Great Post by Abe Kislevitz re all the modes of the H3 Black

[Marty Cerven]

Anyone using this camera may want to read this, Abe explains pretty much all you need to know about the new Hero 3 Black edition camera.

Understanding Your New GoPro

If anyone doesn't know who Abe, he is the head production artist at GoPro. So he is the man in charge of most of the cool GoPro edits on their official channel, someone that knows GoPro's about as well as anyone from a users point of view.

 

[ronscuba]

Great article. Interesting he recommends Protune with auto WB over raw WB. Not sure if has shot UW.

I like Protune raw WB, but have not tried auto WB in Protune. Protune off auto WB is horrible. Marty, have you compared protune auto wb vs raw ?

 

[toozler]

Other than releasing the Dive Housing, I don't think the UW niche is something they focus much, hence this comment by Abe:

Abe Kislevitz

Posted January 9, 2013 at 8:09 pm | Permalink​

That’s a tough one – I’m not really well versed in dive filming, but I assume physical dive filters will be huge helps, there are some 3rd party ones online. For the hero3 reel I had to do some serious color correcting to get the stuff looking nice, you’d be surprised

 

[Marty Cerven]

Great article. Interesting he recommends Protune with auto WB over raw WB. Not sure if has shot UW.

I like Protune raw WB, but have not tried auto WB in Protune. Protune off auto WB is horrible. Marty, have you compared protune auto wb vs raw ?

Abe doesnt do much UW stuff and I think the AWB is very good on land or even shooting UW video in the dark with just lights. Its daylight use where the lack of a full colour spectrum that it tends to struggle with the most but that is kind of expected as the AWB is tuned to deal with regular topside video. Its a very hard thing to set a good AWB algorithim that can deal with the changeable conditions and colours in all types of conditions and depths, this is why manual control is very important for best results.

I have not seen many if any cameras that do great UW auto white balancing and why one of the key features for cameras to be used UW is manual WB options. Though the 3 black goes about this quite differently then regular manual options it has worked surprisingly well and I actually quite like the method.

I would personally prefer if I was to go to a big camera setup something that can shoot full RAW video and just do all WB in post using a slate or other WB card as a reference point throughout. Much easier then having to set manual prior to each shot, a poor manual set wb wont be much good to you either but still you shouldn't be too far off and post will likely be able to fix it to a point if your not that far off. I know GoPro isnt shooting RAW in the same way a Red does or even the Blackmagic cinema camera which does look interesting but the form factor of that camera is very odd to me even though it is something quite interesting I think.

Abe has also agreed to use our revamped GoProuser forum to answer user questions so if anyone wants to ask him something just go here GoPro User Forum ? View forum - Ask Abe

As he doesnt do UW video, mostly general action videos as in the official GoPro videos plus his own snow based stuff his work is a great benchmark for editing in general. The GoPro channel has had over 200 million views already and for a channel that basicaly is one big ad that is an amazing figure, I am not one to ever watch advertising anywhere else but if GoPro puts up another video I make sure I check most of them out.

 

[JamesK]

Interesting article. Being that all my filming is in caves, I found it quite helpful. Auto WB works nicely for me, and the Protune does not. I helped me confirm some things I had already thought I knew. It really did help explain the modes nicely as well.

Thanks for posting it

 

[Interceptor121]

This section is very interesting

Some important downsides – Protune will NOT look better at night. Right now the camera has quite a bit of digital gain when it’s dark (think auto ISO pumping) so you see more detail than you’ll normally see with a camera of this size. This comes at a price, obviously, which is noise in the dark. This auto gain coupled with the boosted shadows will really look like a lot of noise in pure dark. You’re better off switching out of ProTune as soon as dusk rolls around. Also the noise reduction in Protune is lowered almost entirely so you you’ll get more detail in the visuals at the cost of noise. All this said, this sensor performs extremely well at low-lights for its size. Eventually GoPro could add a gain control button which would lower all the added auto-noise at low levels. This would make the camera look crisp and perfect at lower light at the sacrifice of seeing more of the visuals in the dark.

So if I assimilate low light to underwater he is saying not to bother with protune as there is plenty of noise reduction applied and it will not look as good if you take it away
In fact this is what I have experimented with cineforum if you have the studio edition there are no controls for noise so it just looks crap and you can't get rid of the noise unless you reapply the protune preset

So where does this leave us?

 

[ronscuba]

So where does this leave us?

Experiment on your own. Not to difficult to do a test dive, change the settings underwater and then compare the results.

