GoPro HERO3 with Interchangeable C-Mount Lenses? The Novo Camera Mod Makes It a Reality

Wow! These sure are interesting times. I bet NAB this year will have a few surprises.

Attaching a nice lens and taking it out of the protective housing renders it completely useless for me. Anyone else feel this way?

In my opinion the whole point of a GoPro is it to be small and indestructible.

Actually the applications for the Novo would be similar to another camera made by Radiant Images : http://cinescopophilia.com/cameras-used-in-the-end-of-watch-movie/

Cool rig but you’re looking a thousands of dollars per week for a package with lenses, follow focus etc. This is truly designed for multi-million dollar shows that have the money for a camera truck full of toys and not the indie/guerrilla filmmakers like myself that the off-the-shelf GoPro is made for.

>thinking a gopro is something more than a bro-camera for rednecks and their outdoor sports
>you gear heads will buy and get behind ANYTHING

When I first saw this, the camera nerd in me got really excited. Then practicality set in and I was left asking: if all you want is a tiny camera body with interchangeable lenses and manual controls, why not just use a NEX? Is the Protune 2.7K image really that much better? If for one would like to see a side by side on a big screen.

Don’t really see the point of this. It’s neat but why not use a digital bolex, gh2 (or3), something like that… It seems like an awful lota trouble to turn something into something its not, especially when we already have other comparable options.

If this is not enough to convince the people running GoPro that there would be demand for a dedicated interchangeable-lens camera from them, I don’t know what is.

If go pro put out an interchangeable lens camera I’d buy it in a second. Cineform is the shiznit

I say let one innovation lead to another. I feel like the rig he’s holding could really make way for some micro shotgun news broadcasting.

And think of this too: considering the size of that rig without the grip and monitor it’s significantly smaller than any camera when it comes to mounting it to an RC helicopter. Imagine the possibilities!

The NOVO turns a light, cheap, rugged, semi-disposable sports camera into an expensive, fragile video cinema camera with a tiny imager. I appreciate the engineering that went into the NOVO, but I don’t get the point.

I saw this recently in person. Its very cool and has already been used on a couple of commercials. Also, if anyone saw NBC’s national news broadcast tonight, they saw 8 GoPros in use in 2 different items.
The 2.7 does look good. It may be designed (and marketed) as a sports camera, but I know very few doco/news shooters or prodcos that don’t own a GP3 or two. Also, just worked a spot for a major beverage where GP3 footage was cut in with Arri RAW (at 1080). Graded in very well. When its out I’ll give you the link. I got killed on here suggesting semi-seriously it was the best value cam under $1k. It may not be, but the market likes it a lot.

A GoPro with C-Mount and manual exposure control. Y E S !!!

Interchangeable lenses and all is nice. But what I really want from the Novo to be implemented in my GP3 is exposure-control. :)

I see a great potential for using this camera in a specific kind of production where you want to mix the utterly unique placements of the GO-Pro and intercut those angles with traditional dialogue, shot-counter shot, medium and close up coverage and not notice the camera at all. I’m an editor and when I get go pro stuff it looks cool but it’s a dead give away when used in a narrative scene and it completely takes you out of the scene usually. The lens on the GoPro is just such a signature of the camera that everyone says “GoPro” in their head when you cut to one. This camera will allow you to design a scene where you will never notice the camera at all which I believe is the hallmark of great technique and direction.

The price point really narrows the field of use, imo. But, if I could buy a GoPro, and buy a kit from Novo to make this myself, and spend less than a grand………now we’re talking useful to the ultra-low budget filmmaker or short filmmaker.

It doesn’t though, so I’d rather go Black Magic or Digital Bolex.

Still what they’ve done is a great thing.

Keep in mind, the GoPro essentially has a 5.5x crop factor compared to a 5DMKII or similar. The comparison video of the girl in the warehouse was shot on an 8mm lens. Imagine putting y our 70-300mm on this camera.

That turns it into a 1500mm lens, which puts you into astronomy range. Now someone needs to hack the gopro firmware to allow for long exposures and we’ll have, literally, a pocket telescope.

