Hi all,
We have two GoPro Hero 3 cameras - one Silver edition and one Black edition. My husband and I each plan to dive with one of them on our upcoming trip to Hawaii. My husband has used the Silver edition several times while diving, so he has a little more practice than I do.
We were thinking about setting up one camera (the Black?) to take a continuous video of the entire dive, with the extra battery bacpac on that one. I'll probably wrist mount it to keep my hands free, but if anyone has tried and liked one of the other GoPro mounts, please let me know. I prefer to use to the GoPro branded stuff where possible, because I can get it for free. Long story.
Then the other camera (the Silver?) would be used for still shots, with the LCD bacpac on that one so we can get up close and frame the shot more carefully. I think we'll just use a wrist strap for that, so we don't lose it.
Does that make sense? Or would you split up the cameras' jobs differently?
We're not ready to deal with camera lights or rigs yet, so we'll take what we can get without them. We usually dive with small LED lights in the daytime, and on the night dives we'll each have a big handheld light to shine on things.
I would say that we are game for a small amount of post-processing work... as in, the post processing should not take longer than the dive itself. DH has a Mac and some video editing software, but I forget which software.
The dives we have planned are:
* A just-before-sunset dive and the manta ray night dive in Kona
What camera settings would you guys use for those? I'm hoping these are popular enough that a few people here have actually filmed them with a GoPro! I assume you take the filters off at night, to start. Do we need to use the 30fps rate at night to give the video camera more time to capture light?
* A pelagic blackwater night dive
I'm not too optimistic about what we will record, but we might as well try. This is a night dive with mostly small creatures (1"-4" long) that either reflect light or glow in the dark, and we can illuminate them using dive lights. Some things will be larger and farther away. If anyone has an idea of what settings to use here, that would be cool too. I was thinking we could put a macro lens on the "still" camera and set it to a narrow angle, and use the same settings as the manta ray night dive for the video camera?
* A couple of (outside-of-the-)wreck dives and a couple of reef dives
The standard advice applies here, I'm sure. I'm leaning toward using 1080p/60 fps continuous filming, Camera RAW white balance, Protune mode, and a red filter for the camera that takes video. For the camera that takes stills, we might get one of those flip lenses that has macro lens and red filter options, such as this:
GoPro Hero3+ Accessory SwitchBlade3+
If you made it to the end, we would greatly appreciate your advice on the best camera setup for these types of dives!
