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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Obviously the current situation is a big factor but I can't help but wonder to what degree things like GoPros and drones are something of a fad outside of a fairly niche market.

I suspect a fair number of people buy GoPros for their association with adventure sports and, after taking video of doing a few runs down some blues at the local ski area, come to the realization that they don't in fact base jump or kayak off waterfalls.

As for drones, I've thought about them from time to time. But after taking some video around my house, I'm honestly not sure what I would do with one. They're sort of obnoxious in wilderness settings and are often banned in any case.

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I bought a DJI spark last year and had a lot of fun for a few months flying it in my backyard. it got stale kinda fast though. it basically flies itself, so just flying around in a field gets boring. on the other hand, at $400, it was a little too expensive for me to feel comfortable trying any daring shots with it. I made some cool aerial panoramas, but the camera isn't really good enough to make anything worth sharing. if you want to get decent pictures, you have to spring for one of the $1200 models, which are still only about as good as a high-end smartphone camera.

I did find one killer use-case for it though: cleaning gutters. the house I was living in at the time was designed in a way that made cleaning gutters very dangerous. I used the drone to see which parts actually needed cleaning, then my roommate would clear them using a long pole with a hook while looking at the camera feed. awkward, but much safer.

We are on a 4 week country wide Covid-19 lockdown stay @ home and as part of the regulations they banned all alcohol sales.

Some entrepreneurial person now does drone deliveries of booze within a 5km radius of his home.

That's gotta be a pretty powerful drone- booze isn't light!

involves a lot of trust, too. I imagine the customer has to detach the shipment by hand. a drone capable of delivering a fifth of liquor must be worth at least $1-2k. considering the whole operation is likely illegal for several reasons, I doubt the owner would have much recourse if someone just stole it.

But then no more fly-in alcohol. The booze-drone is like a 21st century golden-egg goose.

> I doubt the owner would have much recourse if someone just stole it.

well, just let everybody know who broken the deliveries and thus made the whole neighborhood gone dry :)

He probably has a camera on it. And let me tell you, you don't want to fuck with the wrong South African. They will kill you.

Serving up the pre-packaged/airplane shots would be fitting.

>as part of the regulations they banned all alcohol sales

For my curiosity, would you mind sharing where this is? It contrasts with my experience in the US, where I know a few states made it easier to sell alcohol.

Dude's name ends with ZA which is the TLD for South Africa

Holy crap, this is insane: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/lockdown-alcohol-ban-st... .

I can't imagine trying to get through this quarantine without at least some booze, and I rarely drink. How are they handling all the bonafide alcoholics that would go into DTs with this?

And cigarettes. Smokers must be going insane.

Also Bahamas has no liquor sales, and crazy tight lockdowns every weekend where you can't leave your house for groceries even.

Having lived in Africa for 2 years (not SA though), I guarantee that the reason for the ban is for the government to profit off of bribes. Whenever something doesn't make any sense in Africa, the answer is always the same: bribes.

Pennsylvania closed their state run liquor stores.

Virginia/West Virginia/Ohio's are still open, I'm pretty sure across the whole U.S they're still open.

The northern counties of West Virginia have also issued a prohibition order for all non-residents, so that only West Virginians can purchase alcohol because apparently there have been hundreds of cases of Pennsylvanians crossing the border just to buy alcohol.

Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.

Wow that's crazy. In Seattle liquor stores, breweries (take-away only), beer bottle shops, and marijuana stores are all included under the "essential" exemption. I can't imagine the upheaval we'd have if the government had shut them.

I have friends in the philippines (Manilla specifically) who told me this

Good idea but I can’t imagine this being legal.

My use case for a drone would be to look at the surrounding area when I am doing off trail hiking or on old abandoned trails. Is it worth to go through the thick brush and the trail continues or will it just get worse? I have been thinking about getting a Mavic Mini for this but these things never go on sale.

depending how far ahead you want to look, you might be able to get away with a spark for this use case. you can find good deals on the first generation at this point, and the new one isn't too expensive anyway.

if you care about following all the FAA rules, this may limit the usefulness of a "scouting" drone, as you need to be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes at all times. if you're in a wooded area, this might not be very far.

