The GoPro Hero 5 action camera was previously reported to come out of the market in October this year but because the American camcorder company based in San Mateo, California is seriously intent on making it the best videographic equipment when it hits the retail markets, it decided to defer its launch to next year.
While no exact date in 2016 has been mentioned about the formal rollout to the market of the GoPro Hero 5, latest reports indicate that the company is very confident of the chances of the upcoming iteration of its action camera.
Apparently, GoPro is confident that the Hero 5 being smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the Hero 4, gives the action camera an edge over its would-be competitors, notes the Vine Report.
There are also reports that in addition to the GoPro Hero 5, the American camcorder company shall also be launching next year a quadcopter or a drone camera to be called as the GoPro Karma.
The confidence of the company over the Hero 5 and the Karma actually emanates all the way from GoPro founder and CEO Nick Woodman, who recently said that the upcoming offerings from the company will surely give its would-be users an ‘Oh my God’ feeling of satisfaction and almost disbelief.
A unique combination
According to the Day Herald, the GoPro Hero 5 will feature a unique combination of future technology and low price, consistent with previous reports that the next iteration of the popular action camera line would come out cheaper than the Hero 4.
Based also on previous reports, the GoPro Hero 5 will sport several remarkable features including high-quality underwater video capability allowing the device to operate seamlessly up to a depth of 60 meters, which is significantly better than the Hero 4’s 20-meter depth capability.
The GoPro Hero 5 will apparently come ready to shoot and record underwater up to 60 meters depth which only means that it will be using a dive housing instead of the standard housing that other GoPro action cameras come out with out of the box.
It is possible that GoPro Hero 5 will have an option for an even better underwater shooting and recording capability to distinguish it among all the other GoPro action cameras and make it a cut above the rest that GoPro has been saying all along.
There was a recent test review of the underwater capability of one GoPro Hero action camera in a diving expedition over at the Orkney Islands in Scotland. Based on the test, it showed that the device performed well at a depth of 40 meters, but it got a little compromised when it reached the 41-meter mark.
Apparently, there was a need to replace the housing of the GoPro Hero action camera to the dive housing but the change should have been made out of the water and not under.
An exciting feature
One of the most exciting features that GoPro Hero 5 will have when it finally comes out of the retail market next year is its awe-inspiring Full Ultra HD video recording capability which is also called as 8K quality.
The 8K quality actually doubles the video recording resolutions of previous GoPro action cameras in the GoPro series. Because of such feature, the GoPro Hero 5 will sport a mind-boggling 4320 pixels.
With Full Ultra HD quality, the video will be presented with eight thousand lines of resolution. But it comes with a trade-off as the high-resolution video will consume more battery power of the device and will eat more storage space in the device’s internal memory.
You don’t seem to understand why 8k and 4k are relevant to shooters.
It’s not “awe-inspiring 8K”, it’s much more likely going to be “shoot 8K for awe-inspiring 4k”.
4k is primarily a tool used to create high quality, 4:4:4 video for viewing in 1080p. Many users are also using it as a tool to create a bit of a buffer for clean zooms and pans. Very, very, *very* few people are using 4k for display in 4k. The dominant display resolution by a landslide is still 1080p.
So video is typically prepared for the 1080p format.
However, 4k displays *are* becoming more common, so 8k will be used to shoot 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 video for display in 4K at 4:4:4 or 4:4:2, as is currently done for 4k.
It will be several years before 4K is the common standard for displays. It will probably be 6 or 7 years before 8K is the common standard.
For serious shooters, this is how they view it. For non-serious shooters, 8K is a gimmick, a fancy bell and whistle to make people go “oooh” and “aaah” while watching 8K video on a 4k or 1080p screen.