Action Camera/ Go Pro-freezing in cold weather

uglyfugly · Feb 13, 2017

Im sick and tired of my action camera not working. Ive tried reaching out to the big names in the sport like Dave Norona and Chris burandt to see what these guy use to get their awesome footage for soemthing that just works. My camera immedidalty freezes up as well as many ive heard of. Googled just about every comination of words but cant seem to find anything definitve on the subject. Ideas to get a good camera with amazing battery life?

uglyfugly · Feb 23, 2017

no one?

Idcatman3 · Feb 27, 2017

I've got a couple year old Garmin Virb Elite.

It seems to have decent (multiple hour on standby, 2-3 hour recording) battery life.

Escmanaze · Jan 5, 2018

Contour Roam

Well I really hope I'm not too late to be helpful. Sorry if I am.

The Contour Roam is SOOOOOO much better than the GoPro for snowmobiling use. Cold weather battery life is 20 times better. Also, it is so easy to turn it on and be absolutely certain it is on. And so easy to turn it off and be absolutely certain it is off. I always had nothing but frustration with snowmobiling with my go pro. I got my contour and now I have nothing but smiles.

I still use my gopro for other activities and the screen is really nice sometimes, but snowmobiling goes to the Contour and it's not even close - orders of magnitude ahead.

Thrillscrilla · Jan 27, 2018

Escmanaze said:
Well I really hope I'm not too late to be helpful. Sorry if I am.

The Contour Roam is SOOOOOO much better than the GoPro for snowmobiling use. Cold weather battery life is 20 times better. Also, it is so easy to turn it on and be absolutely certain it is on. And so easy to turn it off and be absolutely certain it is off. I always had nothing but frustration with snowmobiling with my go pro. I got my contour and now I have nothing but smiles.

I still use my gopro for other activities and the screen is really nice sometimes, but snowmobiling goes to the Contour and it's not even close - orders of magnitude ahead.

I feel like I need to pick one up after reading this! Looks pretty legit. Glad to know I'm not the only having probs w/ GoPro too.

christopher · Jan 28, 2018

Escmanaze said:
Well I really hope I'm not too late to be helpful. Sorry if I am.

The Contour Roam is SOOOOOO much better than the GoPro for snowmobiling use. Cold weather battery life is 20 times better. Also, it is so easy to turn it on and be absolutely certain it is on. And so easy to turn it off and be absolutely certain it is off. I always had nothing but frustration with snowmobiling with my go pro. I got my contour and now I have nothing but smiles.

I still use my gopro for other activities and the screen is really nice sometimes, but snowmobiling goes to the Contour and it's not even close - orders of magnitude ahead.

Is Contour BACK FROM THE DEAD??

I had a couple of their cameras YEARS ago and LOVED them for Sledding.
They were SO EASY to use in the snow!!

christopher · Jan 29, 2018

this could be fun.

nicolas · Jan 30, 2018

Are you talking about a goPro camera? Looks strage, as I am using a chinese Xiaomi, and it works pretty well in winter conditions (but it's brand new, 2 months old)...I thought GoPro is the best:face-icon-small-dis

christopher · Jan 30, 2018

nicolas said:
Are you talking about a goPro camera? Looks strage, as I am using a chinese Xiaomi, and it works pretty well in winter conditions (but it's brand new, 2 months old)...I thought GoPro is the best:face-icon-small-dis

My experience with MANY Go Pros is that they really do NOT like COLD weather and are a bit of a pain in the butt to use in adverse weather conditions.

While the Contour got blown out of the water by GoPro, it DID have a couple exceptionally nice features for use by Snowmobilers.

#1.
The dual optical lasers were OUTSTANDING for aligning the camera to make absolutely certain you were filming exactly what you wanted without the camera being aimed to High or to Low.

#2.
Turning the camera ON and OFF was a BREEZE with gloves on and there was 100% certainty that it was either On or Off. Zero guessing, zero sounds/beeps to listen for.

