Howdy all! A bit of different post for y’all (Sorry, I’ll try not to use that again in the future), I wanted to talk about my vlogging equipment that I used earlier this year on my trip and talk about the differences in DJI and GoPro as far as I experienced.

I’m mostly going to talk about my action cameras here, although I will start with my DSLR and phone. I still use my Nikon DSLR 5600 for photos mostly (when I don’t use my phone) and also for video from time to time, it gets me a better zoomed shot than any action camera will, so for videos when I was out on safari in Kenya I would use that to get closer to the animals. However, I was so strapped for room when I left Australia in April I elected to only take the smaller 18 – 55mm lens rather than the 18 – 200mm lens I used in 2023. Only a few times did I regret it, mostly I was very happy to not be lugging the extra weight around with me. It did mean I didn’t get the shots I would have liked to in Kenya though.

This DSLR is a real trooper too – this is the one that I dropped 15 metres down a virtual climb in Oman when I took a tumble on the stairs at the fort for those who were following those adventures. Yes, it still works, although a couple of times I had some issues with the batteries which weren’t holding charge for as long as they used to, which is normal. But I caught myself out a couple of times where I had to take photos on my phone because the battery that had said fully charged a couple of days earlier was not charged suddenly when needed!

My current phone cost less than $400AUD and is a Google 6A. I chose this phone mostly for the storage space. After being frustrated with a couple of phones (Samsung) that had only 32GB, this one has 128GB, and it also has a better camera than any of my previous phones. It also has a good digital zoom which allowed me to zoom in closer than the DSLR, however the picture quality degrades the more you digital zoom (naturally). At the end of the day doing a post production digital zoom on photos and videos from the DSLR renders better results.

I’ve been blogging seriously since sort of mid-covid I guess, which wasn’t the best time to take up travel vlogging. I watched loads of travel vlogs trying to assess how I wanted to approach it, and what sort of camera I wanted. When I saw the sharp quality and colour of Bald and Bankrupt’s videos, who I used to follow closely, I decided to see what he was using, which was the Sony Fdr-X3000. Small even for an action camera, it seemed to do the job and I was super happy with it. I will point out also I always, so far, shoot in Full HD. All three action cameras I’ll write about today are capable of 4K shooting.

It’s shaped differently to the standard GoPro style camera. The one downside was the microphone which I didn’t think was any good. I ended up using a lapel microphone which had to be connected with cord. This proved a problem on many occasions and I ended up with no audio at all at times. The one I remember distinctly was the cord obviously had been pulled or something and no longer worked and I didn’t realise it and an entire day’s filming had no audio at all in Muscat (2023). It was still plugged into the camera and that meant it didn’t use the in built microphone. This camera also didn’t have a screen to show me what I was filming, back or front but as it was wide angle that wasn’t much of an issue. I was happy with the picture quality, and the file size was more compressed compared to the GoPro and the DJI, so memory cards lasted longer and I didn’t have as much to upload at the end of a day into Dropbox.

Sadly, I lost this camera in France in 2023. I used my DSLR and backup action camera I used to have which stopped working before I completed the trip. My backup action camera was an AKASO for reference. I see Amazon are selling a similar model in Australia for under $100AUD to give some idea just how much of a ‘cheapie’ it was!

I replaced the Sony with another of the same model once back in Australia in 2023, but for some reason it just didn’t give me as good results as the original. I ended up deciding to get a GoPro before my November adventure to the Philippines and Malaysia that year.

The GoPro 10 I think had just come out, actually had been out a while, and the GoPro 9 was significantly reduced in price. Both had low light issues and I couldn’t see the value in a 10 when it was $300 AUD more at the time. The 9 is a pretty good model I think for GoPro, audio was then the issue though so I bought the GoPro Media ‘Mod’ with it which has an okay microphone (better than the in built one) and the hole to put the jack for a lapel microphone.

This mod was okay. I eventually dispensed with the lapel microphone because the same issues would arise, and just used the mod mic. This had its own issues too. The sound quality was okay, but generally I needed to adjust bass and treble in editing. I had a whole day in Tokyo without audio for some reason. I had taken the mod off and on to replace the battery during the day, but that hadn’t corrected whatever the fault was and the whole day was missing audio. Super frustrated that day. I checked the footage in the evening and went back to the camera and recorded some more and the fault did not replicate, it worked fine and has ever since. Just ONCE it didn’t and I don’t know why.

