How Does the Go Pro HD Hero 3 Do In Low Light?
I have now had the Go Pro HD Hero 3 for a few days and have done extensive testing with it:
- HD 1080p @ 60fps
- HD 720p @ 120fps
- WVGA 480p @ 240fps
- Photos
- Time Lapse
- Burst mode…
All very impressive and I will be doing a full review very soon but one thing I wanted to check was the low light performance of the Go Pro HD Hero 3.
The HD Hero 2 was pretty good and I got some very usable footage from it but how would this latest model from Go Pro perform in comparison? Not bad as it seems. Yesterday, I took a lot of footage in Weymouth at dusk where the light was still visible (just) but all the street lights were on, as were the lights at the local mini fun-fair.
There is not really much point shooting in complete darkness because a) I don’t generally tend to shoot at night with no lights and b) Even my 5D Mark II and Sony PMW EX1 wouldn’t do that well in very dark conditions.
Note: The clip below on YouTube shows how the Go Pro HD Hero 3 did in low light conditions but please bear in mind that YouTube’s compression/cooking/fiddling when uploading footage, doesn’t really do this clip justice, the original is absolutely amazing for a camera this small.
Plus you can see some flickering in from the street lights and that is because I was shooting in NTSC mode and the street lights resonate at 50hz in the UK (I should shoot in PAL at 25, 50 or 100fps to eliminate this). It is hardly noticeable in the original footage.
This is straight out of camera and best watched at 1080…(then be sure to check out our full Go Pro HD Hero 3 Black Edition Review)