On my recent trip, to my eyes, protune on with raw wb was way better than protune off auto wb. Less noise, more consistent color. I don't doubt what Abe says, but UW is not necessarily night and when diving at night, I use lights.

 

[Gombessa]

Experiment on your own. Not to difficult to do a test dive, change the settings underwater and then compare the results.

On my recent trip, to my eyes, protune on with raw wb was way better than protune off auto wb. Less noise, more consistent color. I don't doubt what Abe says, but UW is not necessarily night and when diving at night, I use lights.

I only have a couple of dives so far with mine, but so far I'd agree with Ron. The extreme shifts of AWB with the the limited color spectrum underwater are far outweighed by the benefits of Protune and camera raw WB. Maybe if raw WB were offered without Protune mode? Who knows...

 

[Marty Cerven]

This section is very interesting

Some important downsides – Protune will NOT look better at night. Right now the camera has quite a bit of digital gain when it’s dark (think auto ISO pumping) so you see more detail than you’ll normally see with a camera of this size. This comes at a price, obviously, which is noise in the dark. This auto gain coupled with the boosted shadows will really look like a lot of noise in pure dark. You’re better off switching out of ProTune as soon as dusk rolls around. Also the noise reduction in Protune is lowered almost entirely so you you’ll get more detail in the visuals at the cost of noise. All this said, this sensor performs extremely well at low-lights for its size. Eventually GoPro could add a gain control button which would lower all the added auto-noise at low levels. This would make the camera look crisp and perfect at lower light at the sacrifice of seeing more of the visuals in the dark.

So if I assimilate low light to underwater he is saying not to bother with protune as there is plenty of noise reduction applied and it will not look as good if you take it away
In fact this is what I have experimented with cineforum if you have the studio edition there are no controls for noise so it just looks crap and you can't get rid of the noise unless you reapply the protune preset

So where does this leave us?

Hero2 is much noisier in protune mode then the 3 black is, if using it in the hero2 you really need to also use something like neat video to reduce the noise if shooting in low light or pretty much anything underwater more then a few meters down. This shows the sensor in the hero2 is a fair way behind the one in the 3 black even though most likely they are the same size.

Even the Cineform studio professional version last time I tried it didn't have any noise reduction function so this will require a 3rd party plugin if you need it. Using a hero2 UW with protune will most likely need noise reduction every time and this is also another reason why the protune update for the hero2 fell a bit short of what I hoped for in that camera along with just full auto white balance.

Using the 3 Black what Abe is most likely saying there is when use in an actual nite time use just using available outdoor or indoor lighting. A daytime dive even at 30m still has quite a bit more light then shooting video outdoors under a few street lights or low power indoor lighting. Though even the 3 black will start to show a bit more noise at 20-30m with pro-tune on but this hasn't been any more then a hero2 shows in the same sort of light using the regular modes from what I have noticed.

---------- Post added January 12th, 2013 at 06:00 PM ----------

Experiment on your own. Not to difficult to do a test dive, change the settings underwater and then compare the results.

On my recent trip, to my eyes, protune on with raw wb was way better than protune off auto wb. Less noise, more consistent color. I don't doubt what Abe says, but UW is not necessarily night and when diving at night, I use lights.

I agree with pretty much everything Abe says there but he doesn't shoot underwater video and so this is where he doesn't quite see the benefit of the raw WB option. Its not needed in most cases as auto does well except in our uw conditions and as all know UW the more control you have over wb the better.

Also if diving at night you will have some decent video lights and so this is very different to shooting low light outdoors with no video lights. No lights wouldn't matter how noisy your footage is as you wouldn't see anything underwater at nite

 

[Interceptor121]

With the hero2 protune at 24p gives the best low light performance but also the most motion blur
So you need to evaluate if you want to use protune and then de-noise or take the footage as it and edit in native format
I have a mac and protune imports into apple intermediate codec pretty flat and then if I want I can denoise and sharper however the effect is applied to the whole clip so if there are parts say on land they become softer for noise reduction and then might end up with ragged edges
For underwater use with gopro at least for me this is a bit too much as I don't actually use the camera for trips but just for lessons so I shoot at normal 1080p PAL 25fps and the results are not bad for what I have to achieve you can see divers and their mistakes during the class there is no fast action people are kneeling down and doing skills at 5 meters on a platform so motion blur is not the issue
I promised myself to take the gopro to the next proper trip as I have space on the tray and also I want to shoot some water entries and the likes that I would never do with the Rx100 or Lx7, usually I get those done by a boat crew member as I don't want to flood expensive items or loose the lights in the entry