new diver and new Paralenz first experience

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J J

Registered
Messages
25
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10
Location
Southern Illinois
# of dives
25 - 49
So I'm quite the newbie, My wife and I've had about 30+ dives since september. All at Mermet Springs in Southern IL. Tired of only taking phone photos of getting ready to dive, I thought I'd get a simple dive camera to record our adventures. I've been taking D/SLR hobby photos for decades, but found that most decent underwater cases for any of my cameras would cost more than a simple point and shoot. So I decided to start there. In the hopes that there would be less overall expense, and less distraction from just keeping myself alive while learning how to really dive.

A couple of weeks I decided to drink the kool-aid and get a Paralenz since my other dive gear was now paid off. Last week, I got to get it wet for the first time. So I thought I'd post my experiences for any others hoping to do simple photography underwater for the first time without having a clue. We also have our first ocean trip coming up mid January to Roatan, and Cozumel. So pointers and advice are welcome.

So first dive I have the Paralenz mounted to my mask on the "outside" strap. This was a dumb idea. Although it would make taking the mounting off and on easier, it was too loose an flopped all over the the place during the dive. I set the camera to DCC and dove to ~80' under the silt. Visibility was about 20' ~ 25'. It was dark enough that it might as well have been a night dive. Between the depth, overcast day, and silt, it was pretty much black. No problem, turn on dive light... As I later discovered in the 'manual' I should have gone to AWB at this point, but did not. This however allowed me to record everything in a wonderful dark brown and grainy sepia tone... And by everything I actually mean nausea inducing furtive glances at my DC, buddy, and a rock wall. Over and over and over and over again. Let's not forget that as an older gentleman, as my 22 year old insta buddy referred to me, I have to shine my light on my DC to see it, as the backlight is not enough for my old eyes. This of course results in blinding flashes of light on the video which help induce a seizure while vomiting from the jiggly motion of a quality DEEPiatone movie about silted out rockwall in the Quarribean.

Diving wet in 45F degree water, so ~35 min is all I can handle. So time to get out, get a hot shower, and check some pictures and footage on the Paralenz mobile app. Nope. Though the auto on and off worked like a dream there seems to be a limit to the size of a video file that the app will import onto the phone. I can import any photos but video is a whole nother thing. So unless still are what you're doing, don't expect to impress people back at the boat with your amazing videos of rocks or bubbles. I was able to see enough video after a bit, still don't know how. To determine the I'd used the wrong strap.

Tank refilled, another hot shower to make me look like a walking hot water ennema, and back into the lake. This time going handheld as opposed to mask mounted. I made my buddy lead the dive, so I could just use her as a model. And not task load. She decided we'd checkout some of the various "things" like the 727 and train car etc. Max depth 72' with an average of about 35'. So in we go, took a couple of quick snap shots upon entry, and then switched to video for most of the duration of the dive. The silt just never let up. This resulted in having to stay close enough to my buddy that almost the entire video is of random scuba gear, or indiscernible surfaces of mysterious objects. I assumed that if I could see it in my black sided mask w/o periphile vison, that the camera would pick it up as well. Not really true, I'd say that if you want video of more than your buddy's waist and flipper. A minimum of 5 to 6+ feet is required. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it feels like about a 40mm lens. Got back to the platforms where the local fish had expectations. It being the slow season around here. With no divers for days, everything floating in the water around us was checked and verified to see if it was made of hotdog. It was not, but hey, a chance to video something other than silt. Also at 15' the light was pretty good. Once done, I stopped the video and easily switched to camera mode for a couple of quick shots. And then up we go, back in video mode. Now my buoyancy is not perfect, specialty-card aside, but it's much improved. But holy hell I can't tell which end is up. Every shot taken was at a severe angle. On land or in the water. They all looked like the Enterprise bridge had just taken a direct hit. I'm not even sure how to address this yet. It's going to take a very conscious effort. That lack of a viewfinder really makes things difficult.

Back out of the water, and into the shower. So the auto off and on thing is great, with the following exception. The auto off is just too fast. The video turns off after what seems like 30 seconds once you reach the surface. So what you end up missing in your tilted world view is that first post-dive surface conversation. The smiles and quick comments etc. I'd really like an auto off setting that lets you keep it on for a couple of min or so. Tanks filled, transformed back into a hot water bottle, back under....

This time for a gradual dive along the bottom from 65' to 85'. Still not in the lead. I've mounted the paralenz to my inside mask strap to verify that it makes a difference. Not using buddy for a model this time, just going to film what I see on auto. Things go pretty well, not really worried about the camera, it's just doing its thing like it's supposed to. Again, should have switched to AWB, as opposed to DCC since I was using a light. In review all of the wobble had gone. It was now replaced with Jiggle of bubbles hitting it every time I exhaled. It did reduce for the most part when in a good diver position w/ head down. And in the end was only an issue while out of position and investigating something interesting. Everything was pretty grainy, and the ISO looks to be maxed out at around 1600. Though I did find a few things to look at, again, I was too close, and got pretty serious hot spots and not everything in frame. Back to the surface, pack it up, and head home...

