GoProHero 3 Black - why is my footage so colourless?

[divingpyrate]

I don't understand why 99.9% of people that get into gopro video taping are so attached to the protune. What is the lure? Why?

Is it because it sounds cool? Is it because there is a "pro" and a "tune" and therefore its appealing? I would not want to shoot my video with a processed pre-filter that was done by a microchip because if it messes up, video footage will be that much harder to salvage.

Shoot in regular format and you will be fine. If protune is something that is on the menu then read up on what it does before using it. Today's consumer very quickly discards user manual.

I remember when I was digging through the manual to find out what a guy on a motorbike and a cross were doing on my gopro lcd screen... have I read it the first time I would have known exactly what they were.

do you have a gopro?
Many dis this little camera but news flash they are beeing used by professional crews everywhere
Protune and the protune post production preset work very well together


That and having a raw option is fantastic

I dont use it because it sounds cool, pretty diismissive of you to even say that
I shoot because the results are very good, and did not cost me thousands of dollars


Why is the rum always gone

 

[yarik83]

I have 2 gopro hero 3 black edition cameras mounted to my tray with my main camera being bonica hddv with a wide angle lens. I use my cameras for kayaking, mountain biking, scuba diving, hiking, general filming, time lapse, filming my fish tanks, filming my cats, filming my family, filming while inside of car, filming outside of car. I believe only area still not covered is sky diving which I have no plans of doing any time soon.

I got my cameras on black friday of last year... just a little while after they were released to public. I tried protune and my immediate comment was.... "err... but I do that anyways in my corel video studio pro x4"... at which point I very quickly forgot how to use that function and have not touched it since.

I got my gopros after watching national geographic and discovery networks use them. I figured since professionals started to use them... there must be something to it. I waited for hero 3 to come out and scooped them up when they were on 20% off sale.

You pointed out that protune is capable of producing great footage. Bingo... but you must know how to use it. My point was not with placing blame on people for trying it but for not doing thorough research (of which I am guilty myself).

I did a side by side comparison of my cameras on same dives and I did not observe a miracle. I figured that since I was editing footage anyways I might as well spend 2 extra seconds tweaking my good old and plain 1080 60fps footage by adjusting contrast and brightness and voila.

I am currently actively editing 19 hours worth of scuba videos from my 1 week long cozumel trip. I am frankly amazed with how well footage actually looks without any touch ups at all. I will be posting my videos in next few weeks. I have been busy trying to finish up my stress and rescue +cpr+aed+02+first aid courses to get my master diver so not enough time to actually edit stuff. I am about 50% done.

 

[fbk]

Here's a short section I took in Raja Ampat where the WB goes from blue through brown and green over and over without really moving the camera. The sun is ahead but not in frame. I didn't know this was happening as I had stopped using the LCD to save battery. Starting and stopping recording wasn't an option as the POS kept freezing on me and I didn't want to risk provoking it so just filmed continuously. Most of the dive was like this, not on the earlier dives where I used protune (but never finished a dive due to battery running out). Disappointing!

http://youtu.be/USYPvW5A7Qg

 

[Interceptor121]

Here's a short section I took in Raja Ampat where the WB goes from blue through brown and green over and over without really moving the camera. The sun is ahead but not in frame. I didn't know this was happening as I had stopped using the LCD to save battery. Starting and stopping recording wasn't an option as the POS kept freezing on me and I didn't want to risk provoking it so just filmed continuously. Most of the dive was like this, not on the earlier dives where I used protune (but never finished a dive due to battery running out). Disappointing!

GoPro AutoWB fail - YouTube

You can actually see that at the beginning there is a huge lens flare overhead this then ends with the green AWB

Anyway I guess this is now past as you are moving on to a better device

 

[yarik83]

Well there are a couple of things wrong in there.

Are you using a light system (it seemed like light bounced off barracuda ? If so its scattering anything beyond 1 meter (3 feet) so stuff appears foggy. And if you are using a light source are you using a filter at the same time? And if you are using a filter but not the lights then are you using the RIGHT kind of filter for that water? Did your camera fog up under water? How was the visibility that day? Did you swim in thermocline? Did you mess with camera settings or did you dive "as is from the factory settings + firmware upgrade"?

Gopro naturally should do a fairly good job video taping. If you are having issues with it then you need to start going down the check list and figure out what caused your issue.

For example I dove at devils den in florida and my video was ruined by cloudy water. Looking at specs of stuff flying at your lens it looks like you were pointing into current with all kinds of gunk floating about.

Can you remember exact dive conditions that day? "half way decent" is not good enough for the video taping on a sport action camera. Just seems completely bizzare that it would do it. My guess is that you had a conflict of filters+lights+visibility conditions causing the tint in video footage.

 

[fbk]

There were only a couple of dives where the camera behaved like that, both in non-PT. The vis was bad (5-10m) and this definitely affects how the camera behaves although I have shot the same conditions at home and it turned out fine. Yes there is lens flare but I have tons of other footage in clear water on that trip even shooting INTO the sun with the exact same cofiguration and everything stays perfecty blue so it's not JUST shooting into the sun that causes it. I only posted as an example of what the WB issue looks like and that it can be avoided with Protune which is the main reason to use it.

 

[Interceptor121]

The use of any kind of filter and even just the housing increase the possibility of light scattering onto the lens
The gopro housing is relatively well design interns of protecting the lens from flare but of course any filter will create the problem again
All in all is a cheap device and you can't ask for miracles
In ideal conditions and clear water the footage looks impressive when the viz is worse light scatters on the suspended particles and then you have more problems
Cameras with better optics will react better and still give you good footage the gopro just lacks the ammunition still a good gadget for the price
Depending on shooting conditions and user requirements there will be a time where a user will need to part company with their gopro but the device is still a great intro to video underwater