Last Updated on 03/24/2014 by Chris Gampat
Upon looking on Amazon for GoPro products, stumbled upon the camera above: which is a 35mm GoPro camera. When first spotted, we thought that it was some sort of Chinese knock-off product. But then we Googled further and discovered that it is indeed real. B&H Photo also has a listing, and when doing even further research we found this article from Forbes.
The company that everyone knows for having incredible marketing for their pocket cameras that shoot HD video indeed had much more analog beginnings. The company’s Hero camera could go down to 15 feet of water and shot 35mm film. In fact, it came with a roll of Kodak 400 ISO color film.
The original camera was meant to be worn on your wrist, and we can imagine that that would be a bit weird to work with. Last year, I took a ride in a hang glider with a Sony action camera mounted to my wrist. It made capturing footage kind of awkward. What one would have to do underwater is stop movement, look through the viewfinder, and then shoot. That’s tough enough to do when on the surface, but even more complicated to do underwater. A much better idea is a helmet camera–but back in the film days that would require at least a corded release. Such a thing could hurt the waterproofing of the camera.
Today, the company works with all digital cameras and they specialize in the video world. Amazing how things change so quickly.