As I commented last, its seems comparing your camera to a gopro is apples and oranges…you should be marketing to people who want a less expensive alternative to DSLR…the gopro has been and is still marketed to the action sports enthusiast and it seems an attachable lens would just make the thing more fragile and impractical for the POV user. However, I do like your cameras manual aperture setting, something gopro could (and probably will) take a cue from. Good luck.

Its great to see a great camera like the Hero 3 being re jigged to make it do more than it was designed for. Being able to change lenses is a great idea! Well done Viewfacto and Novo

I also am wondering why GoPro hasn’t already made one not just for making cinema movies but, more yet, for home use. They could probably make a home camera with interchangeable lenses that would cost 1/2 the competitors cost. I think they would dominate the market (poor Cannon, ;-) ) I would buy one. The Black 1440p picture is just fantastic. I’m carried away watching videos of it. I wish I had one and could plug a Blue Spark Digital USB mic into it. What a dream!

The real message here is that, this is the first viable platform for the tinkerer. The fact that the 2.7 imager is under $500 makes it viable to experiment with on your own. Imagine taking an old 35mm still camera and tossing this chip in it? I may buy one and tear it apart myself….

I think this is the direction it’s all going to go. Although right now as a “for hire only” it’s not for me just now, as I would rather buy it and spend some quality time testing it out and getting use to using it.

Ok. So they took small waterproof and shock-proof action camera, disassembled it and make a bigger non-waterproof and non-shockproof camera of it. Great. Similar idea is to buy a 10″ high-end netbook, and use it only in docking station it with 30″ LCD, keyboard and mouse.
I thought the idea of gopro was it is small and durable. When I want bigger profi cameras, there are another choices on the market..

Not impressed with the “soft focus”, at least from this first demo. What I really wish someone would do is come out with a software patch that would defeat any AGC circuitry in the Go Pro. I have tested several mics on three different models and can hear a bit of noise from the AGC which relegates me to using a Zoom H4N in conjunction with a Go Pro Hero 2 or 3 when doing an interview where there is no background noise.

Very interesting but I don’t see much use for it with the important exception of aerial photography using small multi-rotor UAVs such as the DJI F450. I find GoPros have too wide a FOV. I’ve recently had to buy a much more expensive UAV to carry a Sony Nex 5r simply because of its weight. I’d prefer to have spent a couple of thousand less on the UAV to have a smaller lighter set-up, but no suitable very light camera was available at any price.

Until they fix the GoPro 3 battery life problems, I wouldn’t even considering doing anything more elaborate with it than rough and tumble outdoor use.

Hi,

I was hoping that someone would come up with a rugged, small diameter (say 40mm or 50mm max.), C-mount camera with all the good points of GoPro and Novo imaging along with FULL control of ALL imaging functions such as binning (2×2, 3×3 and 4×4), exposure and frame rate. That would then be a truly versatile camera with a small footprint that would lend itself to other forms of digital photography such as microphotography, macrophotography and astrophotography (it could even be mounted at the prime focus of reflective objectives without interfering too much with the incoming lightpath.

Surely, a cylinder is the most adaptive of all camera body formats. They could also produce a camera within the same footprint with a bigger sensor with bigger pixels to increase the dynamic range whilst still making it a 4K device. A well thought out device could prove to be as big a seller as the GoPro is and easily ruggedised by sleeving and by fitting a front window.

My interests are sports/family digital still and video photography, time-lapse, aerial and scientific imaging hence the need for utmost versatility, i.e. a camera for all seasons and all reasons – I am still hopeful one will appear that fulfils all my requirements and that I can carry with me on my walks and cycle rides.

So, for the larger sensored camera,16M pixels (4096 x 4096 usable), 5microns square (20.5mm square), RAW, H.264, hdmi, Wi-Fi, standard definition composite video + sound for transmission to remote receiver for FPV (2.4 or 5.8Ghz) whilst still storing Full HD content on SDHC, Wi-Fi control including all functionality available on buttons, external power supply, e.g. much larger batteries, for extended duration and, possibly, active sensor cooling for noise reduction and increased SNr. For the smaller device just reduce the pixel size down to around 2.5 or 3.5 microns square and keep everything else.

John,

retired engineer.

Leeds, West Yorkshire, U.K.