GoPro & similar in 2021, filming climbs

Hey,

So let me just preface this by saying that all GoPro footage for climbing sucks, and it's not worth it, I should mount it on my spare helmet & leave it at home, and I'm probably just a hopeless narcissist for even considering possibly filming myself climbing. Now that we've gotten all the useful comments out of the way, I'd like input from people with actual knowledge to share. So for those with some level of experience with this...

I don't want to invest a bunch of money on this - basically just want to try it out & see if I find it interesting or not to film a few climbs. I'm currently thinking about the Akaso EK7000 Pro. Reviews seems to indicate it's a decent cheap go-pro version. Image stabilization seems not too great (numeric only, not optical), but then I'm thinking isn't mountain biking, somewhat slower pace, especially trad climbing when I'm spending half the time fidgeting with placements anyways. Am I wrong in assuming that?

You can get 2.7K @ 30FPS or 4K @ 27FPS. I don't care too much about that, 2.7K or even 1080p seems fine to me. The false 4k may even be enough for climbing (as it's not as fast-paced as other activities, the slightly reduced frame rate may not matter as much?)?

One think I was considering was possibly setting it up at the top of the climb/close by climb and using it as a fixed camera. Is that realistic, or is the lack of a zoom* going to mean that I might just as well setup my smartphone (which is lower end and has a shit camera though)? Or would I need to find an actual point & shoot in order to do that and get decent results?

Obviously not going to get a drone, way out of budget and that's too much commitment (even in terms of setup/usage) for what I want to put in this at the moment. Even setting aside the controversy around drones at the crag....

Say I have a TOP budget of 150 USD for this, any alternative recommendations?

* It has a "zoom", but it's just numeric adjustment, so basically it seems like it's just cropping your image & degrading image quality. So guessing I could "zoom" by just using the default FOV in 4K & cropping it out afterward.... Comments on that?

you pretty much nailed everything in the first paragraph.

I haven’t done any video editing for half a decade but doing anything in 4K is a nightmare. At least then it was basically a gimmick. 1080 is a fine resolution. 

TL;DR: 1080p60 on any old gopro or action cam is fine for helmet cam. Phone on a stand is fine for filming from the base. Unless you have a photographer, I wouldn't bother with any fancier cameras. 

I use a Hero 5 on my helmet sometimes on trad climbs to review gear choices later and see if I'm doing stupid things or missing holds etc. For on your head I think image stabilization of some sort makes the video less nauseating to watch, although you typically lose some FOV so I set it to the widest possible. 1080p 60FPS is plenty for POV, any more resolution only adds to file size unnecessarily unless you plan to zoom in a ton on screenshot. On steep balancey climbs where you are hugging the wall and looking down often for feet or offwidth/squeeze chimneys the gopro gets in the way and can be super annoying. Even on more regular crack climbs I still smash it into the rock quite often as you gotta have it protrude in front of you helmet and point down to actually capture what you're doing.

Any action camera probably won't be better than a phone on a stand for stationary filming from afar, and might be worse as you said due to the wide angle lens and basically just cropping to "zoom". A modern phone is probably going to be good enough for your purposes, especially since a greater optical zoom on a point and shoot would likely require you to pan up as you climb so you'd need an assistant or a fancy motion stage. 

I like to film boulders, and I have an Akaso and I kind of wish I had just gotten a GoPro. The Akaso is fine when lighting is perfect, but my experience is that in low/mixed lighting scenarios the image quality gets grim quick. I've only ever used it on a tripod pointed at boulders, so I can't really speak to the image stabilization side of things. For what you're describing, the thing will probably work fine, and it'll definitely help you decide whether you want to actually spend money or not. 

DJI OSMO Action might be useful

Helmet cams are inherently shaky.  I have used mine a few times to record climbs, and it goes OK, but the footage really isn't interesting after the fact, unless you fall.  That's why drones have become popular, because you can follow the action from a 3rd person perspective and the view does no change every time you move your feet.  Think about how many times you move your head from the placement, to your rack, back to the placement, to the rope, to your feet...  That's a lot of camera movement.  Even without the head movement, you are pretty much looking at a wall within an arms length, that is what your camera sees as well.  How much compelling helmet cam footage have you of climbing?

These are not mine, but they illustrate the limitations.  

Ice Climbing

Devil's Tower

A stationary camera is fine as long as you are not a tiny dot is a vast expanse of rock. That is why it is more appropriate for bouldering. If you really, really, really want to use a POV camera to get climbing shots, I would recommend something like this for 3rd person POV on a budget.  If you already have some sort of chest/back harness, you could always DIY it.

Disagree on first paragraph. I have used videos to better understand what’s involved in certain multipitches, especially alpine ones. Also used them for partners to better understand so they can’t claim I sandbagged them again.

That camera you linked is terrible and you'll hate it. See if you can't borrow a GoPro Max. All the things you may hate about a GoPro and its footage is fixed with this camera, including shakiness. Editing a movie will take at least twice as long, but it's worth it.

Been using a Hero 10 for a while now and nothing else compares. Just go for the best. It’s resale value will also hold better than anything else on the market

My advice if you want viewable footage is to look for a 360 camera. Most of the better ones will have editing software that will allow you to control the view for the 2D footage before exporting. This helps to deal with the times when your helmet gets askew, or you're looking around too much, or when you bump the camera on a bulge and it's no longer pointing directly at the best viewing angle as you climb, blissfully unaware of the crappy footage of the sky or just the top of your helmet. Additionally, during those times when you're fiddling with your gear, you can use that time to pan around to allow the viewer to see what the view around you is like. 

Granted, they're seldom cheap and the editing is painstakingly tedious and irritating, but the end result is often better in terms of what's happening on your climb, though sometimes you'll get weird fisheye-like shifts from taking the view to the edge of one of the two cameras. 

Thought about this recently and I think the best system for climbing (unless it's a chimney) would be some back mounted pole solution with a 3d camera.  Not sure if anyone has something like this though.

Christopher Smith wrote:

Thought about this recently and I think the best system for climbing (unless it's a chimney) would be some back mounted pole solution with a 3d camera.  Not sure if anyone has something like this though.

Not really anything that's secure and not flimsy from what I've been able to find that's actually really available