I wouldn’t mind something that has less image quality and a range of only 1000m but is smaller and weighs less. The Spark is a little big for a long hike.

I misspoke before; there's no new spark. I was thinking about the mavic mini at the same price point (which you mentioned). it weighs about 250g. any lighter than this and you're probably looking at toys that can't fly any appreciable distance.

Spark is already affected by winds and actual usage on a forest plus winds can get you that range of 1000m, anything smaller will not have the endurance for real life usage.

I do this while off-roading with my Jeep.

It's not always perfect, but, it's damn useful.

One time I was traveling along a particular trail which started to get very, very rough. Not 100 feet away was a parallel trail which was well travelled. It would have been impossible to see without the drone.

The problem I ran into wasn't a lack of things to do with my drone, but a lack of places in which to do them. It's really hard to find places that are worth shooting that also allow drones. that said you can get away with doing it anyway, since most rules are based around not being a dick so if you don't bother people nobody will say anything, but it still sucks you're technically breaking rules/laws.

Go to the woods.

if you're just worried about actually getting caught, any isolated place will do. if you care about following the law strictly, it can be nontrivial to figure out what's allowed. there are federal, state, and local rules about where drones can be flown, and they are sometimes written in weird ways.

as an example:

> Launching, landing, or operating an unmanned aircraft from or on lands and waters administered by the National Park Service within the boundaries of [insert name of park] is prohibited except as approved in writing by the superintendent.

depending on how you interpret "operating", it might be legal to launch your drone just outside the park limits, stand there with the controller, and then fly it all over the park to your heart's content (provided you land it back outside the park). if an official actually saw you doing this, they might hassle you without regard for the nuance of the law.

NPS rangers tend to be fairly proddy, in my experience. Before all this started, I spent a fair amount of time photographing birds in national parks with a 200-500mm tele, and I've found it rare to encounter a ranger who doesn't remind me that commercial photography is forbidden there, on the assumption - in my case at least, the false assumption - that anyone with kit like mine must be a professional.

I went to a park last year with my (pretty large) camera bag, and one of the rangers there asked me to open it to prove it wasn't housing a drone.

The Spark takes reasonably decent video. There's no reason why you couldn't share it.

I remember going snowboarding with a go pro. We were so excited to see the footage. The guy in the Chalet even offered to put it on the big screen so everyone could see. What followed was about 30 minutes of embarrassing slow and inordinately dull snowboarding. The jumps that seemed high were barely off the ground. The speed that seemed potentially deadly was a snails pace.

Recording yourself doing sport only makes sense if you are really good!

Making appealing video requires thought, knowledge of lighting and how cameras work, and creativity. "Just strap on a camera and go" is definitely not the way to do it, people make amazing videos with mediocre skill in the thing they're doing.

It's like any other complex tool, garbage in garbage out.

I think it depends on what you are doing. If you are doing something intense enough, it works.

Check out on the roofs, the guys who break into sky scraper construction sites and scale the buildings. Go Pros work perfectly for their use case:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gLDYtH1RH-U

I think a 5 minutes clip of a climb that obviously took several hours proves GP's point. No one would watch raw garbage captured by their GoPros, you need heavy editing and a catchy soundtrack.

If daft punk had been staying in the chalet with us and offered to put their next unreleased album up next to our snowboard footage, I still don’t think anyone would have stayed to watch it.

My best clip [0] is fastening the GoPro to a clothes hanger where I removed the middle pin, and added some cardboard on one side to make it not wobble. Then some fishing line and spinning it around my head while skiing. At 0:09 the shadow of the contraption can be seen.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCXlwJYt0mg

That shot is really good. Do you have a photo of the contraption?

No, but some googling I found something looking very similar [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV1qTigUkR8

That is so cool! Looks like it was filmed on a bullet time rig. Well done!

Or really bad!

My GoPro videos are wipeout compilations, action packed and fun to watch.

Reminds me of me learning surfing and taking videos. Finally got to surf a wave without falling, felt like a hero. Then I saw the video and realized the wave was at max 20cm :(

I think the wide-angle lens contributes a lot to this effect. I found that tree skiing was the best way to get a sense of speed with these cameras.

