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GoPro HERO5 Black
Real Exposure Control & a RAW-Image Format
Review by Erik Vlietinck
GoPro’s Black action cameras are among the best money can buy. I bought a HERO5 Black to test its new features and image quality. Let’s start with the photography features. The new HERO5 Black allows you to shoot RAW images, which are saved as .gpr files. You’ll need Lightroom 6.7 or later to use these files. A Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) JPEG mode is also available. The WDR mode creates a pleasing, higher-than-normal dynamic range photo. Both photos and videos can be tagged with GPS metadata. The HERO5 has a brilliant 2" built-in, LCD display, and it’s water- proof with no further protection required for depths of up to 33'. The SD card is in a hopelessly tight spot, next to the battery behind
a sealed door that’s quite difficult to open and close.
I could control the HERO5 by voice, but it often went hilariously wrong. More useful is the surprisingly-responsive touch color display. The QuikCapture mode—which lets you use the record button to turn on the camera and automatically start recording, as well as stop recording and turn off the camera—gave a mixed experience. It’s not clear what all the powering up and down does
to the electronics, so in the end I turned it off.
The built-in electronic video stabilization (EIS) works wonders
when shooting while walking. But what really made me happy are the HERO5’s clean 4K HDMI-out and its exposure control. For the latter you hold your finger on a target area on the LCD screen and select whether the camera should lock on or not.
Finally, the HERO5 gets audio quality right. You can record to a separate .wav file with control over the quality of these recordings.
In addition, you can connect an external microphone via a USB-C
adapter. The sound will be richer than ever before, either way. ■ 105
Company: GoProInc.
Price: $399
Rating: 4
Hot: 4KHDMI-out;RAWphotos;LCDdisplay; audio quality; stabilization
Not: Voicecontrolisn’t100%dependable; SD-card is hard to remove
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