Yes thanks for the reminder. As a matter of fact I had zeroed in on the LX10 at the turn of 2018-19 but it was not available either in my country or my upcoming vacation destination Bali when I contacted the camera shops by email. One shop offered to find it on preorder a month in advance if I paid an advance but then I decided I absolutely wanted raw so I purchased the H7B instead last X'mas taking advantage of the year-end sales. Yet to shoot with it. Also one the detailed nit-picking reviews I read observed and demonstrated that the LX10/100 records crushed blacks - which is often going to be the case with ambient lighting at greater depths.
I shoot with a H3B currently and yes the distortion on the sides is terrible. With the H3+B since I dont use a viewfinder I am compelled to shoot wide and point in the general direction I want with the hope that the subject will be captured somewhere in the frame. During stabilization in post, the corners get cropped anyways but still visible. I plan to shoot linear with the H7B now since it has a lcd viewfinder embedded and I can frame the shot.
Does the H7B show significant distortion even in linear mode?
Ps: I agree about the URPRO red filters - I use SRP red which are originally URPRO and it appears to correct other colors in the spectrum from Yellows to Orange at varying depths which I doubt that the other red filters do. The only issue I have with these are a golden glow at shallower depths - I have a hard time getting rid of those without throwing the other colors off - with my basic novice level color grading skills. Does the switchblade 7 with macro dome use URPRO? I am tempted to shoot macro as well but I dont want one of those blood red filters that just impose a uniform red tint on the colors...
I'm a bit torn on the GoPros -
I've been using them in flat/native/ raw profiles with protune manual functions and a filter, and yes, the UR PRO work very well for me.
The SRP CY just works great (I just take it off above 5 m), and I also have a non SRP UR-PRO 52 mm standard filter with a 55 mm conversion lens, that I've also used on the TG5.
I was also using UR-Pro filters on my old Lumix compact camera, also great results. It's all subjective, but I find that the color balance is more "natural", whereas I find some filters give strong day-glo like colours that I really do not like.
I don't know about the Switchblade - I have a Macro-mate mini for macro, which I use with lights no filter or with the UR PRO in the shallows -
alas, be warned, for macro, ideally you'd need to access the zoom on the GPH7B, which you unfortunately can't do underwater (touch screen only, so not possible UW...), and the zoom resets after the camera turns off, so in this regard the 4 was much better.
Scuba-diving users of recent Go Pro models and macro-lens manufacturers would really thank GoPro for a zoom-lock fuction or zoom access through buttons, but I'm afraid the company's market is mainly point-of-view action cam users....
The Hero4 Silver I had worked great in medium fov + protune (and narrow for macro....sob)
- no distortion, but when I "upgraded" to the Hero6 Black, the new field of view was a major letdown, and I'm still looking for a way to correct this.
On the plus side you have stabilisation, and a better colors, dynamic range but the image seems less defined and lens distortion, much stronger in the cam's new linear mode than in the former medium fov.
Some examples:
This here was all shot on the
Hero 4 silver (flat/native, 60 fps, max iso 400 medium fov, pro tune settings + UR Pro filter) :
This was shot on the
Hero 6 black (flat/native, 60 fps, max iso 400, linear fov, pro tune settings + UR Pro filter) :
Whereas this was all shot on the
Hero 7 black (flat/native, 60 fps, max iso 400, linear fov, pro tune settings + UR Pro filter) :
Same places, better visibilty in the first and second clips, second clip was shot under influence of this year's super strongly positive phase of the
Indian Ocean diapole, which gave us very green and cold water all season.
In my opinion, you can see that there's a bit of a give and take.
The GoPro upgrade from 4 to 6/7 did improve the colours, but also lost something in image definition and in terms lens distortion (it's always there, but gets more distracting if you have movement or vertical lines in the corners).
Here are two clips more on the Go Pro 7 black, always in linear, same settings as above:
and
Hope this helps give you an idea of what to expect in linear fov
cheers
ben