My problem with GoPro was that it became apparent that they relied on a yearly upgrade cycle. I'm willing to do that for an iPhone that I use daily, but not a camera that I use a few weekends a year. After they released a 1080p camera and the remote that let you operate the camera without constantly removing your helmet, I stopped upgrading. I occasionally watch their product launch videos but I just don't want to spend any more on this product space. I think the image stabilization has potential, but the 3D / 360' camera is a gimmick until there are better ways to consume and edit that content.

Another big problem out on the slopes is that phone batteries drain quickly in the cold and operating phones with gloves on is still a chore. Any app-based improvements that GoPro has introduced feel like a non-starter to me in many of the environments that GoPro is useful.

Toss a hand warmer in the pocket that you store your phone and extra GoPro batteries.

I bought a GoPro Hero something for a long remote hiking trip. The durability and self-steadying was just amazing. Using the app to take selfies or wide shots of scenery was shockingly flawless.

Then, I started mounting it to my dirt bike helmet, just for video evidence if I were to wreck and die. What I didn't realize was just how painfully slow it feels to watch a video of me (barely an amateur rider) on a track. The silver lining being, watching that video has helped me improve quite a bit.

Where was it mounted? On your helmet will tend to make everything seem far away and slow. Stick it on your ankle or on the board itself...

The cyclist/dashcam market is pretty big. I see plenty of cyclists with a helmet-mounted camera, to protect themselves against lawsuits and dangerous drivers, and I see plenty of drivers with dashboard-mounted cameras, to protect themselves against lawsuits and dangerous cyclists.

GoPros make terrible dashmount cameras since they lack important features like automatic saves when a crash occurs. My older GoPros also had really useless implementations of rolling recording (I'm not sure if that's fixed on the current models, but it wouldn't clean up the rolling recording from previous sessions).

They are great for bicyclists and motorcyclists who need a camera that will survive a direct impact with the ground.

They're also the best devices for simply filming your ride in any context where your main concern isn't people crashing into you.

Hey, if you're not dropping your dual sport every once in a while, you're not having enough fun on the trail! :)

Yes. For car/motorcycle, I also want external power (not all gopros have it) and a setting to start recording on powerup, so it's always on when the vehicle is powered. Plus overwrite mode, save current clip if crash, save if "i like this" button is pushed, etc.

I feel like they have all the tech components to offer a dash product with minimal work.

I have a Hero8 and it works fine for this. Rolling recording with a large memory card means it keeps stuff for a long time.

This is exactly their strategy, and it works to some extent. Their aspirational marketing works quite well. The people acquiring their product are aspiring to be outdoorsy, fit, and adventurous.

I bought a GoPro several years back as well, after using it on one of my camping trips and a trip to a water park with the kids, I realized I don't really have the kind of adventurous, outdoorsy life I was aspiring to. The GoPro sits in a drawer.

You actually have to be pursuing activities that you think are worth capturing on a GoPro or a drone, and then you have to have an interest in capturing/editing those pursuits.

Longer term, there is a legitimate niche for their products. It is the intersection of people interested (personally or professionally) in photography/videography who have adventurous/outdoorsy pursuits and hobbies. Whether that niche is large enough to support a company of their size (and their competitors) is still an open question.

Kind of like those annoying watch commercials showing everyone free climbing when in reality your adventure watch is only going to be telling you how late the 4:18 BART is.

Seems like TV producers (and of course YouTubers) also use them, e.g. to mount them on and in a car for a car review video shoot.

For me, the aspiration to own a GoPro was to capture footage in wet / water conditions. With an iP68 rating for the iPhone to makes sense for light use-cases, an iPhone is sufficient for me.

1. I think the underlying problem has been the lack of innovation from GoPro. I find that while the number of cameras in our daily life has increased, the use-case for something like a GoPro is marginal at best. Apple and other vendors have done an excellent job of improving camera technology on the iphone11 that today, I no longer carry a GoPro or even an SLR camera on holidays.

2. Another amazing shenanigan from GoPro was their accessories business. When I got my only go-pro in 2014, it required me to spend another $200-300 on some really basic accessories like an LCD screen. It just felt like the company added barriers that stopped you from actually using the product.

