Thoughts On Action Cameras

I’m often asked to recommend a good action camera. I’ve only used GoPro’s so far. So I really can’t say much about other brands.

But I have some thoughts about action cameras when it comes to recording long distance motorcycles trips. Do you really see yourself editing GB’s of video footage in a video editing software? It’s a pretty boring and time consuming thing to do. I often see people with GoPro’s stuck to their helmets all day but rarely see any videos posted on social media. Unless they are editing the videos for their private collection. But my guess is the footage just lies on the SD card only to be overwritten by the footage of the next motorcycle ride.

Action cameras are good for short activities, like skiing, white water rafting, sky diving and similar. At the most you will need to trim the start and end of a video clip and you are done. But if you want to create and publish videos of your day or week long motorcycle ride you need to really make the time to edit huge amounts of footage. I’m still editing the GoPro footage of my Nepal ride which I did three months ago. As you can imagine, this takes a respectable amount of dedication and perseverance.

So if you really don’t see yourself doing all this, then maybe you should ask yourself whether you really want to spend all that money on an action camera. Instead you may want to spend the money on your motorcycle or some nicer riding gear.

Another thing. You need to stop your motorcycle to change batteries, swap SD cards, charge all the batteries at night and do whatever you need to do to keep that action camera alive and recording. If nothing is going to come out of it then you might as well sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Maybe someone else in your group will take the trouble of recording the trip and editing all the footage.

Just my two cents. 🙂