On the plus side the GoPro has front and back screens. The files though are large and therefore take longer to back up than on the Sony. Which I think is discontinued incidentally. GoPro’s batteries had poorer life than the Sony (and the DJI). The biggest issue with GoPro as a vlogging camera though is its performance in low light. I never really had low light issues on the Sony, however the GoPro 9 (and they all have issues I believe) strobed like crazy as soon as it got a bit dim, especially indoors. It was very frustrating and on over night flights when doing a review it was a real issue for me. Overall there were a couple of videos with extreme strobing and I even put a warning on one maybe two videos because it was that bad. Also with the media mod it was quite heavy for an action camera.

And then came DJI. Which I bought either at the very end of 2024 or the start of 2025. This one I had seen from Noel Philips who in 2024 I think swapped to DJI from GoPro and seemed to be really happy with the results. I usually research these things a fair bit, and I saw a number of videos on DJI’s Osmo Action Cameras. This time I really took a holistic approach to the job it needed to do – I needed better performance in lowlight and I wanted good audio with less hassle, and DJI seemed to fit the bill.

DJI Osmo 4 was what I got in the end. I was convinced that the Osmo 5 only had a few new features that I wouldn’t need anyway, and at the time the Osmo 4 was being sold at a few places for under $400AUD which is a great price. I looked at videos on YouTube comparing the Osmo 4 to GoPro, and the picture quality seemed better and the lowlight performance was too.

The inbuilt microphone was another step up as well. BUT DJI had their own Bluetooth microphones that would pair to the Osmo 4, and this was the real seller for me. They had a range of microphones and I wanted the mini, but this was only available on their website. Others come with a whole kit including a receiver, but all I needed was the mic and its charging station.

I had to wait because it was out of stock for a little while, but came back in. They were selling for only $69AUD which is cheaper than the Rode lapel mic with wire so I bought two as I was going away for a long time and anything could happen to such a small thing. For example, I put it not only through the wash when I didn’t realise it was still attached to a shirt in Hungary and then the dryer! And yes – IT STILL WORKED. But then in Kenya it fell off when I was on the back of a motorbike so swings and roundabouts. Still have the second one though.

They work pretty well, but sometimes have pairing issues. Not sure if it’s other Bluetooth signals or what, sometimes it won’t connect to the camera. Sometimes the off and on again process fixes the issue, sometimes not. Usually I would say. And then amazingly it works again five minutes later. But the quality is great and in general I am super happy with the microphone.

All in all the Osmo Action 4 is the best action camera I have had and I think the best that I’ve used for vlogging. It’s light and doesn’t require the mod like the GoPro for better sound, and it has back and front screen which I generally set to turn off 5 seconds into filming to conserve the battery life which is decent, better than the GoPro. And the files size is a little smaller than the GoPro, but not compressed to the same extent of the Sony. So there is still a bit of time required to upload videos to DropBox at the end of the day – which if you’re interested can sometimes be more than 20 Gigabytes of data.

One feature of the DJI Osmo Action 4 is a zoom function, which is digital. However this is the first action camera I’ve encountered with a zoom function, and even though it’s only 2 times, I’m still impressed that they have it.

I do mix vision in some videos, like the one above when I visited the gorillas in Uganda. In this video you will see mostly the DJI Osmo Action 4, but also shots from my Pixel 6A and the DSLR once actually with the gorillas in one place. I certainly used all three a lot interchangeably on safari in Kenya too. The point of vlogging with an action camera is that it’s light and can be produced at the drop of a hat. Another feature of the DJI over the GoPro is its one touch recording, so that the camera does not need to be ‘on’ to start recording. It usually is filming within 1 – 2 seconds. GoPro has the same feature but it is not nearly so quickly. An action camera on a selfie stick is also much lighter when you have to film pieces to camera than any other option.

Model:		Sony Fdr-X3000	GoPro 9	DJI Osmo Action 4
Year Launched:		2016	2020	2023
Ratings:	In Built Mic	3/10	4/10	6/10
	Other Mic	N/A	6/10	9/10
	File Size:	9/10	4/10	5/10
	Low Light Performance	6/10	3/10	8/10
	Picture Quality	7.5/10	6/10	9/10
	Usability	6/10	6.5/10	7.5/10
Final Scores:		6.3/10	4.9/10	7.5/10

So yeah, there you go! I’ve done a little table here if anyone is interested in direct comparisons between the three cameras. Otherwise, I feel confident at the moment that I am using a great little camera to vlog on! Thanks for reading today, take care wherever you are in the world and… May the Journey Never End!