Shot this video over the weekend in 2k mode (protune)
When I try to zoom in on the frame in Gopro studio it looks like a blurry mess. Is this normal when shooting from this distance?

Looks like video noise from high gain is causing the "blurriness" ie. lack of distinct hard edges.

Looks like video noise from high gain is causing the "blurriness" ie. lack of distinct hard edges.

That clip looks well-lit to me, relatively, with light streaming in the windows.

Here is a video from the 4K Panasonic A500 action cam, taken indoors. Looks nice and sharp:

Panasonic HX A500 4K Video: Taxi, Airport and Train on Vimeo

The middle part has interior airport lounge and other areas, followed by interior train.

Lack of colour in the clip in the corners, murky shadows... it's definitely gain up.

I do not disagree that there is evidence of noise-reduction smearing. The point is that the room is not that dim, so the camera is showing poor "low-light" performance when the light is not that low.

Is it possible that the camera focused on the foreground object at the lower left corner, which does appear to be sharper?

Thanks

The GoPro is a fixed focus camera. It can't change focus distance without taking the camera partially apart.

To me it looks like too much gain from low light. GoPros are NOT known to be good low light cameras. They require a LOT more light than normal video cameras.

Hi
I had more than enough light in this place and I have the most recent firmware and in addition I manually set the ISO and so the highest it could go is ISO 400

The color is flat because I have it set to the flat color profile in the menu- I rather adjust it in post than use the Gopro Color setting

Is the image from this camera sharp in other locations and lighting conditions?

Close up shots seem okay but at a distance they are not. More lighting helps but it still looks out of focus.Tons of light in this shot but the people sitting are out of focus and the bride and groom shot is a bit soft

Then you have one of the early versions of the 3+ which had a short focus issue. You can take the camera apart and refocus it or see if GoPro will replace it with one that doesn't have the problem.

so the camera is showing poor "low-light" performance when the light is not that low.

Never said the light was low - said it was showing gain noise. Could be high shutter speed or any number of other things but the image undeniably is showing gain noise which, without showing the second photo under bright light which IS undeniably soft, would be prone to causing softness.

Since the outdoor image is also soft (to say the least) I'd agree that there is something else at work here.

Does anyone have experience with GoPro support, once you send a camera in is the turn around time quick?

There is 165 pages in this thread re the focus issue in the 3+ GoPro User Forum ? View topic - Difference in focal range sharpness Hero3 Blk vs Plus (http://goprouser.freeforums.org/difference-in-focal-range-sharpness-hero3-blk-vs-plus-t14637.html)

It affected some early camera date releases. You should also update to the latest firmware, it has a JPG correction code that fixes the low file sizes of JPGs (previous around 2MB now 4MB+) back up to the quality of the Hero3Blk non plus model.

Turnaround time is approx 1 week for USA

Thanks for the info - I guess I will be contacting them this week
I do have the most recent firmware update on this camera