2a. Minor nitpick - Their packaging in 2015 was a piece of work. It took me forever to get it unpacked and even get hold of the device.

3. Mgmt focus - I live in San Mateo and the stink of constant GoPro layoffs made it an undesirable company to even consider working for. The people I knew that worked there all quickly bailed and went to work for Google or Apple. It also didn't help that I only remembered about my GoPro when I saw Mr Woodman show-up on Shark-Tank. I just felt he didn't focus on a struggling company and wanted to find other things to do.

1. They have added some newer models that are interesting, like the 360 one they just released that actually has a screen which I guess is also 2.

They're priced way out of the budget of idle curiosity for me though. Sure 500 dollars isn't a lot for a camera, but it's way out of the range for something I"m going to goof around with.

To add to this, even if you enjoy adventure sports, filming them can be a pain. A friend of mine was working on getting sponsored as a rock climber and did a lot of filming with his GoPro. Getting decent shots takes a lot of time and effort, which really cuts down on the actual climbing you get to do each day.

It's funny how when you want to essentially get a job doing something it involves actual work!

Yes, after getting one for skiing, I realized that helmet cam footage only looks awesome if you are dropping off a cliff. Even at steep pitches the perspective on the footage looks like you're on almost flat terrain. It takes real time and care to get usable shots out of the things. I've made a short ski edit for a club before and the amount of effort that goes into producing something mildly entertaining to watch is insane.

Drones and helmet cams actually seem like they have pretty niche applications when an iPhone will do great for 95% of people, 95% of the time. The need for that particular lens and shot just isn't usually called for in whatever you're trying to create.

Something about them in my experience makes it feel like you're not going as fast. I ride an electric skateboard and helmet cam footage makes it feel like I'm just walking when I'm approaching 20 mph. I guess that's why they normally use a ton of angles on most of these things.

If gaming has taught me anything, it's that a wide field of view makes it appear that you're moving much faster. I found a simple video showing a person walking the same path with three different fields of view.

The 120 degree FOV makes it seem like they're sprinting while the 40 degree FOV looks like a slow walk in comparison. Also pay attention to the little box the person walks past halfway through the below video. Imagine you're skateboarding and that is a parked car. The difference in speed and perceived danger is huge.

https://i.imgur.com/s4IrpJU.mp4

Great theory (and love the reference mp4!) but I suspect it's not fov. GoPros have a fish eye'd lens on them, and a high field of view.

I think you are on to something with the amount of stimulus though. I ride a One Wheel which... has one wheel, and the nearer I get to top speed the less speed it has to balance me.

The sensation is different. The wind is blowing harder on my face, I have to scan and process each ridge and change in the road, my balance is different, is that car opening it's door? is it going to turn, that drain cover is bad need to lean to avoid it, car behind me can't go left, does my front foot have too much force, intersection coming up slow down, speed up no cars, turn signal are they going to cut my lane... etc.

Meanwhile if I'm sitting in a car, well... 20mph is nothing, I'd barely notice it. The wind sensation is gone, I'll go straight if I don't touch anything, people respect my area since I weigh 2000 plus pounds.

The perspective is different, the level of sensation is different. It's similar how a go kart feels a lot different then a car in regards to speed despite the fact both are four wheeled motorized vehicles.

Ugh, yeah that's the other strange effect. There's absolutely no sense of speed captured. Maybe due to lack of nearby reference points and no depth perception even though it's POV? The footage is positively boring.

I suspect part of it that like... contextless footage is boring. I'm going to paraphrase Casey Neistat here: "No one gives a fuck about my time lapses or drone shots"

Who cares about the random video you took down a mountain, it's fun in the moment and no one can take that away from you. To an external observer though, why should that be interesting?

The lack of speed is one thing, the lack of context is another. They don't know about the ice patch you're watching out for, the sensation you get when you hit the powder just right, or even that you are going 10% faster then normal (sorry I'm a blue square skier and don't really know what goes through the head of people who are actually good).

I've taken lots of videos on the racetrack in my car, go-karting, snowboarding, motorcycle riding, scuba diving....

In addition to many of the things noted here (looks slow as hell due to wide-angle lens and the fact that you are, also, slow as hell)... the video editing is just a nightmare.

