GoPro vs Wingscapes timelapse camera

Here is the video…

And so the text would be searchable…

I got my Wingscapes Timelapse Cam years ago when I first bought the property… Originally, it was that so I could trace the shadows moving across my lot (important for passive solar positioning), but I ended up enjoying recording the construction process with it also.  Lately, I have wanted a better camera.  Eventually, my whining paid off and my wife got me a GoPro Hero3 for my birthday.  “White” just means that it is at the low end of the GoPro video range, but it still has the timelapse feature that I wanted.

For a comparative test, I mounted the two cameras side by side and recorded some timelapse footage for an “odd job” that I did (see the video link above).

The “odd job” was building a giant wall out of bales of rigid insulation… Why? I wanted to put a tarp across the back of the Quonset hut to stop the wind from blowing thru.  This would allow me to use the garage as a workshop…  But it was like a wind tunnel in there and I couldn’t keep the tarp still long enough to bolt it on…  I had these bales of rigid insulation already stacked somewhere else on the property, and I decided to restack them at the back of the quonset hut to block the wind…  It worked very well, and I chuckled at the idea of having an R-value of ~240.  At some later point, I will put up ICFs to form a proper wall, but I imagine even that would have been difficult in the wind tunnel environment of that quonset hut…

 

Anyway, let’s compare…

Wingscapes Pros:

Much better battery life (days or weeks with 4AA batteries) and better time lapse options for longer duration’s (10 seconds to daily)…

This makes sense because that is what it was designed for.

Wingscapes Cons:

A tiny pinhole lens in a large heavy housing that can be a challenge to setup.  It also has manual focus (that I have messed up a few times) and a basic, but awkwardly placed, view finder with no way to really tell how the shots are coming out until you download them.

I really can’t understand why the wingscapes cam needs to be so bulky or why the birdwatchers who buy them don’t demand better optics.

GoPro Pros:

Much better optics, plus its lens is very wide angle, which will help with the interior shots later.  The GoPro is also much smaller and easier to move around.  The GOPro settings can actually be controlled from my phone and my phone screen actually works as the view finder (which I thought was really cool until I realized how quickly the wi-fi used up the battery).

The timelapse options are actually better on the low end of the range…  With a number of options between Half a second and 60 seconds…  It also has much better Video options. Even though mine is just the white edition, it gives HD up to 60FPS.

And this all makes sense because this camera is meant to be strapped to an adrenalin junkie and pushed off a cliff.  Its timelapse options are more intended for capturing a half hour of sunset than a day at the build site.

GoPro Cons:

The battery life is poor (for a timelapse).  It can do 3 hours of video at 60 FPS, so I expected that it could go for ages on timelapse at 0.2 FPS, but it didn’t make much more than 4 hours, (even without the wi-fi viewfinder turned on, which drains the power even faster)…  And when the battery dies, it is a special GOPro battery, so I can’t replace it with a spare.   Also, the color seems less vivid on the GoPro, but I have only tested it on grey days and with pretty grey subject matter…

In summary…  I don’t plan to get rid of either camera.  They each have their place and will help me catch good footage and we try to get this house built over the summer.