GoPro HERO10 Black Bones and GoPro Player with Improved ReelSteady Launched

Camera News

by Jakub HanApril 12^th, 2022

The new GoPro Player with built-in ReelSteady can now stabilize even Hypersmooth-embedded clips and offers further features such as batch export, reframe for 360 footage, lens correction, trim, and more. The new GoPro HERO10 Black Bones is a naked HERO10 designed specifically for FPV pilots. Wrapped in a vented and lightweight plastic enclosure without any display, speaker, and battery, the camera only weighs 54g. It is available now in the US (including the GoPro Player license) starting at $400.

Today is a good day for many FPV drone pilots out there as GoPro launches two interesting news. First of all, the US-based company introduced a new version of the popular ReelSteady stabilization software along with a new GoPro Player.

Secondly, GoPro announced a new action camera specifically designed for FPV drone pilots – GoPro HERO10 Black Bones. Let’s take a look at all the details.

GoPro Player + ReelSteady

In case you are not familiar with ReelSteady, simply put: it is software that can stabilize footage in the post-production based on gyro data embedded in the footage. Since GoPro acquired ReelSteady roughly two years ago, the ReelSteady GO app was designed to work exclusively with GoPro cameras. It has gotten especially popular in the FPV community as the level of stabilization is very good and it beats the GoPro’s built-in Hypersmooth in most scenarios.

One of the downsides, up until now, was that ReelSteady GO could only stabilize GoPro footage recorded without any stabilization. Users, therefore, had to decide if they want to use ReelSteady even before they start recording. The new version of ReelSteady that is launching today can finally work with stabilized clips as well. This is, however, not the only improvement. ReelSteady now supports batch export and it comes as a part of the newly launched GoPro Player desktop suite.

On top of built-in ReelSteady, the new GoPro Player includes a wide variety of useful features such as:

• lens correction – remove the fish-eye distortion if needed
• frame grab – capture full-res stills from ay video
• trim – with support for precise frame-by-frame clips trim tool
• reframe – transform 360 footage into traditional videos and photos with keyframes

GoPro HERO10 Black Bones

The new GoPro HERO10 Black Bones is essentially a naked GoPro HERO10 but designed and assembled directly from GoPro. What is a naked GoPro? It is the same camera that you know, but stripped down to a bare minimum with a single goal – keep the weight as low as possible.

This is huge news for the FPV community that had to DIY naked GoPro cameras for years. FPV pilots have been modifying existing GoPro cameras and creating naked ones because they can be carried by much smaller quads that can easily fit in tight spaces and fly better indoors, etc.

Some pilots tried other cameras for their lightweight (often sub-250g) rigs such as the older GoPro Session, Insta360 GO 2, or the new DJI Action 2. The naked GoPro, however, despite its stability and reliability issues, still remained very popular for its good image quality and ability to use ReelSteady.

GoPro finally recognized the need for such a device and launched the HERO10 Black Bones. It includes all the essential components from the HERO10, so all the recording modes, resolutions, and framerates remain the same – including the built-in HyperSmooth 4.0 stabilization. Check both our news article with specs and Gunther’s HERO10 review to know more about the camera’s capabilities.

Compared to the standard HERO10, the Black Bones version does not include any display, speaker, GPS, or battery. Thanks to that, the weight of the camera is now 54g. Compared to the standard HERO10 weighing 158g, they managed to shave off over 100g of “unnecessary” weight.

All the internals (lens, sensor, microphone, and GoPro’s PCB with the GP2 SoC) are wrapped in a well-vented protective enclosure from lightweight plastic. The good news is that HERO10 Black Bones still features a replaceable cover glass that can also be swapped with an ND filter.

Same as any naked GoPro, having no battery, the camera needs to be powered directly by the drone’s battery. According to GoPro, the HERO10 Black Bones is compatible with any 2S-6S, 5-27V drone battery and it utilizes standard FPV industry connections. The camera can be controlled via physical buttons, Quik app, GoPro remote, QR codes, or the drone’s transmitter.

The good news is that the HERO10 Black Bones camera still offers the full GoPro warranty and damage protection with replacements for GoPro subscribers. The camera can be mounted to any drone with a single screw and it also includes an adapter for the standard GoPro ecosystem mount.

Price and availability

The new GoPro Player with the built-in ReelSteady is available now as an in-app purchase for $99. It is worth noting that the existing ReelSteady GO customers get a free upgrade to GoPro Player + ReelSteady.

All the new GoPro HERO10 Black Bones cameras come bundled with the new GoPro Player + ReelSteady suite. The cost is $400 for existing or new GoPro subscribers, or $500 for non-subscribers. That is roughly the same price as the standard HERO10, but in this case, I see it as an improvement, because DIY naked GoPros did cost more than that.

Link: GoPro

Have you been flying FPV drones with a DIY naked GoPro? What do you think of the new HERO10 Black Bones? Are you using ReelSteady to stabilize your footage? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section underneath the article.