I looked at the footage late last night before I went to bed. What looked good through the viewfinder often wasn't. I'm offering some additional observations here.
1. I noticed the same strong green cast to background and peripheral objects in my footage. Earlier I thought this was due to using auto instead of manual WB. Now I'm leaning more towards the CMOS having the same effect as our eyes. When we look at a reddish light (my video light is 3400 K) and then look away, we see a green after-image. I think this may be what is happening here. I am also using only one light (the other one flooded two years ago and parts are no longer made for them). That means that shadows are cast (areas which are not in direct illumination by the light) and it is these areas which come out green as well as anything outside the direct video light beam. I filmed some Peltodoris (= Anisodoris) nobilis nudibranchs mating. They are bright orange. One was quite large and the areas of its orange body that were not directly illuminated turned out green. Now using HID lights, or a pair of video lights to fill the unlight areas may solve this. However, I never have that problem shooting with any of the other four Sony cameras I've used in this housing with these lights.
2. I did some filming of lobster in the well shaded understory of a kelp forest (using the video light). I was disappointed in two things. Some of the footage came out sharp, but was slightly underexposed (suggesting poor low light performance). However, it was still usable. On other footage the lobsters came out out-of-focus despite the fact that the light was bright enough, and I believe I was far enough away to be in the focal distance of the camcorder on most if not all of that footage.
3. The silty bottom was full of nudibranchs (mainly the P. nobilis and lots of Acanthodoris hudsoni). NONE of the footage I shot of the small A. hudsoni came ouit in focus despite the fact that it was well lit. Some of that footage was undoubtedly shot closer than 10" but not all of it.
4. Filming at depth is over fairly silty bottoms which do get stirred up, and we still had high levels of particulates in the water column in the shallows. I'm wondering if the stirred up silt and particulates aren't affecting the auto white balance.
5. Sony's engineering decision to make the camcorder do "macro" focus from a distance is a bad choice underwater, although I understand its value topside where the camera may shade the subject when one films too close (have had that happen in my days of shooting terrestrial close-ups, but a good camera person can work around that by using good camera positioning relative to the subject and light source). By making the camera focus on macro stuff from a distance of 1 1/2 ft, it introduces far more backscatter. Dumb for UW use IMHO.
After three days of testing this camera, I'm considering a return to my TRV17 since I've "missed" some very good footage the past three days. My field of usable footage with the TRV-17 usually runs about 85% while the yield from the HC-7 so far is about 10%. I don't know what I'm going to do with the HC-7.
I'm sure I'll continue to experiment with it to see if I can get usable results from it. Hopefully I'll be able to borrow a dual set of HID's to see if that fixes the green cast.
I will definitely be organizing all my thoughts (and any possible solutions to the problems) and writing Sony about this. The camera may be great topside, but so far it is a bad choice UW under the conditions I film in. In tropical environments without the shading of giant kelp and extreme light absorption or scattering by particulates and phytoplankton, this might be a great camera.
If anyone uses the HC-7 with paired HID lights, please post your results.
