Anyone Actually use a Sony HC7 Underwater Yet?

[drbill]

First of all I'd like to thank you for your post but you must be more specific, when you played back was on your analog TV or on LCD of the camcorder?

You're welcome.

I believe I said previously I was watching the video on an analog TV. Is it possible that the colors have been distorted in the down conversion within the camera to the AV output port?

My buddy with the LCD HD television is in Fiji for another 12 days, but I'll watch the footage on his TV when he returns.

 

[ScubaBob92651]

Just wanted to chime in here. I just purchased an HC-7 and Gates housing a little over a week ago, on the day I headed off to my friends wedding in Cayman Brac. HUGE thanks to Mike at H20 Photo Pros for setting me up with the housing in just 5 hours (ok, 3 of which involved me making a quick trip to Gates in San Diego in a rain storm..)

I plan to write up a larger review of the Camera/Housing soon, but wanted to show some initial results related to some of the discussion here. Granted, this footage is shot in the super nice clear waters of Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, but I think it shows some of what this camera/housing is capable of (and I'm by no means a pro at this stuff..)

First some initial thoughts (I've only reviewed about 20 minutes of my approx. 90 minutes of U/W footage from the trip)

1. WHITE BALANCE WHITE BALANCE WHITE BALANCE - this can't be stressed enough. I know SD camera's can produce some pretty good output using auto white balance, but that's much easier when you are talking about a color palette in the thousands opposed to the millions with HD.
2. HID - I've only used HID lighting for shooting HD video, and couldn't imagine using anything but HID.
3. Focus - HD is harder to sooo much harder to focus than HD. Auto focus really doesn't get things right, especially with macro stuff. This was an issue with my housing for the HC-7 for what appears to a manufacturing glitch. The manual control to turn on/off auto focus did not reach the intented button on the camera. As such, I was forced to use auto focus for the entire trip (maybe someone will come back with a good RTFM statement, but I think I had everything setup correctly.

Anyway, for now, I've attached a sample clip. I've reduced the resolution to 960x540p. No image manipulation, color correction etc. was peformed on the footage (with the exception of slowing down the footage). Some notes:

• 1st and 2nd clip (Turtle and Peacock Flounder) - Some clips to show color range/accuracy (I think turtle clip was white balanced for 3', but is shot at about 6'). Shot using red filter.
• 3rd clip (Diamond Blenny) - shot using HID lights/no filter. Focus is off (though perfect if the subject was the anenomoe )
• 4th Clip (Grunt) - shot using tele macro. I believe I accidentally forgot to set the white balance in one-touch (manual) mode prior to this dive - so the color is off. I don't see myself using this feature underwater that much, as it puts you about 3' away from your subject. Even with a tripod, this would introduce too much H20 (and junk) between you and the subject.

Hopefully, conditions allowing, I will get in a local dive soon and see how this setup is for SoCal diving. Again, I will post a more complete review soon...

Sample Clip

 

[pakman]

Scubabob, thanks for the info and the sample vid... Nice!

Quick queston, how are you accessing the telemacro feature on the Gates? Does the white balance plunger/ button reach far enough to access most of the touch screen or do you customize the menu so that WB and telemacro buttons are set close to the far right of the screen?

Look fwd to your report on the housing...

 

[drbill]

ScubaBob... Thanks for showing that the HC-7 can produce some very nice results! Impressive footage, especially the first two segments.

Why would one film without HID lights. Cost of course! I am going to have to bite the bullet and buy my set... plan to in two weeks. However, I am surprised that a well lit close-up is so poorly rendered in my filming.

Won't be able to manually WB until the new PCB's for my housing are available.

 

[pakman]

Dr Bill, I wonder if it's worth for it you to try shooting in HDV, then download the clips directly to your PC so you can view the raw m2t files directly. That way you could confirm that its not some downconversion issue or the analog conversion to your TV set.

 

[ScubaBob92651]

Scubabob, thanks for the info and the sample vid... Nice!

Quick queston, how are you accessing the telemacro feature on the Gates? Does the white balance plunger/ button reach far enough to access most of the touch screen or do you customize the menu so that WB and telemacro buttons are set close to the far right of the screen?

Look fwd to your report on the housing...

Thanks pakman. Yeah, I customized the menu white balance is in the middle right of the menu, and tele macro in the bottom right. Regarding your PM question, I was using the 90 degree wide angle on the turtle, and I believe the rest of the shots are with the flat port. I know the 90 degree is full zoom through, but mainly used the flat port for the smaller stuff. Have to play with the fathom some more for macro...

 

[pakman]

Thanks ScubaBob. I presume the 90deg wide lens port is the Fathoms WP25?

edit: nevermind, just reread the last sentence of yours... [dooh]

 

[drbill]

Dr Bill, I wonder if it's worth for it you to try shooting in HDV, then download the clips directly to your PC so you can view the raw m2t files directly. That way you could confirm that its not some downconversion issue or the analog conversion to your TV set.

Until I upgrade my software, I can't capture the HDV footage... only the mini-DV. Not planning to upgrade the software until I'm "sure" this camera can do what I need it to do.

What I am planning to do when I get time (I'm editing all my sea star footage from the last six years now) is to capture stills from the HDV footage to the Memory Stick and look at them in Photoshop to see if the colors are as bad as the downconverting analog video I'm seeing. I have seen some pretty bad footage (color wise) downconverted from an FX1, so it is possible that is part of the problem.

 

[sinistar]

As always, please note I'm a newbie to this stuff myself.

drBill, If your PC is relatively fast I would recommend finding and downloading the free utility program called HDVSplit. I have used it with an old laptop and it ran fast enough to capture the raw HDV M2T files from Sony camera. This is a free application and held in high regard by many people needing to capture HDV footage from the Sony HD Cameras. I believe after you have captured individual clips you can directly play them back using the Windows Media Player. If your PC is quick enough you might be able to see something usefull before purchasing the editor. And you'll have already captured the raw HDV files in advance. The files will be big, but you can limit capture to selected clips.

re: Looking at HDV stills captured to the memory stick can be usefull but just remember that they are being compressed yet again. There are many times I wished the HC1 would have supported saving .RAW images over jpg's. Perhaps the HC7 now allows this - that would be nice.

 

[Diverbw]

Well, I just bit the bullet. Got my Gates HC7 housing from Marine Visions. It should be here Thursday. Not sure if I will be able to sleep between now and then.
Of course, now I am wondering if I should have bought the tripod also. Has anyone used this http://www.marinevisions.com/tripod.php
I really want to do mostly tiny stuff, but at this point, just not sure yet.

Is it harder to stay steady when shooting smaller stuff? Or will I be ok without it.

Thanks in advance for any advice.