It's easy to capture a couple hours of footage of your hobby, but unless you ALSO have the hobby of WATCHING a couple hours of something you already did, the value is just not there.

I've watched almost none of the videos I've shot. Also, I'm still able to use my ancient Hero2. I thought of buying a newer model to get the "latest and greatest" as an impulse buy once; I can afford it, that's fine. I looked up a product matrix of the Session, Hero 5, Hero 6, black, silver, whatever products were available at the time. I just stared at the product matrix for awhile, gave up, and closed the browser window.

Honestly, if their product line had less overlap or fewer products or just.. made it easier to decide camera to buy, they'd have another $400 of my money.

shrug

They keep improving their products, but there are no real innovations or killer reasons to buy some new model. And they all basically work good enough.

Hey, I have that adventurous, outdoorsy life life! Wanna send that GoPro over? I'll make sure it's properly utilized ;)

I literally do kayak off waterfalls and while some in the group will have a GoPro or similar generic camera, they just aren't that good for documenting a trip. Someone bringing their phone in a dry box and getting setup on the side of the river usually provides better footage and a better angle than having the camera on my helmet. I just don't see them that often except for the professionals who post on Instagram all the time.

People told me I was crazy when I said GoPro was going to be killed by cell phones. "No one would risk their iPhone". Except prior gen iPhones are pretty cheap now, cases have become very good, and the abilities far surpass the GoPro. Plus, someone can shoot, edit, and upload all from the same device.

And if it's your own older iPhone, it's essentially free. Slip a waterproof case on it and you have a pretty rugged camera/GPS/etc.

Yes, there are people who do point-and-shoot photography with all kinds of equipment that they don't actually need. The iPhone also ̶c̶a̶n̶n̶i̶b̶a̶l̶i̶z̶e̶d̶ absorbed some of the DSLR market from point-and-shoot photographers who don't actually need DLSRs.

That doesn't mean that niche markets aren't real. It it not going to make any sense to mount an iPhone to my helmet any time soon.

There was a period when there were a lot of people buying DSLRs with the kit zoom lens, putting it on automatic, and snapping away. Maybe there was a period when this made some sense because of sensor size but it really doesn't today.

I've been doing photography semi-seriously for a long time and have a couple different camera systems (DSLR and mirrorless) and, to be honest, if I'm on a trip where I know I'm mostly just shooting casually I'll often just bring my phone.

> cannibalized

Apple doesn't sell DSLR, I think. Not cannibalism.

If you scuba dive, there's no option even close to GoPro for the combination of accessories, price, stabilization (the iPhone is still not quite there, and the old ones are totally useless), video quality, and access to the controls under water. It shoots in a flat color profile, which the iPhone still doesn't, so grading color is super easy.

Editing and uploading from a phone is nice, but it stays on the boat when you drop in.

I totally disagree. The Kraken diving case is exceptional. I did 20+ dives with it in Micronesia this year and the photos are about as good as anyone is going to get without a DSLR. In fact, I was more limited by my lighting than by the camera.

It's also huge to have a screen as big as the phone's, and being able to slip the whole rig into my thigh pocket meant I took it on every dive, not just camera specific ones. I can't imagine a better setup for me.

Edit: You mentioned video. The Paralenz is a much better diving camera than a GoPro. It has a tubular form factor, making it easy to attach to a mask strap. It also is natively pressure resistant and can add depth numbers to your video, GoPros require a case. Here's a dive filmed with my Paralenz: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MEynCKlhk

The kraken case costs as much as a GoPro, iPhone stabilization isn't as good as GoPro stabilization, if you want GoPro-like wide angle shots you need to pair that case with a $1000+ phone. You're also limited to the capacity of your phone since essentially no phone has removable storage. Ditto battery, although with USB PD that's less of a problem. iPhones also don't shoot log color profile, so color correction is painful for video.

The paralenz can't shoot high frame rate, so slo-mo looks choppy and requires serious post processing. It's stabilization is a joke compared to the GoPro, it doesn't shoot flat color so color grading is painful, it has no screen for checking your framing, and it costs roughly twice as much.

