GoPro - LIT HERO (CHDHF-132)

The ways I’ve been using Lit can’t be replaced with a smartphone - • Leaving it underwater for an hour with the LEDs illuminated to record the animals that live on the bed of my backyard pond • Mounting it underneath my motorcycle at night to illuminate the suspension / undercarriage on the freeway These are things I could also do with a flagship Hero model + Light Mod, but not with a smartphone, and Lit’s size is nice. Not sure it really justifies the product overall, but just sharing some examples. I’ll post some footage soon

Unpopular opinion maybe, but gopro puts out great quality underwater footage. It depends what you're using it for and what you want to film though. I'd encourage you to go look up recent gopro 4k underwater footage and you'd be surprised how crisp and sharp the images are, even without additional lights or gear. If you're looking for close up macro shots it's not the best (although it can still take great stills or you can also simply extract a still from 4k footage). I can't count the number of times I've seen people commenting on amazing shots here and asking what camera was used, only to be surprised that it was actually just a still frame from a gopro video. Is it the best for making professional quality prints or video? Probably not. Does it put out great quality non-professional video for a vacation diver? Absolutely. If you're okay with the quality of iphone videos, you'll likely be okay with the quality of gopro videos. The most important thing if you're filming video is image stabilization, which gopro is best of class at for non-professionals. There's nothing worse than shaky cam footage underwater and it's really good at producing smooth footage even for beginners. If you want to up your gopro game, you can still do it on a budget by adding a good tray (don't buy a handle) and two lights. I use a backscatter tray with 2x Orcatorch D710Vs. It's very decent and hard to beat at the price range. Sky's the limit on price if you want to look at more premium options. The best part is that I can fit it all in a regular sized backpack, which is something you can't do with nearly any other underwater camera options. I'm, also not worried about it getting banged around as they're built like tanks. Lastly there's a huge market of used gopros too if you really want to buy something on a budget.

Better than ANY POV action camera, would be a Vlogging camera or DSLR. Night and Day better!! Since that is your main need. Here is Hero 13 Low Light Action fwiw, compared and matched to a DSLR and phones in the edit. [https://www.reddit.com/r/gopro/comments/1ibh19o/dde\_low\_light\_hero\_13/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gopro/comments/1ibh19o/dde_low_light_hero_13/)

Many videos shown on YouTube are from the launch periods and are sponsored. Especially the DJI Action 5 was pushed pretty hard in my opinion. But they all make great videos. If you want low light performance I wouldn't go the gopro way. But in good light conditions I'd say the gopro still has the crown. For me the killer features though are 5.3k 8:7 and Gopro Labs which adds features no other action cam even comes close to. Those all help a lot for editing.

For me GoPro always had the best mic/audio balance. insta always sounded baseless and sucked at eliminating wind noise as well