travel

The one travel product guaranteed to get you off the couch and booking your next trip.

There’s a pretty standard list of essentials any traveller pops into their suitcase before heading out for their next trip.

Clothes. A few clean pairs of undies. Shampoo and conditioner and deodorant. Perhaps a travel pillow for the plane.

But in the age of the iPhone, there’s one thing that more and more of us seem to be forgetting to include in our luggage: a camera.

“Why bring a camera when I have the one on my phone?” we all ask.

“Why bring fancy technology when all you want is the perfect Instagram shot?”

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If you're wondering why you need to bring an extra camera on your next trip, you've never met the new GoPro. Image via Getty.
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Because, as I learned at the launch of GoPro's newest action camera, HERO6 Black, travel is about so much more than that.

Just ask the full-time travel bloggers and photographers. Those that travel the world living in a van or hiking with their dog. Or the guy who spent 600 days trekking around the entire coast of New Zealand.

Sometimes, to get the best shot, the best memories from a trip, you have to get a little down and dirty. And for that, you need something a little more rugged than your average smartphone lens.

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The HERO6 Black is GoPro's newest action camera. Image: Supplied.

The HERO6 Black is heralded as GoPro's most "powerful and convenient" camera yet, backed by a brand new type of technology.

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It has "next-level" image quality - the camera is capable of recording HDR photos and videos, which means colours are more vibrant and shadows have better clarity. The HERO6 is also capable of shooting stunning slow motion videos.

It's worth mentioning I'm no hardcore adventurer. I don't jump from planes, or ski down the uncharted sides of mountains. Some days, I have a hard enough time getting out of my apartment and going for a walk.

But there's something about this camera, this relatively tiny device, that makes me just want to get out of the house and start exploring.

jess san francisco go pro
Nothing will inspire you to get outdoors than a camera you can take anywhere. Image: Supplied.
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At AU$749.95, it's hard to imagine why any 'average traveller' would need such a technologically advanced device for their adventures.

But Nick Woodman, the founder and CEO of GoPro, is well aware that most of the camera's customers aren't doing "double backflips off cliffs" or "throwing big carves on their motocross bike in the desert."

For those people, the camera is designed to inspire. And for something fairly indestructible (it's even waterproof up to 10 metres), it's a relatively small price to pay.

"We want people to realise they are capable of so much more than they think... to inspire them to live a better life," he told the crowd at the HERO6's San Francisco launch event.

"[Inspire them] to get off the couch, get out there and get living."

And for those of us that are less 'adventure YouTube vloggers' and more 'please like my Insta photo of my summer trip to Europe', there's QuikStories, an app that makes it easy to share your GoPro footage on social media.

While being surrounded with such adventurous types for 24 hours definitely has me inspired to try sky-diving or swimming with sharks, I also feel just as motivated to go for a walk around my city, or a a hike in the bush, with the camera that can capture it all.

Jessica travelled to San Francisco as a guest of GoPro.

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