These are the ones that people put on helmets, etc and then film extreme sports from their own perspective.

I see it as a cute novelty, so I don't want to dole out name-brand money. I've seen some cheap knockoffs at around $30 to $50.

Will I be losing a lot of quality?

I can live with 720 vs 1080 HD.

But I wouldn't want the video to be herky jerky or otherwise unstable.

Or am I just losing battery life or superfluous features that I wouldn't use?

http://www.cigarbid.com/Forum/c/posts/634053/Its-amazing-what-we-can-do-these-days 

But, my wife is an amateur photographer.....pretty good at it.

She takes action shots (surfing, skiing/snowboarding) and stills (nature, ocean, landscape, people, etc.) with her regular camera (Nikon).

She has a GoPro 3 Plus and LOVES it. She got the housing for underwater, etc.

I will say it takes amazing video AND still shots.

I read somewhere that there is a new competitor for Go Pro (forgot the name)....supposed to be pretty good, but having over-heating issues and such, and it's almost as expensive.

A $30-$50 knockoff will "work"........but it won't be nearly as effective in many areas.

Guess it just depends on what you want your final product to be, and what your needs are.

IMHO they offer great video and still photography, even under extreme conditions.

I recommend making sure you have a view screen, otherwise you have no idea whether you're pointing the right way.

Anyway... the videos are not great, but I suspect some of that is lack of user skill, coupled with the fact I haven't gotten LED lighting for it.

The camera definitely takes some getting used to. The 30frame bursts are great, but you have a very wide angle that you have to account for when looking at background.

Anyway, I think it was a worthwhile purchase for me... I've gotten sharks in Australia, poisonous snakes in Fiji and caves in Greece. I'm taking it to some cave dives in Mexico in a couple weeks.

You wear a scarf when cross dressing.

You're such a fashionista.

Don't ask how I know.

Oh my,

Jose, Pedro's third cousins uncle

The biggest problem I've had with my GoPro is trying to figure out what to do with the footage.

I've got hours of underwater footage... most of it isn't very interesting... but I just don't have the energy to create the clips of the interesting stuff, because I can't think of where I'm going to put it or what I'm going to do with it yet.

Maybe know what you want to do with the media and where you're going to put it before going nuts with the equipment.

I don't mean for storage. I have that covered. I mean simply what do I do with it. A bunch of video sitting on a hard drive or two doesn't really do any good.

I've not bothered posting it to facebook, or setting up an online video library for friends to look at it... or posted it to youtube or anything like that. In retrospect I may have been smarter to think of what I was planning on doing with the video clips before hand.

I'll do that after I strap a gopro to my head when I have to beat up homeless people.

I hear there's good money from SF Techies for footage of homeless being beaten.