At Home I'm curious to see how easy the images are to import/edit in LightRoom. First things first. LR has no Paralenz RAW support, and I'm on a Mac. So no playing with the RAW files yet unless I can find a PC to convert them to DNG. However the jpegs are of a high enough quality to handle simple edits and small color corrections. On import timestamps are all over the place, so your images and movies are not in a decent order. video files are broken into 10min chunks, but unsorted. So keep track of what fish or rock you were looking at when you've hit a 10 min video window. That way you can stich them back together... </sarcasm> The quality of a few pictures is not horrible. The quick above the water snapshots need so much rotating, that 1/3 of the photo has to be cropped out, making it useless for grandma's family calendar next year. Also out of the water there is quite a bit of fisheye distortion, but still usable. Took a photo in our covered buddy pavilion. It was overcast, Maybe with the raw file I could add enough light, but not with the jpeg. Too blurry because of motion, and just way too dark to make out good facial features. One decent underwater photo came out ok after some smoothing and dehazing. Still pretty dark.

Next was to see if I could pull some stills from the video. Used iMovie for this, worked pretty well, and was at 15' so the light was ok. Again, most video of my buddy was just too close for a decent shot. I was really hopeful that'd I'd be able to keep the camera attached to my head, let the video run, then go back over it, and pull shots out. I think if I keep my distance and stayed aware of bubbles, movement and framing, that this is still a possibility. But probably has a better chance in good light. One of the things I really liked about using video was being able to use it to make a plan for the next dive by noticing things I didn't capture well, but would like to go back and attempt to take stills of. I wish the phone app would have let me view longer videos, so I could do this easily during a surface interval, but I think at this point a laptop would be required.




Lessons learned so far (TL;DR)
  1. Have something interesting to shoot.
  2. Keep your distance ~6+ feet.
  3. Turn off DCC when using a light.
  4. Be aware of camera orientation.
  5. Hold still.
  6. Don't depend on phone-app for reviewing video.
  7. Quality is around an Iphone 6, so don't have big expectations.

Others have WAY more experience than me when it comes to this area, so please add any suggestions or comments you have. I apologize for my grammar and whatnot since this was written over a number of days while being distracted. :)
 
forgot to add images.

Still From Video:
MOV_0036.jpg

Plain Still Image
IMG_0033.jpg
 
I glanced over your post. I don't use the Paralenz app and I can't imagine any solution for transferring giant video files to a phone. As you learned the DCC is not compatible with a dive light. I wouldn't expect that camera or any action camera to compare to a DSLR. As for mounting the camera, this thread may help...

Paralenz Dive Camera...
 
If you head mount a video camera, you have to dive in a very controlled and deliberate manner. If/ when you are nervous, you will be glancing around, scanning around etc. It makes for horrible video.

You can probably practice by wearing it and filming a trip
To the garage to recover a screw driver. You have to stop moving your neck, learn to scan laterally with eye rather than head motion and you have to stare at any interesting subject for much longer than feels necessary to allow the audience to recognize and actually see what you are looking at. The unfamiliarity of underwater subjects also adds to the need for slower pans and longer stationary shots, even with all that you are going to be challenged to get a clip longer than 10 or 15 seconds that will not need to be cut and have excessive head motion video sections cut out.
 
I glanced over your post. I don't use the Paralenz app and I can't imagine any solution for transferring giant video files to a phone. As you learned the DCC is not compatible with a dive light. I wouldn't expect that camera or any action camera to compare to a DSLR. As for mounting the camera, this thread may help...

Paralenz Dive Camera...

I think in the end I'm not really interested in transferring the video as much as being able to view it and see if there are things that would worth taking more time for on a second dive. Obviously some things aren't repeatable, but there are a few things that I got a quick glimpse of on the video that would make for some interesting photos or even quick videos if done very carefully. As it is I'll have to go home and download the video, and then make notes for the next day as opposed to next dive that day. I sort of like the idea of being able to scout a photo site with video first. And thanks for the link, hadn't seen that one...
 
If you head mount a video camera, you have to dive in a very controlled and deliberate manner. If/ when you are nervous, you will be glancing around, scanning around etc. It makes for horrible video.

You can probably practice by wearing it and filming a trip
To the garage to recover a screw driver. You have to stop moving your neck, learn to scan laterally with eye rather than head motion and you have to stare at any interesting subject for much longer than feels necessary to allow the audience to recognize and actually see what you are looking at. The unfamiliarity of underwater subjects also adds to the need for slower pans and longer stationary shots, even with all that you are going to be challenged to get a clip longer than 10 or 15 seconds that will not need to be cut and have excessive head motion video sections cut out.


Thank you for the tips. On the first dive we got lost for a bit in the silt at the beginning which made for some spectacularly horrible video. That's why I opted out of being the leader on subsequent dives. Too much task loading...
 
I think in the end I'm not really interested in transferring the video as much as being able to view it and see if there are things that would worth taking more time for on a second dive. Obviously some things aren't repeatable, but there are a few things that I got a quick glimpse of on the video that would make for some interesting photos or even quick videos if done very carefully. As it is I'll have to go home and download the video, and then make notes for the next day as opposed to next dive that day. I sort of like the idea of being able to scout a photo site with video first. And thanks for the link, hadn't seen that one...
Does your phone have an SD card slot? Perhaps you could just pop it into your phone to access the video. They had some firmware issues for a while so I imagine the app was put on the back burner.
 
Does your phone have an SD card slot? Perhaps you could just pop it into your phone to access the video. They had some firmware issues for a while so I imagine the app was put on the back burner.

No, just standard IPhone. I do feel that they have the right idea, and seem to be pretty responsive in their updates. So I'll keep trying. I really want to avoid opening the back up during the day. If I can help it.
 
I have the Lightning SD Card Reader in the link below. I've only used it to download photos taken on an Olympus TG5 from the SD card directly to my iPad while on vacation but it says it works for video and iPhone too.

Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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