Make A Wish trip to Bora Bora! Snorkeling questions with GoPro 3

[jacemansquad19]

Hello everyone. We are going to Bora Bora in 3 weeks on my son's Make a wish trip and we will have a couple of snorkeling excursions. I'm going to bring 2 GoPro 3 Hero Blacks and was wanting to know if I needed to get the red filters for them. Since I'll be with my young kids, i don't think we"ll be going any deeper than 10-15 feet, maybe 20 at the most. I just wanted the best picture quality as possible. As far as recording, what would be the best recommendation for settings? I was thinking about getting one of the GoPole extension poles too? Would you also recommend a tray or just mount one of the cameras on our head? I'm very new to this and any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time ........Jason

 

[Interceptor121]

No filter to shallow to need one and maybe get a pole. Tray are needed more if you film horizontally that is not your case

 

[Shasta_man]

I would bring a red filter because you could easily use it even at that depth. With it you will get the colors you see, though some white areas will be red, but without it you will only get blue washed out video. I bought one from Backscatter. I'd also recommend a simple tray to stabilize holding it. If you go to a place as beautiful as Bora Bora (I've been there), you can get some decent video by diving down and skimming the reef with the camera. Stability in the video is essential as the small package already makes it difficult to get stable video. It's that much more important when underwater because it's difficult to recognize objects as quickly. I also set the GoPro zoom to medium because wide distorts a lot. Another tip, also helpful on land, is to actually count to ten with the the camera pointed at the subject and still. It takes about 6 seconds to recognize things so 10 seconds is good enough for editing later. That's another reason the headmount is not so effective. Tip #2: try to always video something at the same level or upward, not down. You lose the colors and depth when shooting downward. That's why you want to video across the reef and not just down at it. The trip to the Lagoonarium in Bora Bora helped guarantee sightings but not sure it is still there. Last tip: Shoot a bunch with the Go Pro before going whether on land or sea so you know how it works, and then look at your footage daily so you can use any learnings the next day.

 

[Interceptor121]

Am not sure I agree with those suggestions. There is enough red left at shallow depth that a filter will just be additional hassle when you fin down and maybe gets displaced
I also don't believe there is any issue filming downwards if you have plenty of light in fact at shallow depth is perfectly fine
Snorkelling is a relaxing activity and a pole more than a head mount will help you capturing more detail on a shallow bottom
There is a good example here
http://wetpixel.com/articles/underwater-extendable-monopod-for-gopro-cameras
I would consider a tray only if you want to do scuba diving and still the pole is a good option

 

[jacemansquad19]

I really appreciate you all for taking the time to reply to my questions. Thank you very much

 

[Shasta_man]

We'll have to agree to disagree, Interceptor. Without a filter even at that shallow depth you'll still get washed out blue blah compared to with a filter. That's from unfortunate first hand experience. So it will be either get some decent color in your video with a filter to at least show what it was like or a lot of blue and monochrome looking reef with an occasional OK shot. Filter from Backscatter is simple to use and cheap at $70. Shoot the camera handheld only as you walk lightly down the sidewalk. Look at the video. That's what you'll get without a $30 tray. You could make a simple tray to stick the mount on, but it has to be waterproof and durable. The pole is probably cool and could work well, but I'm wondering again how steady you can hold an object on the end of a pole. You could test that by mounting it to the end of a broomstick and walking. I just wouldn't depend on that as sole source of video. Again, watch the days video so you can correct your technique the next day. Good luck with the trip. Hopefully Make a Wish sprung for the overwater bungalows. Worth every cent.

Been to Tenn too... or TENNessee as we pronounced it.

 

[jacemansquad19]

Thank you for the info Shasta_man. Upon your recommendations, I ordered a tray from Mako, GoPole, and a red filter and went ahead and got a polarizing filter too for bright sunny days to experiment with. I bought one of the Hero 3 Blacks and was playing with it all weekend. I'm not too familiar with all the editing programs like Imovie and Cineform so I had a little trouble with it but I figured it out somewhat. i was expecting to plug the camera into my computer and play some great footage but that didnt happen. i started freaking out about all the choppy video but I finally figured it all out. Very happy with the Gopro and the things it can do. I'm looking forward to getting some great video in Bora Bora. Yes, The Hilton Nui is sponsoring us and gave us 2 overwater bungaloos. Pretty amazing. Thanks for all the help!

 

[Mike]

A little late to the party - but here are a couple graphs that shows the color losses in different types of water at different depths --