By no means am I a professional. I'm an amateur that enjoys trying to video what I can and learning from the process. I wind up with more crap video than what I was hoping for. I've left my macro lens on without realizing it, or not even had the camera recording when I thought I did, forgetting I had previously ended a recording. But here's a few things that should help push you forward and reduce some frustration.
Lighting
Figure light range at 6-8 feet. These little action cameras have small sensors and need lots of light. That light may seem bright and light up the whole reef, but figure this: that light not only has to punch through the water to get to the subject, but it has to reflect from the subject and punch back through that same amount of water to make its way back to the camera. This is why you'll see a nice colorful reef in the foreground and a washed out blue hued reef in the background.
You have a video light, which is good. Regular dive lights/torches have a pronounced hot spot that will quickly blow out the subject you are trying to capture. Video lights differ in that they provide a nice flat projection of light without hot spots.
When trying to video subjects, don't be afraid to film without lights before kicking them on. Many creatures, fish, and dive buddies don't appreciate having thousands of lumens of light in their face and may recoil and duck out of sight when illuminated so brilliantly. Others don't seem to care.
I was able to get within a foot of a banded sea snake with a pair of video lights and follow him along and he didn't change course or behavior as a result.
At night try and be respectful of sleeping creatures. If he had fingers, I'm sure he would have extended his middle finger at me when I woke a sea turtle from his little hidy hole on the reef causing him to swim off. Predatory animals will also take advantage of your lights to aid in their hunting. I've had eels grab fish that were likely blinded by the lights and had sea lions take advantage of lights at night to chase fish through the kelp forests. Yes it's cool and amazing to see, and many predators in popular dive locations have learned to use diver's lights to help them hunt, but in an ideal world we don't want to introduce change into wild animals' behaviors.
Camera Settings
60 fps is good. When viewing my fish on the reef shots, I like to slow the video down to 30 fps. Reason is, the fish is moving, you are moving, the particles in the water are moving. Playing at full speed tends to be a little unsettling. Shooting at 60 lets you slow it down to 24 or 30 fps for a nice smooth slow motion.
However, if you find that your images are underexposed, try dropping the frame rate to 30 fps. This will effectively slow the shutter speed, allowing the sensor to get more light exposure and give you a brighter image.
You may want to bring the exposure value down to -.5 or so. Essentially this will help to "brighten" the image.
Play with it. Don't expect perfect results right out the gate. If you have an underwater notepad, or slate, write down the settings on it and video it when you start your dive. Then change settings and update the slate. This will make it easy to recall what effect the settings have on your image.
Video about twice as long of a subject as you think you want. If you have a cooperative subject, try to get a minute's worth of video so you can edit/cut as needed, particularly if making shorts, as I have learned. I often come back looking at video wishing I had more of a subject because something else came trough that I didn't notice or I'd like to hold an angle for a bit longer.
Experiment with the color profiles. Same thing with the white balance. You may want to shoot in a flat mode so the camera doesn't try to unnaturally enhance the colors. Or start tring to adjust it's white balance causing a shift in the colors in the middle of filimg. Using an editing program like
Davinci Resolve you can adjust the color, tint, hue, and other values for your videos. A handy tool like the
AOI white balance card can help with setting the colors in post. But if you don't want to get to that level of editing, there are some apps like GoPro Quik or AquaColorFix that can get you quick results.
Practice the aim of your finger guns
Your brain has the incredible ability to point your finger at something accurately without having to look directly at your finger. I used to do some "trick shooting" by shooting from the hip at the amazement of friends at the range and this was the secret sauce to hitting the targets. With the gun gripped in my hand I'd point my finger at the target along the frame of the gun, which would line the gun up with my finger, which would in turn be in line with the target. From there it's simply moving to and pressing the trigger. It worked surprisingly well. I don't like to spend the dive looking into the small viewfinder that is difficult--at best with middle aged eyes--to focus on when trying to quickly capture something. So, while holding the frame for the camera, extend your index finger on your dominant hand like a finger gun. Point and shoot.
Try this, at chest height, point your finger at something within a half-dozen feet or so. Mostly likely you'll be on it. So use this ability to initially aim in your shot when holding the camera via the frame. Most likely your subject will be pretty close to where you want him in frame, and then you can fine tune with the viewfinder. Great for capturing those creatures that may not present themselves for long and are gone by the time you can get your eye to the view finder (screen).
Keep your head up and eyes open
Keep your head on a swivel and look around you. Don't dive with your face buried in the camera. It's easy to get sucked into what's in front of you. But if you want to capture the unexpected, you need to scan your surroundings every so often. Is there something out there in the big blue behind you as you are focused in on the reef? Last week while diving Beqa Lagoon in Fiji
I witnessed a most amazing experience with a humpback whale swimming by. I wouldn't have seen it unless I took the time to look around as he approached from behind me.
From a safety standpoint it's also important to maintain your situational awareness. I've seen divers inadvertently follow critters under an overhang without realizing they had something above them until they hit their head when they raised it up.