Edit: the quality of the glass in the paralenz is also pretty painful, the vignetting in that video and dynamic range are pretty unfortunate.

Agreed. The GoPro is great for diving and snorkeling. There are better options out there but they cost a lot more usually.

I think the main thing people underestimate in general is the amount of setup you need to capture something interesting and the amount of editing afterwards you need to turn it into something that actually holds peoples attention.

I enjoyed doing it for a bit with backcountry skiing but kids meant reduced trips and no real energy to sit down and edit.

To be fair, GoPro absolutely recognises that - that's what their Quik client is for.

As another ww kayker, I like the helmet cam view for reviewing my technique/seeing rapids from first person. The video usually isn't sexy, and you need to remember that everything is way bigge irl, buy I've found some videos helpful.

Carnage videos of people swimming can also be fun/terrifying to watch from their pov.

Another component to the disappointment with GoPros is that the camera perspective and flattening reduces the dramatic impact of what may have in fact been a challenging endeavor.

I've seen footage of hard mountain bike trails and class V kayak runs that I have done, and also seen non-first-person footage of the same drops, and it's pretty impressive how much the GoPro footage makes a 25 foot waterfall seem inconsequential relative to a 3rd person perspective (i.e. someone on the bank).

I wonder if having a stereoscopic camera could improve this situation. I pay no attention to VR or whatever so I don't know if this is the venue in which stereoscopic/3D movies would be viewed but it could be cool. Harder to share I suppose, and if your goal is to impress others on social media then it probably wouldn't work unless people start bringing those helmets to look at their phones while they poop.

Watching first person action sports in VR doesn't work unfortunately, it's extremely nauseating.

Drones have a lot of commercial uses and most of them havent even past their formative stages. From inspecting power lines (which most municipalities mandate every year) to mapping properties and utilities to eventual deliveries of goods, if another consumer drone was never sold I would still be bullish on the drone industry.

As a guy who kayaks off waterfalls and stopped using his GoPro a few years ago, most waterfall drops don't look that cool from a helmet view either.

Kayak fishing is the same. Either you need 3-5 cameras covering all angles or it’s not very dramatic. Most of the time it’s videos of me fumbling with my gear until my battery runs out.

When I did some white water kayaking and rafting my camera would have water spots or a terrible angle.

I bought a GoPro after sticking my old cellphone inside a running CNC machine to get video of the milling process. It was all well and good until the cutter started heating up and we decided we needed to turn on flood coolant after all. Phone's not waterproof, so that was the end of that.

When you start pondering the optical clarity of Tupperware, perhaps it's time to just buy a proper camera. So I did.

Since then, it's been stuck to CNC machines, laser cutters, car bumpers, car wheelwells, car suspensions, toy cars, Power Wheels cars, drones, rockets, and kites. It's been nestled into the sand between the launcher tubes of a fireworks show. It's produced documentation of countless projects, produced a record of machine assembly in case of warranty problems, and taken timelapses of packing and moving several houses and offices. I've used the wifi viewfinder as a "periscope" to keep an eye on the birthday boy's arrival for a surprise party. I'm about to buy my fourth battery for it, because those do wear out.

People who buy a camera and let it gather dust lack imagination.

GoPros are a fad or niche market, only because they market it that way. Even if you're not doing anything "extreme" it's really nice to have a running video of even the most mundane canoeing trip just to get still pictures and laugh at those people who kept flipping their canoe. It's the least interrupting way to record an event.

I'm surprised GoPro hasn't formed partnerships for success in other markets. High school sports, and even younger, are often filming competitions and performing automated or manual analysis to rank players and provide feedback. Schools and Boosters are paying crazy amounts of money for these services, but it could be so much better aggregating videos of ~10 mounted GoPros together to get "on the field" perspectives. Then there's the whole professional sports media market. People LOVE hearing audio from NFL quarterbacks, imagine a first person view.

> Then there's the whole professional sports media market.

GoPro have made some efforts in that area - including employees working on special products for the professional broadcast market, "a partnership to enable GoPro HERO4 cameras with a professional grade, live, HD wireless broadcast solution" [1] and a partnership with the NHL [2] with the players wearing helmet cams.