Battery life was NOT particularly good though.

inspectorgadget · Jan 4, 2024

I'll bite. I Have used all sorts of POV cams over the years from Viosport lipstick cams to cheapo spy cams. Was actually building a Mac Mini media center for my Apex but sink the boat anchor before I finished that project.

I use portable USB jump batteries like you would use to charge your phone when you do not have a plug-in charger. You have to experiment to find those that take the cold better. My GoPro is now under my visor and the battery is on top of the visor. This works most days except for the coldest days. A couple of notes - some GoPros can be direct wired via a charge cable WITHOUT a battery plugged in, some cannot. When its real cold either keep warm swappable batteries available OR keep the battery chamber empty and power via just the jump battery. I have 2 brand new small rechargeable batteries for this season. The batteries I ran last year seemed to loose their cold resistance.

BTW, I understand the DJI action cams to resist the cold well but to my eye their video is not as good as my older Hero 7 cam.

Escmanaze · Feb 2, 2024

Dang.

It's 2024 and GoPro still can't make a camera with a good battery for cold weather. We got guys out here wiring up external batteries to their helmets.

@inspectorgadget I appreciate your ingenuity and your commitment to the cause. But how frustrating is it that it is 2024 and something like that is required to get a bit of decent video.

Sucks

KTMDirtFace · Feb 4, 2024

They all suck, my old contour HD never had any problems. the new Go Pro's with even the enduro battery suck.

The only thing that works is to start recording before it gets cold and leave it on until it dies. and carry extra batteries either in your heated glove box or in a chest pocket against your body.

Once they get cold and are not on and running they will die in like 5min.

They work better when they are on. if they get cold while off they will **** the bed.

Basically, if you leave it off on your helmet and ride in the cold and then turn it on when something cool is about to happen they die in like 5min. if you turn it on when you head out they do a lot better and will last an hour or more.

inspectorgadget · Feb 6, 2024

KTMDirtFace said:
They all suck, my old contour HD never had any problems. the new Go Pro's with even the enduro battery suck.

The only thing that works is to start recording before it gets cold and leave it on until it dies. and carry extra batteries either in your heated glove box or in a chest pocket against your body.

Once they get cold and are not on and running they will die in like 5min.

They work better when they are on. if they get cold while off they will **** the bed.

Basically, if you leave it off on your helmet and ride in the cold and then turn it on when something cool is about to happen they die in like 5min. if you turn it on when you head out they do a lot better and will last an hour or more.

Right correct. Its the chemistry and physics of Lithium.

Escmanaze said:
Dang.

It's 2024 and GoPro still can't make a camera with a good battery for cold weather. We got guys out here wiring up external batteries to their helmets.

@inspectorgadget I appreciate your ingenuity and your commitment to the cause. But how frustrating is it that it is 2024 and something like that is required to get a bit of decent video.

Sucks

The way I look at it, its easier and less hassle (and cheaper) to bypass Gopro's batteries and use batteries that have more maH. If I didn't use other batteries I would just stop investing any effort into capturing the video. So my Gopro runs with no battery installed if plugged in to a charging battery. Just need to keep enough of these on hand to have a warm one ready when the one gets cold.

Our trip to WST this year had us riding in 20-30º every day. Keeping the GoPro battery bay empty I was able to use 1 battery all day on my visor. On the coldest day I had to swap to a warm battery during the day once. In much colder weather, I could see needing 4 batteries for a day.

inspectorgadget · Feb 16, 2024

I'm just gonna add that over the years I used to try the same strategy with multiple GoPro batteries but for whatever reason they just seem to be way more suseptible to cold impact. The packs I bought this year worked great, are small and low profile and even better have a large 4 lite power indicator. Down to 1 light, time to swap.
2 batteries $46.

https://a.co/d/jgVDtNh

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Action Camera/ Go Pro-freezing in cold weather

uglyfugly

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