A close friend of mine gifted Chris and me a GoPro Hero 4 as a wedding gift, and today, I’m finally getting around to opening it and tinkering. As soon as I opened the box, I realized that this seemingly tiny camera had so many parts that it would be quite overwhelming to set up and understand what everything was for. I even had to look up some YouTube videos on how to set up certain parts.

This camera is so small that it fits in the palm of my hand, yet it takes 12-megapixel photos, has a lot of complex settings (you can even control down to the second your light exposure during night shots.. I wonder if I will ever get *that* into this to be that anal and do that), and has a waterproof case with multiple types of “back doors” that you switch out depending on how waterproof you want your camera to be, or what you’d like the sound quality to be like. Clearly, this was not meant to be a simple point-and-shoot camera and needs quite a bit of learning to maximize its capabilities. The one thing it does not do is zoom in and out, so it’s one thing for me to be cognizant of when I am taking this on our trips and leaving our DSLR at home.

The idea of having such a tiny camera replace my bulky DSLR is so attractive, though. The GoPro is so tiny and light, so it would lessen Chris’s whining when I make him carry the DSLR around. We’ll see how it goes during our Banff trip this week.