GoPro drives me nuts. I bought one of their (second or third gen) cameras in ~2012 that had a firmware limited number of photos I could take with it.
One of my goals was to do a bunch of time-lapse shots, taking photos every few seconds and then making a video out of them. They marketed this feature (take a photo every X seconds) quite a bit, so it was definitely a selling point to me.
I discovered the bug a few weeks after owning it, right before a big vacation I was hoping to record. It would take about 8 or 9 photos and then lock up. I couldn't turn it off or stop its capture. When I plugged it into my computer, I saw that there were hundreds of empty folders. I tried power cycling it by taking the battery out and putting it back in. I also wiped out the memory card both via the computer, as well as selecting the 'delete all' option on-camera, all to no effect. I emailed them, and their response was:
> Hi, Do you take many time lapse pictures? What may have happened, is you may have encountered a known issue with our current firmware, in which the camera is no longer able to save files after it has taken 9999 images. Could you please let me know what the name of the last successfully captured image was? If this is the case, we would need you to send in your camera, and would reflash your firmware to fix the issue.
So I had to shell out $20 in shipping and mail my (brand new) camera across the country for it to be reset. I wasn't able to record the trip I took. Still irks me today that they were selling cameras with a known, software-limited, number of shots you could take with them before they had to be sent back.
If their QA department took a photo every 1 second (as their product was advertised to be capable of) it would take 2.78 hours for them to discover this bug.
I'm shocked that they required you to pay for shipping. That takes some serious lack of customer service to do that without blinking, particularly for a firmware bug.
I have no use for actions cams and am not an expert in any way, but the quality of that $20 camera looks amazing, in some scenes it actually looks sharper and better than the GoPro that costs 5x as much.
I used it primarily as a travel & underwater cam. The software is pretty terrible out of the box, and I ended up having a decent # of pictures that were either never saved or "lost" from the memory card. (The card was fairly old - so this could have been an issue with the card...) Also the camera stopped working completely (as in wouldn't take any pictures, and wouldn't turn off without taking the battery out) after about two months of use.
Given it was $50, and the shots I was able to pull off the memory card were great, I am not too upset. However, caveat emptor.
Unfortunately, in that preview, the (interlaced) GoPro footage has been incorrectly processed. If you pause the video at any point, you'll see the double-imaging in the GoPro footage - an immediate sign of incorrect processing that isn't the fault of the videocamera.
This happened because the GoPro probably records interlaced footage, which didn't get properly deinterlaced by the video-creator's software. Basically, the GoPro didn't get a fair trial.
That said, the SJ4000 footage has a decent quality, and I'm all for capable competition.
Bear in mind that there are a lot of counterfeit SJ4000s out there of varying quality, some of which are sold using photos of the genuine article. At that price I wouldn't be surprised if it's a fake.
The funny thing is, I own a Hero 4 Session. You're supposed to be able to continuously record and have it loop every X amount of time. Well there is a bug and it doesn't even work. This is the NEWEST version too!
Got one for Christmas... and I'm having multiple firmware issues. I mounted it on my MTB (the price of the accessories is insane !), started recording (1080p, Superview, 48 fps), after a little over 30 minutes the thing freezes. I have to hold the power button for several second for it to reboot. I can then start recording again. Of course the first 30'ish minutes are missing from the SD card. Same thing happened now two times out of two rides :-|
Don't worry. I have a newer GoPro and I truly love it. It's taken some of my favorite pictures, including my engagement picture :) Great wide angle lens and the integration with the phone app is really nice.
One of my goals was to do a bunch of time-lapse shots, taking photos every few seconds and then making a video out of them. They marketed this feature (take a photo every X seconds) quite a bit, so it was definitely a selling point to me.
I discovered the bug a few weeks after owning it, right before a big vacation I was hoping to record. It would take about 8 or 9 photos and then lock up. I couldn't turn it off or stop its capture. When I plugged it into my computer, I saw that there were hundreds of empty folders. I tried power cycling it by taking the battery out and putting it back in. I also wiped out the memory card both via the computer, as well as selecting the 'delete all' option on-camera, all to no effect. I emailed them, and their response was:
> Hi, Do you take many time lapse pictures? What may have happened, is you may have encountered a known issue with our current firmware, in which the camera is no longer able to save files after it has taken 9999 images. Could you please let me know what the name of the last successfully captured image was? If this is the case, we would need you to send in your camera, and would reflash your firmware to fix the issue.
So I had to shell out $20 in shipping and mail my (brand new) camera across the country for it to be reset. I wasn't able to record the trip I took. Still irks me today that they were selling cameras with a known, software-limited, number of shots you could take with them before they had to be sent back.
If their QA department took a photo every 1 second (as their product was advertised to be capable of) it would take 2.78 hours for them to discover this bug.