what's next?

bankruptcy....

no sooner do you buy some piece of hardware nowadays than the next week it's made obsolete (with little or no resale value).

[/r]

+1 Ushere.

I gave up trying to keep up.

Another +1

Bob.

What good is 4K with an obviously cheap lens? Am I missing something?

I think perhaps you are missing something, have you ever played with a GoPro? The glass lens isn't cheap, it's an ultra-sharp F2.8, 6-element aspherical glass lens, now you can shoot 4k from vantage points which are totally impractical with larger cameras. GoPro cameras produce some surprisingly decent footage. A GoPro is just a tool, if you don't have any tasks that require a tool like this then there is no point in owning one.

GoPro cameras produce some surprisingly decent footage.

+1 on that. With their high bitrate AVC output, and typically VERY high shutter speeds in sunlight, the crisp fine high frequency detail is pretty darn good.

The lens is a fix focal, fixed aperture, fixed focus lens. They also leave the barrel distortion strong. Correcting distortions on an ultra wide angle lenses would add cost and more importantly for them, SIZE. With such limitations, one can make such a thing inexpensive and quite sharp.

I wonder what bitrate(s) the new Hero4 can do in 4Kp30. In the 3, with most flash cards you cap out at 35Mbps, and with some of the super fast flash cards you can get 45Mbps..

with most flash cards you cap out at 35Mbps, and with some of the super fast flash cards you can get 45Mbps

For the record, most cards are measured in mega bytes per second and video is usually measured in mega bits per second. There is an eight fold difference or so. So, yes, you are right, most cards will only do between 35 and 45 MB/s, which is quite fine in most cases for reasonably high bitrate video. I have shot quite a bit of 200Mb/s video on my Sandisk Extreme Pro cards which are marked at 95MB/s. There is a claim out there that you need faster cards for 4K video, but with the GH4 at least, that is not true. The extreme pro 95MB/s cards do 200Mb/s easily.

Of course it all depends upon the level of compression that GoPro uses to store their files. In theory you could store 4K on very ordinary cards if you heavily compress.

There is an option to replace the GoPro lens with a better one. It is not a conversion for the faint-hearted though. The company is Back-Bone: http://www.back-bone.ca/final-design-revealed/

For the work I do, stabilisation is a key requirement and I also do not want the image degraded by the stabilisation process, so perhaps optical stabilisation in a replacement lens would be good, or electronic stabilisation when shooting in 4K, so the resultant 1080 image I am after is not ruined.

Well aware of this mega bytes to mega bits, and have posted as such before. Most cards to not write at anywhere near the speed they read.

http://gopro.com/support/articles/software-update-release

I know my GoPro 3 Black dropped from 45Mbps to 35Mbs in Protune 1080p60 on the firmware update GoPro implemented described in the link. I had a Sandisk 64GB Ultra micro SD card, 30MB/s read. 64GB micros SD Extreme did not exist at the time. My newer Sandisk Extreme Plus card does allow 45Mbps mode in my GoPro(s).

GoPro are playing it safe. Some cards did not keep up, 100% all conditions, and you got a bad file on rare occasions. Testing pristine clean cards, or ideal benchmark write conditions, does not cut it for 100%. If a timing burp happens at the wrong time. Well...

Maybe GoPro is being too conservative, but we do not control their firmware.

"Is this another version of that doubling-up of memory speed etc - what's the name of that process?"

Moore's Law for CPU that has now plateaued

Thank you Peter. Moore is now Less?

Grazie

boom, boom grazie ;-)

Here's the official GoPro Hero4 announcement:

http://shop.gopro.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-GoPro-Site/default/Landing-Hero4

brief comparison: hero4 vs. hero3

It looks like the bitrate has been increased to 60Mbps for the new higher frame rate modes like 4kp30, 1080p120.

http://shop.gopro.com/compare?category=cameras

My Hero 3 black is outstanding. 1080 50p is my default, just not ready for 4k yet both from a hardware and presentation perspective....... but that 120 fps - wow! Do you recon it will also do 100fps like it does 60/50 for NTSC/PAL land?

That would be some super smooth slo-mo action.

On another note, they are also selling a new "Hero", just $129 for a 1080 30p camera with waterproof housing - that is value for you

Be aware that fullhd 120 fps is with jagged edges :(

GoPro have officially announced the Hero 4 now: http://gopro.com/?utm_source=product-launch&utm_medium=email&utm_content=LearnMorebt&utm_campaign=20140929_hero4-preannounce_EN&utm_term=&ExactTarget=true

On another note, they are also selling a new "Hero", just $129 for a 1080 30p camera with waterproof housing - that is value for you

As I understand it, this new version will be unable to removed from the waterproof case. All the connector ports have been moved to the rear panel.

I would assume that the accessory monitor screen will not work on it.

However, for the price, I'm considering it for a second camera (own a 3+Black now)