Your Tech Story

GoPro

GoPro Hero 9

GoPro launches Hero 9 Black action camera with 5K video recording, dual screens, and more

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

After GoPro Hero 8 Black, the company has launched GoPro Hero 9 Black with added features and modification. If you are a photographer or a videographer, this is a must-have and you should add it to your list. GoPro Hero 9 Black is mainly designed for shooting adventurous video clips but you can shoot other clips as well. Though the GoPro Hero Series camera is famous among vloggers, the Hero 9 Black will be the biggest hit of this year. 

The GoPro Hero 9 Black is the flagship action camera of the company for this year. Some of the highlighted features of this new gadget are a high-resolution sensor, removable lens cover, front-facing color LCD, etc. The Hero 9 Black model will be compatible with GoPro Mods which will include a new max lens mod. Let’s have a descriptive look at this new action camera. 

GoPro Hero 9 Price and Availability 

The high resolution 23.6 megapixel Hero 9 Black will be available in the market from late October. The price of this model is Rs 49,500 in India. GoPro will also launch a Media Mod, especially for the Hero 9 Black in the upcoming months. The company claims that it will offer a much better microphone which will come with a foam cover. The foam cover will help in suppressing the noise thus being an excellent noise absorber and also a weather-resistant product.

After Hero 9 Black is made available on the market, Hero 7 Black will become the entry-level model while Hero 8 will continue to sell but maybe at a dropped price. GoPro also has a GoPro Max, that is, the only 360-degree camera offering of the company. But, it won’t be updated this year.

Specifications and Features

The most important feature of this action camera is the 23.6-megapixel image sensor. This is the biggest upgrade of the model as the previous one had a 12-megapixel sensor. The video shooting capability of the Hero 9 Black is up to 5k video at 30fps. For the still images, the quality will be 20 megapixels. The company has also upgraded the rear touchscreen by making it a bit broader. The rear screen measures 2.27 inches to be precise diagonally. The company has also added a new front-facing color display to the model.

GoPro Hero 9
Image Source: techradar.com

There is also a 1.4 inch LCD that works at its best when pointed at yourself. One can also use the front display for framing the shot using it as a monitor. This product will boost the feed of the recent Instagrammers and YouTubers once it hits the market. For people who love traveling, this model is a pure blessing.

Hero 9 Black has a battery of 1,720mAh which makes it slightly bigger and heavier than the previous models. The removable lens cover of the Hero 9 Black is of great advantage as you can swap it with a new one if it is damaged. You can replace it with a new Max lens mod as well which has a wider field of view and you can use Max HyperSmooth stabilization. One can also with horizontal lock software settings with this new accessory.

Apart from the new main software HyperSmooth 3.0, TimeWarp 3.0 has also been installed. TimeWarp 3.0 always instantly to switch the video speed of the hyper-lapse to either real-time or half-speed. The new model can also perform horizontal leveling with the camera instead of relying on the GoPro app. It has a Type C charging with a single microSD card.

Scheduled capture is one of the best features of the Hero 9 Black model. You can fix the timing of the shoot and along with that schedule the duration for the time it will shoot ranging from 15 seconds to 3 hours. And, after capturing the video, the camera will turn itself off immediately.

Hero 8 Black vs. Hero 9 Black

Hero 8 Black weighs 126g and Hero 9 Black weighs 158gm. The new Hero 9 Black is waterproof up to 10m and the rugged body is similar to that of Hero 8 Black. Hero 8 Black is compatible with the Media Mod whereas for Hero 9 GoPro will launch a new Media Mod. The battery of the new GoPro Hero 9 Black is also better (1720mAh) as compared to Hero 8 Black (1220mAh).

Nick Woodman : The Founder of Sports-camera Manufacturing Company ‘GoPro’

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Trying, trying, and trying, this is the basic rule to achieve your goals. If you fail once, you have to try harder next time, as giving up will lead you to nowhere, but failure. Except, if you keep trying, there will be a day when you will thank yourself for your own hard work and sustainability. The American businessman Nick Woodman also believes in the power of trying, and after failing in his first two startups, his third startup, ‘Go Pro‘, helped him achieve his dreams, and he finally, built a billion-dollar empire for himself.

Early Life

Woodman was born on 24 June 1975 to Concepcion Woodman and Dean Woodman. He spent his childhood in Menlo Park and Atherton, California. His father founded the Robertson Stephens, an investment bank based in San Francisco. He did his high school from Menlo School. He then attended the University of California, San Diego, where he graduated in visual arts, with a minor in creative writing in 1997.

Experimenting with Startups

Woodman was always curious about starting up his own business, for that he began with an eCommerce website named EmpowerAll.com, which was outlined to sell electronic goods for no more than a $2 profit. But the website could do well for him. Later, he launched a gaming and marketing platform, Funbug, again which could not live up to the mark.

Founding GoPro

It was then when he was travelling to Australia and Indonesia for a trip. He loves surfing, and while surfing in Australia during the tour, he tried to capture his adventure on the camera. He asked his friends to click his pictures while surfing, but they all failed. Later, he tried to take the pictures himself by attaching the camera to his hands with a rubber band, but again it was all in vain.

nick woodman
Image Source: engadget.com

This incident led him to brainstorm about developing ways to help people with such needs. The idea of developing cameras that can be attached with a belt came into his mind, and Woodman went forward to do the needful to transform the idea into a big business plan.

Woodman borrowed a sewing machine from his mother and started experimenting with different designs to formulate belts for cameras. He also took a loan of $2,00,000 from his father and $35000 from his mother in order to start the business. He also invested his savings, around $10000, obtained from selling the sea-shells, that he had brought from Bali and sold in the California coast, in his startup.

In 2002, he founded GoPro. The name was inspired by the Pro surfers who got their pictures clicked by professional photographers. Initially, the company focussed on developing camera models with ‘point and shoot’ property, in order to get high-quality pictures instantly.

The first model from the company was manufactured by a Chinese company named Hotax. The model was a 35mm film camera, attached with the belt designed by Woodman himself, after a few modifications in the design. The retail cost for the camera was set at $30. In the beginning, he went to sell his camera on his 1971 model Volkswagen bus. With the success of the camera, it went through a few improvements like support for Wifi, waterproof housing and addition of SD card.

After two years from the inception of the company, it got its first big order in 2004, from a Japanese company. In the same year, the total earned revenue of the company was $150,000 and the following year, it raised to $350,000.

In late 2012, Foxconn spent $200 million to purchase 8.88% of the company, making the company value at $2.25 billion and Woodman a billionaire. In the year 2014, the company went public.

Personal Life

Woodman is married to Jill R. Scully and has three children with her. The family lives in Woodside, California. In 2013, he won the national Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. He has also been invited to many events as a speaker, to share his experience and some tips as a successful entrepreneur.

Woodman is also in philanthropy and has founded Jill + Nicholas Woodman Foundation, a charitable trust in the Silicon Valley.