marshallkarp
Contributor
Review of SJCam SJ4000
It was three years ago on the last dive that I was climbing up the boat ladder at Fort Lauderdale. I remember the moment well. I had been using a Flip Video Camera, Ikelite Housing, and the $300 wide angle lens. The lens caught on the ladder rung and ripped off the housing. I called for the crewman to give me my fins back so I could go get it but he said Id never find it. I still have the camera and housing and am hoping to find a $50 lens on Ebay someday.
I wrote all this to say, last year, I did not dive with a video camera and just took stills. I think people appreciate the stills more on social media as they can glance through them. With video, even 15 to 30 second clips, most people wont take the time to watch them, unless there is really something unique or interesting.
I wrote all that to say, I have wrestled with buying the GoPro, should I spend the money on the Heros or holdout for the wide angle lens. Then, along came the reviews of the SJcam SJ4000, basically a $100 camera.
This was a no-brainer, so I ordered one a week before the trip. As always, after it arrived, I took the camera out of the housing, stuffed some tissues in, closed it up, and weighted it down in the laundry tub full of water for an hour. No leaks. I had read some people saying the housing leaks but I test mine before the dives.
Next, I bought the Insignia selfie stick at Best Buy. Using the SJCam attachments, everything fit fine for selfies or extended video capability.
Fast forward to my only two dives about two weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale. If you read my other post about ear trouble, you will see why my diving was curtailed. Anyway, the first dive that day was a 70 foot wreck dive. Down the downline I went. At the wreck at 70 feet, I powered on the SJ4000, it started powering on, then shut down. Odd. I tried again, same thing. I tried different things, shaking the housing, thumping it (hey, the Flip and housing set actually started working once when I thumped them as they must have been minutely out of place), hold the power button down longer, giving it a quick push, all same results. Very odd. My suspicion was a pressure problem as I had read that those 10 meter cams dont flood or implode past 33 feet but the buttons diaphragms compress. Not a good way to start off.
At the end of the dive, we started up the upline and I tried powering on again at 50 feet. Now it worked great. All I caught was a glimpse of the wreck, just at the edge of the visibility. My only video from that dive was a group selfie of our safety stop.
The second dive was a shallow reef dive, about 30 feet at the deepest and no problem powering on at and I got video of an eel, lobster, swim throughs, selfies, and such.
Since I could not dive anymore the rest of the week, I was reduced to the role of a surface site seeing tourist and since I wanted to test the camera, I shot all my videos and took my stills with the SJ4000.
Conclusions Pros and Cons
What little underwater video that I got was great. This is the best quality underwater video that I have ever had the capability of taking. I was really happy with 1080p resolution.
Having said that, I saw another poster reporting that his camera wont power on below 50 feet and another poster saying that he has taken his camera to 100 feet with no problem. I emailed SJCam tech support about my problem a week ago and have heard nothing back yet. I was wondering if the housing compressed adding to the button squeeze and was going to try to put a penny or two in the housing on the front and back to see if a spacer would help. I never got to try this, though. The housing is rated to 100 feet but if it cant reliably work below 50 feet, I would not have bought it. Inexpensive or not. By the way, this was only two dives, so I havent given up on it, I will give it a few more deep dives and see what happens.
I really liked using a selfie stick. I was able to get closer to the eel than I normally would have. Ever since I saw Survivorman use his tripod for a selfie stick, I have used that technique on land but this is the first time underwater. I like the capability. Plus, while videoing a fish hangout in a swim through, I was able to use the stick as a monopod as I planted it on the bottom sand to steady it.
As for the surface site seeing still photos, I got the stills pretty well de-fisheyed with Photoshop, where they are OK, not great, but if you are looking for it, you wouldnt notice it. I can see it but I am super sensitive to looking for it. So, the stills can be fisheye distortion corrected to an OK point.
As for surface site seeing video, I cant recommend it. I mean, if you are into extreme sports parachuting, skateboarding, and such video with fisheye wide angle shots, go for it. I am into wide angle but not fisheye and the fisheye effect is pronounced topside. Not sure what the underwater optics does to undistort the fisheye effect but it does.
Oh, I got them somewhat de-fisheye distorted using Sony Vegas effects and they look OK, too. Not great, just OK. I had seen where you can use the GoPro editing software to de-fisheye them but the format is mov, whereas the software takes mp4. I tried once to convert the mov to mp4 using QuickTime Player Pro but the GoPro software wouldnt read it. Given time, I could figure out the right conversion but I just did not want to take the time.
Bottomline
As I said, I have not given up on getting this to work on deeper dives, so I am merely mentioning about my experience. I can recommend it with **** for underwater video up to 50 feet and if you want an inexpensive sport cam to do that, this will work fine. I cannot recommend it for surface site seeing video due to the fisheye lens distortion. Probably better to use your cellphone cameras for this. Me, my ancient Flip Video Camera will do the job.
I do have to point out, I have lugged big heavy housings and weights on dive trips before. Packing this and the self-stick were negligible weight in my carry-on. I did not even get a pelican case for it, in part due to the price point.
Lastly, speaking of the price point, at $100, you do get a big pile of accessories, this is a plus for buying, again, if you are into fisheye wide angle surface video. Also, if you get some use out of it and lose it on a dive or leave it somewhere, $100 is just not that big a hit. Dont get me wrong, its a hit, just not as big a hit as a $300 to $400 GoPro.
