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5 Easy Steps To The Site
1
In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
2
Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
3
Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
4
My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
5
The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2023 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
Just had to do it – FIRST!! :-)
But interesting they go all the way back to the hero 7. – But i guess it’s because the 7 is still widely available to buy today, and they have models in different pricepoints. If the 7 got the webcam functionality, that would make it highly competitive to the higher end webcams out there, and make for some new markets.
Just as a heads up – the Hero 7 did actually get webcam mode: link to gopro.com
(In fact, it goes even further back than that.)
Thanks Ray
Did not see that one. – going all the way back to the hero4B makes it very interesting indeed!
The page says that but it doesn’t recognize my hero 7 black and some others in this thread having the same problem.
Its not available in all languages, if you had your GoPro Website in German, it will only tell you about the Hero 8. You have to switch the site to English.
Still waiting on the next gen Garmin camera…
It’s pretty clear that’s never going to happen, although I don’t think Garmin has said anything official. They don’t sell them anymore, VIRB Edit has gone two years without an update, there are no longer forums for the cameras at the Garmin forums. The two things I miss with my Hero 8 is easy addition of GMetrix and camera control from my Fenix/Edge. (Yes, you can add GMetrix to a GoPro video using VIRB Edit, but only for basic modes. It’s not possible for any time lapse mode.) Otherwise, GoPro stabilization is much, much better and color fidelity is better (VIRB video always looks a little dark and color drained to me.) I still use my VIRB 360 a lot, but it’s clear to me that Garmin is out of the action camera business.
This is very disappointing that Garmin is out of this business. They were light years ahead of GoPro with their Virb Ultra 30 at the time of its release and same for the 360. I own both and was always pleased with their video editing work flow. Moved to GoPro and have had nothing but disappointment. If you want to edit MAX video on windows might as well forget it. Anyways thanks for the insight.
Yeah, I think that time is over.
I agree that Garmin was (and still is) far superior to what GoPro offers in terms of metrics and overlay options. It’s not even close.
The problem though is that ultimately, the GoPro’s underlying cameras aspects are equally so far beyond what Garmin has (and has had for a few years now), that there’s virtually no competition there.
Which isn’t to say they couldn’t do it, via the same route as DJI. But with DJI now in that game, that’s gonna be GoPro’s main competitor in the years ahead. DJI hasn’t quite nailed the action cam yet (imho), but did a pretty incredible job for a first try.
Gotta check out this qr code thing.. if someone ever asked how your couldn’t touch the back of the GoPro to change settings, it happens all the time with scuba divers. Put the camera in a waterproof housing to go deep and you can only use the two buttons. I would love to be able to take the same picture with different settings but that can’t happen because I can’t use the touch screen.
Now, maybe I can get around that limitation. Woot! Thanks for the article.
Ohh…that’s a great use for it!
Since you can use QR to set a protune? vinyl print a QR and attach it to your toptube. ;)
Yup, you can.
Any chance you’ve heard of any fix for the consistent glitching when using the GoPro as a webcam? Their forums are filled with threads on this but have yet to see any response from them.
Do you mean the overheating issue after approx 20 minutes that causes camera to shut down? I have a Hero8 Black and remove battery and use a remote power source. Solved the issue but is a boring option.
I had hear that worked and didn’t have any luck the first time I tried a few months ago. I’ll give it a go again and see what happens.
It’s not something I’ve run into. :(
Mine never actually shut off it would just get glitchy. Essentially it would make me look like Max Headroom, background would stay solid but my image went crazy.
My coworkers found it very entertaining, but it got old…
Like I said the GoPro forums are filled with threads on it, but I’ve never seen one with a response from them.
I love Gopro, and they are arguably the best action cam, but they are out of touch with some of their users. Would you be able to create a QRcode for every single combination of settings? Who wants to do that? In a lot of instances the camera is mounted to the body, to a vehicle, fpv drone etc.. so you can see the problem there. I don’t know about anybody else here either, but Gopros are getting bigger and heavier, with more breakable features being added all the time. I fly FPV, and would sooner have back the Session 5 form factor, smaller, lighter weight, more durable… who wants a heavy action cam!?
