How do I waste a 300 dollar camera?

I recently purchased a GoPro Hero 4 Black edition. Mainly because they finally decided to address one of my biggest complaints. But only slightly.

You see. These cameras, they are awesome. 4K in that tiny package. Water-tight seal and everything. And 1080p at 120fps was just a great bonus. But what has always irked me from the very first iteration (and it’s one of the reasons I’ve used my Hero3 Black so seldomly) is the fact that there has never been any way to really control exposure.

They addressed that somewhat in the Hero3+ with the auto-ISO-limit but I had no money to spend for that version. But I did have the cash when they released the 4th version. So I got it and it works really well.

So I have tried a few times to make a simple video where I just show how I make a drink of fizzy water. Nothing fancy but it shows some of the low-light capabilities.

I lit this with a pair of new soft-boxes powered by 75W fluorescents in 5500K. The camera has a PolarPro Macro on it for most of the video and almost all of it is in 1080p 120fps slowed down to 24fps for 5x slowmo (remember, for that, I need 5x more light to compensate). ISO-limit was on 400. Color settings where 5500K, Protune Flat.

In post I did some Neat denoising, VashiMorph with letterbox to Cinemascope it and ColoristaII color correction. Finally I put on a FilmConvert Pro filter with grain to 50% and a Fuji stock.

The results where much better than the last try where I had no soft-boxes and no Macro-attachment for the lens.

Well, as always… Be Seeing You!