GoPro Admits the ILS Isn't for Stills Shooters — and That Autofocus Is the Problem

GoPro's own Senior Creative Director says he wouldn't recommend the Mission 1 Pro ILS to anyone shopping primarily for a stills camera. "You're gonna want a camera that has autofocus, you're gonna want something that is made for that experience," Abraham Kislevitz told DPReview in a new interview. That's a rare bit of candor from a company trying to sell a camera partly on its photography credentials.

The Mission 1 Pro ILS is GoPro's compact interchangeable-lens camera, built around a Micro Four Thirds mount (with no lens contacts) and a Type 1 sensor — 128 mm², substantially smaller than a true Four Thirds chip. The crop means any given MFT lens captures a narrower view on the ILS than on a Panasonic or OM System body. The mount's lack of contacts also rules out most native MFT lenses that rely on electronic communication.

What does the ILS change for working shooters?

Very little, if you need speed. Kislevitz was blunt: "I think the number one thing that we see with ILS, obviously, is autofocus." Some users embrace that — vintage-glass shooters slowing down and "shooting with intention" — but for anyone working fast, manual focus is the bottleneck. "As a super-fast point-and-shoot photographer, autofocus is kind of table stakes," he said.

The camera also isn't rugged in the GoPro tradition. "It's not the camera that can go underwater, it's not the camera that you are likely gonna throw in the sand," Kislevitz said. He frames it instead as "a small, mountable, let's call it cinema camera that can take photos."

The photo-mode rewrite nobody asked for — externally

A recent firmware update for the Mission 1 series rebuilt the stills experience. The motivation wasn't customer research. "Honestly, a lot of it was internal," Kislevitz said, citing himself and GoPro's resident photographer, Jensen.

The grievances were mundane but real. A loud beep on every capture, a processing delay, a black screen, no preview of the frame just shot. Kislevitz recalled his first ILS session on a Tokyo train, muting the beep for photos and then toggling it back on for video, constantly. Even the shutter sound got a rethink: an indoor-friendly snap rather than an obnoxious alert.

"It became very clear that we should go rewrite the photo experience with this product so that it became more like an actual point-and-shoot photo camera experience," he said.

An audience GoPro didn't plan for

Director of Communications Chris Prado said vintage-lens shooters and film-world converts are seeking the camera out, drawn by the MFT mount's adaptability. "I haven't been able to shoot this crazy piece of glass that I've had on my shelf for so long, and finally now I can get this really easy adapter," he recounted users telling the company. Kislevitz has adapted his ILS to a telescope and photographed the moon with it.

The sentiment, by his own account, is unusually warm: "I don't think I've seen this many positive experiences with GoPro in a long time."

Where it slots in

Kislevitz positions the ILS as a video-first body — 4K at 240fps, or 960fps capture — that carries a usable photo mode without a second device. "If you are in a situation where size matters, that's where I see it being a differentiator," he said. He now packs it in a fanny pack while mountain biking or skiing, activities where he'd never brought a mirrorless camera.

He also sees room for purpose-built glass: tiny pancakes, weather-sealed optics. The contactless mount, of course, already limits the existing MFT pool.

The company's real fight remains perception. "GoPro is an action camera company, therefore ILS is an action camera" — that assumption, Kislevitz said, is the one he keeps arguing against: "We are traditionally known as an action camera company, but we are a capture company." Whether buyers buy the rebrand, or just buy the camera for niche adapted-lens work, the autofocus gap will keep it out of most professional stills bags for now.