“Would you be able to create a QRcode for every single combination of settings? Who wants to do that? In a lot of instances the camera is mounted to the body, to a vehicle, fpv drone etc.. so you can see the problem there.”
The point here is more flexibility for those exact power users though. The app is still there for everything else (well, minus protune now apparently).
I agree that the Hero 9 for FPV is heavier than previous, though we’re now seeing FPV start to splinter towards FPV for racing vs FPV for cinematics. But we’re also seeing the quality and stabilization coming out of the Hero 8/9 specifically being a world away from the older cameras like the Session 5. It’s not even a competition anymore – and I think that’s in part why we’re seeing such good and incredible FPV films these days. Not because the sport is getting more popular, but because the camera quality is so much better able to handle it.
Does it finally mean we don’t have to choose anymore to have either Labs feature OR standard firmware features on our cams?
Like now it is possible to have both webcam support and QR code support via one firmware?
Right now they’re back at parity – so everything is in there again.
Great!
Do you know if they plan to officialy (and regularly) merge the “Labs branch” with the standard public firmware? Or will they keep it reverse, public features merged from time to time to the Labs branch?
Supplementary comment, after having tested it myself : I’m surprised they didn’t added microphone support for this webcam mode, yet.
I hate my Go Pro 9 black. I had the devil of a time to install Intel UHD drivers on my computer as I have a dedicated GPU.
As a webcam it has horrible latency making it useless for that purpose. Hyperstablization makes 4k video glitch with light sources. Who thought 5k crammed into a small sensor was a good idea?
The worst Part of all of this is that I requested an RMA immediately. Was promised one within an hour but I’ve had no further response from GoPro. I’m so pissed off about that it’s unreal! I’ve contacted them via Twitter but no response!!!
Worst customer service ever!
I can’t find the new firmware for the HERO7 Black. There is only version 1.90 which came out last year.
Hi Craig-
It’s here: link to community.gopro.com
Towards the bottom.
Cheers!
Thanks got it now :)
Hi there,
I’m interested in what this pages has but i’m just curious, is this solely now available for the hero7 black or can the hero7 silver work as well? I have the latter but like i said, I am interested.
I have one Go pro and will never buy another one
Got the drift ghost 4k for Christmas and love it already gopro could learn a lot from them
I don’t like the mounts and the shape of the go pro
I have installed the new update and the Gopro webcam utility on my Hero 7 black but on running the webcam utility it states only for hero 8 and newer. Any ideas?
Yea I have no idea why one page says it’s compatible with the Hero 7 black and another says it’s not. I downloaded it and it doesn’t recognize the 7 at all.
I just updated my h8 to firmware 2.5, and now it won’t talk to my pc anymore. It used to talk to my usb port, but it stopped working correctly. What a mess. Why doesn’t GOPRO hire some sw people who aren’t stupid ?
go figure.
Hope they figure this one out and fix their new firmware. Uggggg.
regards,
Dan
The QR Code thing is a nice feature.
but i can’t find to set the Hero 9 to Max lens mod.
guess this will not work.
Hmm – but, given you’d be hard-changing the lens, why wouldn’t one just manually change the setting at that time?
ok good point there :-)
have to try that a qr code doesn’t change that setting …
Hey Ray,
Can you confirm that if I update my Hero 7 to the GpPro Labs firmware I still retain use with the standard GoPro app for download, remote control and Quik Stories?
Yup, no impact there!
A few things.
There is a glitch on the Hero9 that causes the video to go “upright” 3 seconds into the recording.
Here’s how it happens.
Mount the Hero9 upside down (chesty mount)
Start recording
3 seconds in the message appears on the screen thus flipping the video ‘upright’ for 10 frames. It does not happen if he Hero9 is upright from the start.
Where are the Max Lens Mod QR codes settings? You still have to go into the camera to set some settings after scanning QR code since the mod limits/adds settings.
Did you stop making in depth reviews of action cams?
His first Hero 13 review is on his YouTube channel now. I’m sure they’ll be a written version soon. In general I don’t watch YouTube videos for sports technology, but cameras are the exception.