After many months, even years, of reading GoPro forum messages and Q& As, and similar things in DJI forums for both drones and the Action camera, I can only conclude that the term “Settings” is the wrong one to be used.
You see, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of questions about “What settings do you recommend for such and such …”.
It’s almost as if people are hoping for some magic feature that unlocks a “perfect picture / video” mode for any given situation.
Sorry to be blunt, but there isn’t. Nil. Nada. Zip.
Because of this, I recommend GoPro (at least) change the “Settings” moniker to “Options”, because that is what they are. Things the camera can be made to do, or can be put in a certain mode, such as widescreen, or hyperlapse for example.
There is no “setting” for “take a picture underwater at 4pm while I am 2m snorkelling” or option to “I am riding my bike in the rain and it’s a bit dark”.
There is the ability to tell the camera to set certain parameters that will assist under those conditions and lots of others within the cameras abilities and to understand this – shock, horror – you will need to understand basic photography theory. Stuff like aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, ISO and so on.
There are a million tutorials on these things – I have a few myself on my website at creativecontent.au – and they are not that hard to pick up and understand. And once learned, will make a MILE of difference to your images and videos.
Oh, and no, the GoPro does NOT zoom. And please don’t remove that funny looking cover on the side. As per the manual.
And finally, shooting the eclipse with a GoPro is a total waste of time, as is shooting it from a drone. In the latter case, getting 120 metres closer to an event 93,00,000 miles away won’t make a scrap of difference, and in the former, as it is a wide-angle lens you’ll get a teeny, tiny image only. In both cases you might burn out the camera sensor.