Stills taken with Sony Nex 5N, video with GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition
My conclusion: The GroPro Hero is a great camera for simple family video work.
First let me say that I am a serious still photographer with my primary focus portrait and wedding photography. And I truly love still photography. For me it is magical. Having said that, I have been exploring video capabilities of my D800 and for a bit longer with my Sony Nex 5N. With multipe personal projects (and not professional), I have been developing my skills at combining video with stills to create a fusion documents of the experience. I suspect that I have done about a dozen fusion documents from family vacations to personal vacations.
I am at a point in my life were I don't skateboard, ski, sky dive, surf board or drive a race car. So you might wonder why I was interested in buying a GroPro Hero 3 Black Edition. I had two projects in mind: to record the segment of the Illinois Prairie path (bike trail) between Elmhurst and Geneva and to explore the underwater imagery of a small lake that the family has a cottage on.
I have discovered that the GoPro is a great little camera video camera for family stuff as demonstrated by the fusion document above. It would have also been very difficult to fly through the flowers with my D800 but with the GoPro it is incredibly simple and the video quality is excellent.
Equipment/tools for this project were
Cameras: Sony Nex 5N (18-200mm f3.5-6.3) and recently a GoPro Hero3 Black Addition.
Aperture for managing all the stills as well as archiving the video
Final Cut Pro X for building the fusion documents
iMac plus lots of western digital drives
I am still learning about time lapse and still photography with the GoPro and as I gather information, I will post and update. On the negative side, there are only third party solutions for an external battery charger. In addition, I find the attachment arms cumbersome as they can only deal with right angle attachments. A universal attachment system would be absolutely great.