waiting for the week before Zoom into June, Colorado, etc as we felt that was when all the emails were pouring in. Know many players playing for the "top teams" and relying on their travel coaches who were not effectively recruited without putting in their own work. The LynkSpyder mount also was so much easier to use than any of the GoPro options. Also used the GoPro remote as the wireless connection from my phone was hit or miss and using the remote to stop and start between innings (I took video for our entire team) made it so a battery lasted for an entire game. Definitely will want to get high capacity (64GB or above) memory cards and extra batteries. Good luck.

[Hollow Grind]

Fastpitchdaddy, MrGeek, and BB2830, thanks for your advice!

Can anybody outline the differences between the various models of Go Pro cameras? I'm not concerned so much with 4k clarity as I am with the ability to film multiple games in a day and editing capabilities..

[MrGeek]

I have a Hero3 that's a few years old. I'm sure a newer model has a better picture and higher res but mine does just fine. I use 720 res at 30fps to keep video size manageable. My DD is a pitcher so I center the lens on her and the catcher. Then I use the GoPro software to chop it up and share. Fairly simple process that doesn't take too much time after you do it a few times.

[LynkSpyder]

At this point, we are still officially recommending the HERO4 Silver. But unofficially (because we have not been able to test the camera in the heat of the summer...since it was released in the cool of the Fall) the HERO5 Black is the best camera that GoPro has released to date. We recommend shooting games at 1080P/60 FPS. So, for what we recommend, 4K doesn't really factor in. But at this resolution, the camera is marginally better then the HERO4 Silver; better, but not a lot. However, it is a far more stable camera than any other GoPro; especially when using WiFi, which has been know to cause other issues.

Here is a side by side video we did of the 2 cameras (HERO4 Silver and HERO5 Black):
https://youtu.be/A02rhhMw9Dk

And here is the setup we recommend, which involves an external battery for very long record times on a single charge:
http://www.lynkspyder.com/support/gopro5-configuration

I hope this helps.