It was three years ago on the last dive that I was climbing up the boat ladder at Fort Lauderdale. I remember the moment well. I had been using a Flip Video Camera, Ikelite Housing, and the $300 wide angle lens. The lens caught on the ladder rung and ripped off the housing. I called for the crewman to give me my fins back so I could go get it but he said Id never find it. I still have the camera and housing and am hoping to find a $50 lens on Ebay someday.
I wrote all this to say, last year, I did not dive with a video camera and just took stills. I think people appreciate the stills more on social media as they can glance through them. With video, even 15 to 30 second clips, most people wont take the time to watch them, unless there is really something unique or interesting.
I wrote all that to say, I have wrestled with buying the GoPro, should I spend the money on the Heros or holdout for the wide angle lens. Then, along came the reviews of the SJcam SJ4000, basically a $100 camera.
This was a no-brainer, so I ordered one a week before the trip. As always, after it arrived, I took the camera out of the housing, stuffed some tissues in, closed it up, and weighted it down in the laundry tub full of water for an hour. No leaks. I had read some people saying the housing leaks but I test mine before the dives.
Next, I bought the Insignia selfie stick at Best Buy. Using the SJCam attachments, everything fit fine for selfies or extended video capability.
Fast forward to my only two dives about two weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale. If you read my other post about ear trouble, you will see why my diving was curtailed. Anyway, the first dive that day was a 70 foot wreck dive. Down the downline I went. At the wreck at 70 feet, I powered on the SJ4000, it started powering on, then shut down. Odd. I tried again, same thing. I tried different things, shaking the housing, thumping it (hey, the Flip and housing set actually started working once when I thumped them as they must have been minutely out of place), hold the power button down longer, giving it a quick push, all same results. Very odd. My suspicion was a pressure problem as I had read that those 10 meter cams dont flood or implode past 33 feet but the buttons diaphragms compress. Not a good way to start off.
At the end of the dive, we started up the upline and I tried powering on again at 50 feet. Now it worked great. All I caught was a glimpse of the wreck, just at the edge of the visibility. My only video from that dive was a group selfie of our safety stop.
The second dive was a shallow reef dive, about 30 feet at the deepest and no problem powering on at and I got video of an eel, lobster, swim throughs, selfies, and such.
Since I could not dive anymore the rest of the week, I was reduced to the role of a surface site seeing tourist and since I wanted to test the camera, I shot all my videos and took my stills with the SJ4000.
Conclusions Pros and Cons
What little underwater video that I got was great. This is the best quality underwater video that I have ever had the capability of taking. I was really happy with 1080p resolution.
Having said that, I saw another poster reporting that his camera wont power on below 50 feet and another poster saying that he has taken his camera to 100 feet with no problem. I emailed SJCam tech support about my problem a week ago and have heard nothing back yet. I was wondering if the housing compressed adding to the button squeeze and was going to try to put a penny or two in the housing on the front and back to see if a spacer would help. I never got to try this, though. The housing is rated to 100 feet but if it cant reliably work below 50 feet, I would not have bought it. Inexpensive or not. By the way, this was only two dives, so I havent given up on it, I will give it a few more deep dives and see what happens.
I really liked using a selfie stick. I was able to get closer to the eel than I normally would have. Ever since I saw Survivorman use his tripod for a selfie stick, I have used that technique on land but this is the first time underwater. I like the capability. Plus, while videoing a fish hangout in a swim through, I was able to use the stick as a monopod as I planted it on the bottom sand to steady it.
As for the surface site seeing still photos, I got the stills pretty well de-fisheyed with Photoshop, where they are OK, not great, but if you are looking for it, you wouldnt notice it. I can see it but I am super sensitive to looking for it. So, the stills can be fisheye distortion corrected to an OK point.
As for surface site seeing video, I cant recommend it. I mean, if you are into extreme sports parachuting, skateboarding, and such video with fisheye wide angle shots, go for it. I am into wide angle but not fisheye and the fisheye effect is pronounced topside. Not sure what the underwater optics does to undistort the fisheye effect but it does.
Oh, I got them somewhat de-fisheye distorted using Sony Vegas effects and they look OK, too. Not great, just OK. I had seen where you can use the GoPro editing software to de-fisheye them but the format is mov, whereas the software takes mp4. I tried once to convert the mov to mp4 using QuickTime Player Pro but the GoPro software wouldnt read it. Given time, I could figure out the right conversion but I just did not want to take the time.
Bottomline
As I said, I have not given up on getting this to work on deeper dives, so I am merely mentioning about my experience. I can recommend it with **** for underwater video up to 50 feet and if you want an inexpensive sport cam to do that, this will work fine. I cannot recommend it for surface site seeing video due to the fisheye lens distortion. Probably better to use your cellphone cameras for this. Me, my ancient Flip Video Camera will do the job.
I do have to point out, I have lugged big heavy housings and weights on dive trips before. Packing this and the self-stick were negligible weight in my carry-on. I did not even get a pelican case for it, in part due to the price point.
Lastly, speaking of the price point, at $100, you do get a big pile of accessories, this is a plus for buying, again, if you are into fisheye wide angle surface video. Also, if you get some use out of it and lose it on a dive or leave it somewhere, $100 is just not that big a hit. Dont get me wrong, its a hit, just not as big a hit as a $300 to $400 GoPro.