They laid off the people working on it internally and it's gone from their product pages (although you can still buy a kit... for $7,500 [3]) so I'm guessing they didn't find the market as lucrative as they'd hoped.

[1] https://gopro.com/en/us/news/gopro-partners-with-vislink-for... [2] https://gopro.com/en/lu/news/gopro-and-nhl-new-partnership-w... [3] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1198311-REG/vislink_9...

Youtubers and other content creators use it, and buy up a lot of the ancillaries equipment (microphone, lights etc).

I've bumped tons of fellow travelers that use them just for raw convenience when making travel videos. I.e. I don't just use it that one time a year I snowboard, it also comes with me to the beach, when I try kayaking, trying to get cool sakura shots, etc.

Then there's bicyclists and motorcyclists (again, me) that use it as a "dash cam."

Thing is I'm all of the above... and I'll probably never buy another gopro. I have a gopro. It works extremely well. Best in class. The only time I'll buy another is if I lose this one or it breaks. Sometimes I buy batteries and the like but those are maybe 30, 40 bucks. And I have no interest in their moonshot cloud whatever bullshit. So I'm not sure how businesses like that continue to make money.

Every year you get millions of new customers who start adventuring for the first time. Things also get lost or break etc so it seems to be a viable long term business.

This is common for durable goods. You get a spike of initial sales and steady stream after that, the difference is microwaves spiked decades ago and GoPros’s peaked more recently.

This is a good point, and the new accessories that make GoPro 8 so much better for content creators just landed at the same time as the coronavirus, so that's unfortunate timing from a business standpoint.

This is probably not what GoPro execs had in mind but I find GoPro is perfect camera for my 2 years old. I know there are cheaper rugged water-proof cameras that would work just as well for kids but I already got GoPro.

I bought GoPro thinking that I'll use it for my "adventures", however, it is mostly unused at home. So we just let our son play with it.

However, on travels, we really love having GoPro with us as it is small enough, and easier to use than phones. With phones, if we are out all day, we are a bit worried about battery life. We also have a bigger camera, X100F, but that is a bit too big to carry all the time on a vacation. So we leave it in the hotel unless we plan to do a photography. So most of our vacation photos and videos are evenly split between GoPro and phone cameras.

How does he play with it?

Sometimes he pretends like he is taking photos or making videos. He also chases our dog as if he is recording him. He probably learned that from us as that's how we use it. Sometimes, he may use camera as a toy car or a block.

The button is too hard for him to push but that's where voice commands come in. I can say "GoPro take a photo" while he is holding it. We have captured some fun shots like this.

Ah ok, that's what I was expecting. I'd be surprised if a 2yo could consciously take photos.

I remember arguing with someone here a few years ago talking about "intuitive" interfaces and arguing that his 3-6 month old "understood the iPad".

No.

> Obviously the current situation is a big factor but I can't help but wonder to what degree things like GoPros and drones are something of a fad outside of a fairly niche market.

I see these comments a lot here but... what exactly is wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets? E.g. your Hegels, Ferraris, Tag Heuers, etc.? Companies that specialize to fit some people exactly as opposed to mass appeal companies that make products that try to appeal to everyone but then slightly suck for everyone as well?

Can someone explain this viewpoint?

Absolutely nothing wrong with it, IMHO. But our business culture in the United States looks down on these sorts of companies. Growth is king.

But I fully agree with you. It doesn't have to be this way, and it's (IMHO) incredibly harmful.

I dont think there's anything wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets.

I think the reason people knock on GoPro is because they raised VC money and went to market. By taking on VC, they signaled (imo) that there was a huge market opportunity ($XXB) for them beyond a highly specialized niche market.

These Americans you witness see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires looking for moonshots to catch their big break which will never come.

Many of the companies that are in focus here have simply grown too big to be sustainable in the niche they cater for, either through aggressive funding or by riding a finite hype wave (e.g. Gopro, no idea if they also suffer from overfunding)

Absolutely nothing. But GoPro obviously had much larger ambitions than being an action camera for people who jump off cliffs even though they used that tie-in to try to pull is a larger audience.

Climbing equipment is relatively niche as well. But manufacturers don't really try to pull in a broader audience. (Though climbing gyms do, in part, aim for casual climbers.)

