GoPro Evolution: From 35mm Film To America's Fastest-Growing Camera Company | Hacker News Reader

GoPro Evolution: From 35mm Film To America's Fastest-Growing Camera Company

forbes.com

54 pointsthealexknapp28 comments

The key to GoPro is content. As the saying goes, "Content is King". Camera Phones just do not create contact, "on Par" with a goPro generally speaking. Think of your average Camera Phone user, and average Gopro user... The average content generated from the goPro, although - probably not impressive like the footage you see in the adverts, is still going to be superior to average content from a phone camera. Naturally the goPro user has acquired the camera because his average state when using the camera is "something Exciting", and, the average state of the average phone camera user (when grabbing footage) is perhaps "I will share this with my friends" or "this looks cool" (whatever you want to label it).

Absolutely, I built a passion project a couple of years ago because I found so many amazing videos I wanted to share. They just all happened to be GoPro ones! http://goproheroes.com/gopro-hero3-black-edition-smaller-lig...

It's also worth mentioning they are the only company I know that gives away everything they sell to one lucky winner every single day!

Meh, consumer news.

As far as I know the GoPro is based on Ambarella’s platforms. Here are some specifications, a teardown and a look at their newest platform:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1nsYd3lG60 http://www.ambarella.com/products/consumer-hybrid-cameras.ht... http://www.anandtech.com/show/6652/ambarella-announces-a9-ca...

Not to down play the immense success, but having a prominent Silicon Valley VC father and a 100k initial investment on his part must have been crucial in getting the injection mouldings done and ready for volume production.

That was pre-kickstarter days. Kickstarter has levelled the playing ground for other hardware entrepreneurs in getting early support to pay for the tooling and moulding process.

The competition for the GoPro isn't cellphones. It's Google Glass.

That is, if Google Glass is waterproof/shockproof etc

Oh and GoPros are not only tied to a person, but often tied to objects (like bikes, airplanes, boats, etc)

Yup. You can't take 6 Google Glasses and suction-cup them all over a car.

Can't take google glass in the surf. Have lost goggles that I put on under a swim cap! Let alone surfing.

It's neither probably. Their competition is other "action" cameras within more convenient packages. Luckily for GoPro they still excel in video quality (in their category).

Yes. I was thinking particularly of the #2 action camera vendor, Contour ( http://contour.com/ ) as the GoPro's main competition right now.

Though Google glass and whoever competes with it will get there too, eventually.

Then you would need a waterproof and shockproof cell smart phone?

It'll be interesting to see if they can compete with cameraphones. GoPro does have a few differentation strategies. First is that they'll offer higher quality video than phones. However, the video quality on phones will get better all the time, and the difference in quality will become smaller every year.

Another strategy is that they can compete with price. Consumers can always buy a case and a strap to house their smartphone in, but if you're filming sports there's a quite high risk to destroy the phone. The price of GoPro-style video cameras will go down over time (if they won't constantly add new features in), but the cost of phones will probably stay high in the future.

Consumers will likely choose the $79 camera instead of risking their $500 phone to film sports.

The quality difference isn't super far off, but I don't think the main target audience for GoPro is going to disappear to using camera phones. There's just too much of an industry built round them now, they can survive a huge chunk of damage and keep rolling, there's all sorts of mounts and and attachments and so on.

There is always going to be a significant low light advantage to having a larger lense and sensor. Add a mourning bracket / wrist strap, improved noise reduction and there is only so close a camera phone can get.

Yes, that's true, but when camera phones will be as good as e.g. Canon 5D Mark iii (and they will, relatively soon even) then that quality will be good enough for practically everyone. At that point only professionals need better quality.

How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

The 5D Mark III has > 24x the sensor area of an iPhone 5, and most smartphones are even worse off [0] [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_interchang... [1] http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/app...

>How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Even though larger sensors will be beneficial, at some point the small sensor will be good enoug for 99% of consumers, though professionals will still prefer the larger sensor.

>Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Perhaps, like Nokia pureview did - however that phone is slightly larger than the average smartphone.

>Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

No, but technology will advance so that small sensors will be sufficiently good to 99% of consumers. There's progress in sensor technology ever year. There's also progress on the processor side, which has been/is apparently a bottleneck, as new processors in DSLR cameras enable better image quality (take for example DIGIC processors).

Sensors are getting better, but the optical characteristics of a lens that fits in a cellphone are limited by physics (namely diffraction).

The Sony RX1 shows how small you can get today for a full frame sensor, but the size of the lens is pretty big, because of the physical limitations of optics.

I have a 5D Mark III and there is a huge difference in quality with my iPhone 5. I can put on a f1.2 lens on the 5D and get amazing autofocus accuracy with a depth of field (DOF) of millimeters in low light and get an amazing shot at ISO 10,000. The phone is impressive for what it is but the autofocus doesn't have to do much because the DOF is so big. If you have a bigger sensor and more megapixels you need a good quality lens and good autofocus.

On the other hand GoPro have a pretty good quality output where big DOF is a good thing and they focus on high frame rate video for action. I would love if my phone had better image stabilization (e.g. Luma app) and went up to 120fps at full HD. That would be achievable soon.

I don't see how a camera phone will be as good as a 5D Mark3 anytime soon. I mean, phones don't have focusing! Not to mention a sensor that is maybe a tenth the size?

I love me my iPhone 5 but unless you want a phone the size of a 1980s one, there are physical limitations. Try photographing a soccer play from the sideline or getting a shallow depth of field with a phone, things you pay thousands for a full frame SLR for.

Now, as good as a good point and shoot soon? And better because its Always in your pocket and connected? I'll buy that.

iPhone 5's camera is probably comparable to a 10-year-old DSLR.

It's true that DSLR cameras have many advantages compared to smart phones, but I was talking about image quality. Professionals and hobbyists will buy the DSLR instead of shooting with a camera phone, but this doesn't apply to your average consumer.

A GoPro doesn't have the same pressures placed on its thickness that a smartphone has. It can afford to have a lens that is deeper than 5 mm while people expect phones to get thinner and thinner. A deeper lens can afford you better optical quality.

In the foreseeable future, the form factor of a phone makes it impractical to e.g. strap on your helmet, while the more cubical gopro would be a very impractical handset.

I'm really impressed by the timeline on the article. Appears to be implemented with https://github.com/athletics/infostory ; anybody know if this was this custom made just for Forbes, or even just for this article? Seems like a ton of effort for a small detail, but it really enhanced the article for me.

Edit: Better googling yields this article which talks a little bit about the timeline, so definitely not just for the article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2012/09/13/inside-f...

Oh, yes, please. I really love this, that would open up so much possibilities for storytelling.

Hi, I'm one of the partners at Athletics. We originally developed the timeline custom for Forbes and have wanted to push this a bit further at some point, hence the repo. Really glad you liked it.

Where credit's due: The Forbes team developed the GoPro feature using our toolkit as a starting point. (We did the timeline in Lewis D'Vorkin's post that you referenced.)

Awesome post - really interesting to see the evolution and how it was all started without the help of sites like Kickstarter (seems like that's where they would have started if the GoPro was about to come out today).

GoPro's success is based on one thing, It does it's job very well.

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