Tag: engadin ski marathon

I put a brief mention on the blog for the latest GoPro when it was announced last September. Since then I’ve sat tight, holding off on a purchase until last week. I needed to get one for a wedding in May that will have a fun underwater element to it, and decided that the Engadin Ski Marathon, which I was enrolled in, would be the perfect chance to get acquainted with the photo controls.I’m pretty new to cross country skiing so I was happy to experiment with the camera rather than trying to race the marathon distance. I’d heard that despite advancements, the GoPros battery life is still pretty dismal. My GoPro Hero4 comes with a built in display on the rear of the camera, allowing you to frame the scene, scroll though the various menus and settings and playback images. It’s also probably the number one drain on a battery so I disabled it. Whilst disabling that I also turned off the camera beep and led lights on the front of the device, making it a stealth camera.Turning off the rear lcd screen doesn’t actually hamper the GoPro, as a basic screen is still featured on the front showing you what mode the camera is in, remaining battery and space on the memory card. I’d decided on using the timelapse feature, capturing an image every 0.5 seconds. I had previously set the timer at ten seconds, but it proved hit and miss about whether you’d capture a moment. With an image being taken every 0.5 seconds it left a lot of deleting when i sat down to edit, but meant that much more of the event was captured.I’d say the battery lasted for around two and a half hours. I’d love to say that got me to the finish of the race, but I still had 9km to go. I need to train a bit more to try and come in before the battery runs out! Overall, I was really pleased with the results. The camera is so small that it didn’t bother me at all during the race (where it was mounted on my ski pole). I found the controls really intuitive and the results fun to scroll through. A camera like this is never going to replace your main camera bodies, but will definitely be able to go to places where other larger cameras can’t.I look forward to sharing my GoPro images in future, but until then here’s a few more from the race.