The drones have always felt like a quixotic adventure for GoPro that seemed like a weird distraction for other product improvements.

I don't even think that GoPro should be classified as part of the adventure usage category anymore, as most of the GoPro usage I have seen has more to do with the fact that it's a compact camera that's relatively durable or sacrificial depending on your application. What I've been seeing over the last few years is that GoPro cameras are less handy than a smartphones whose recording capabilities just keep enhancing from the last few generations of improvements seemingly primarily focused on that, especially as more people have been streaming video directly to viewers from their phone compared to a recording, edit, and then upload workflow. A few years ago I felt like I saw GoPro's being used for most of the content in a particular edited video but nowadays I see them used for one or two shots where the camera was more at risk. If anything I just see them getting pushed from mass appeal to a niche compact camera market because there's just better competition in this space and the middle to high end of the GoPro line competes with some of the entry level/second hand Canon and Nikon cameras for recording video and unless you have those space and durability requirements in the niche where GoPro shines.

I think they can have their place in vlogging and doing small scale productions as well, where ruggedness>flexibility. though that's obviously a very small market.

I see drones and gopros following the same adoption arc as DSLRs. The DSLR market size definitely peaked a long time ago but there's enough professionals and enthusiasts who use them that it's a healthy market that's not going anywhere and they are going to be a tool in the toolbox of anyone who creates visual media for the foreseeable future. Drones and gopros seem to fit the same mold because they enable people who want to create visual media (and other people who need the equivalent capability) to do things that you formerly needed a helicopter to do. I don't see those people giving up that capability anytime soon so while the market may shrink, especially for consumer oriented devices, it will be around for the foreseeable future.

My two cents: I own one and bring it to family gatherings to record family. It’s small and non threatening and people don’t react defensively the same way they do with iPhones. I also take iPhone pictures and video but I like the video I get from the GoPro also.

I’ve also carried it with me when documenting something like going for a walk in my daily spot and going to mundane places. I usually do this before I move to a new place to capture those simple things I want to remember about the old one.

Again no one reacts the same way as if you’re walking towards them holding a phone in the record position and I like the video I get from it.

But I also used it on a hiking trip to big bend and it was nice to capture the hike passively and enjoy it without feeling the need to constantly stop and take pictures.

As a full-time skydiver & coach, I would say that's exactly who needs a GoPro the most. When we jump everybody wears at least one camera and often someone jumps outside to get a better angle. The video is not taken to capture an epic moment, it's to review and improve. After every jump the group breaks down every part of the skydive and tries to take a lesson from it.

I have to wade through thousands of videos before I find something interesting enough to post online, but each of those videos has value. The worse the performance the higher the value.

> a fad outside of a fairly niche market

Sometimes I feel like for HN everything that is not in the bubble is a fad.

Go Pro has a market, and that's why it's a company of this size that has released many instance of their product.

"niche" and "fad" are two very different things. They clearly have a niche. The "fad" part, only time can tell. Evidence is currently mixed.

On of the appeal of a GoPro is the simplicity and ruggedness.

When planning to go on vacation for instance, a GoPro is ideal for kids to shoot whatever they want without having to borrow parent's phone/camera or some expensive point and shoot.

Same for people playing Pokemon GO, a super small side camera that is completely point and shoot, can take some rough handling and is mostly weather proof is ideal.

One place they haven’t expanded that I know of which may be a nice potential market is vehicle insurance fraud cams (dash cams).

This fraud isn’t big enough in the US, but maybe if they market it the right way or get the OEMs to install at the factory even better.

Otherwise the will end up like the Cisco flip cameras... a nice niche that can live on if managed well but not going to grow big and should be private.

I'd buy one to do Mapillary streetview "films" because the ones I did with my phone are not really good and the area I live in is not very covered.

But it's too expansive for such a hobby and I'd feel stupid with it on my ski helmet ;)

The main buyers of such products are bored people "without a life" and with a sizeable discretionary income. It's a way to relieve boredom in the short term - capture a few videos, spend a few hours editing them, share them, get bored again and forget the thing in some drawer. Call it unsustainable techno consumerism if you like.

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