GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition: Diving in Jupiter, Florida

[Murfdizzle21]

This video is from my first two dives with the Hero 3 Black edition and the SRP Blurfix clip on dome filter for the Hero 3. I Was able to get my hands on one a little early, through a friend of mine. On December 1, 2012 I went out with Capt Sl8r Charters aboard the Kyalami. The seas were a bit rough, I'd say 4 to 5 feet or so. Viz was about 40 to 50 feet I'd say and the water temp was 78 degrees. We hit Area 51 on our first dive, and tunnels on our second dive. All clips were filmed in 1080p @ 60 fps in the wide mode. With protune on and WB set to RAW. I color corrected the clips in cineform studio, but I still need some practice with it. The spadefish clips were at about 50 to 60 feet, the nurse shark and sting rays clips were at about 80 to 90 feet in the sand, and most of the reef shark clips are from about 75 feet. I did not have any problems with my camera freezing up, or fogging up at all. I was using the LCD back as well. I did two dives of 45 minutes, and I did not have the camera on the whole time. I would say the first dive It was only on for about 15 minutes, wasn't much to shoot. On the second dive I did not turn it off. This is the first video of many, I'll be diving this weekend and I'm hoping to get some more awesome footage.

[video=youtube_share;tyXSE01Eo6c]http://youtu.be/tyXSE01Eo6c?hd=1[/video]

 

[toozler]

It seems there is some fogging going on as you jump in the water (0:18), wasn't there when you got on board, compare how sharp that shot was.

 

[Murfdizzle21]

I see what your talking about, I think that is just water that was on the lens before you jumped in. Before I got in the water I placed my camera in a camera rinse bucket. The filter is a wet filter that goes on the inside, So after I jumped in I just shook away the bubbles and snapped the filter on. I should have taken some video of me removing the filter while recording.

 

[Murfdizzle21]

Hoping for good weather this weekend, viz wasn't very good last weekend so I didn't shoot any new videos.

 

[JamesK]

Nice. Looks like a fun dive. It does appear to be softened somewhat.

How do you like shooting in ProTune and WB RAW?

 

[Murfdizzle21]

Nice. Looks like a fun dive. It does appear to be softened somewhat.

How do you like shooting in ProTune and WB RAW?

Thanks alot, I do like shooting in protune and then color correcting afterwards. I probably need a little bit of practice with my w/b but I think the colors look pretty good. I was going to shoot some video with protune off and wb set to auto this past weekend and compare but the weather didn't cooperate with me. If anybody has any white balance tips or tricks feel free to share. I have a white slate that I bring with me, but I forgot to use it on my last dive (oops lol)

 

[Gombessa]

Being new to the GoPro family, I don't feel like I need the increased bitrate of ProTune since most of my videos just go up on Youtube, but I do use it for the raw white balance option. I prefer the flatter raw output to the radioactive-green or electric-blue that AWB cranks out, and while the GoPro has better WB than my old pocket camcorder, it still does the "start out blue but immediately shift to green once a light source enters the frame," which is annoying and difficult to correct.

 

[Murfdizzle21]

I started re-correcting the clips I used in that video, and they're coming out a lot better. I'll have to make another video with them.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Nice vid looks like a fun site, anywhere with a few sharks I always find fun

Protune also turns off all in camera sharpening so you will most likely want to add some sharpening in post, I use cineform mostly and pretty much just set sharpness to 0.5 which seems to be a good number most of the time. Just make sure not to adjust sharpness on non protune clips as it will look pretty bad but the stock PT videos all come out a little soft due to no in camera sharpening.

I then adjust WB using the sliders and also use keyframes for this most of the time as the lighting changes then adjust the other image settings to get the look I want. I have found cineform can do pretty much all you need to the images look but then I will sometimes add a few more image effects in magic bullet looks but since using cineform I haven been relying on that all that much.

It takes a little practice to understand how the sliders effect everything and my main issue with the free gopro cineform is that I can't copy and paste settings from one clip to the other like I can easily in magic bullet. Each clip you need to start from scratch but it also does speed up the learning process by having to repeat it each time and you will likely stumble across settings that tend to work better then what you used before.

 

[JamesK]

Marty,

Thanks for all of the tips. I really respect your thoughts and opinions on this. I shot in protune on my HD2 and noticed it was very grainy. Like it needed a LOT more light. Have you noticed that?