New Snap-On Red Filter For GoPro Dive Housing-(Giving 3 Away NOW!)

[Rick_C]

Just received my new filter today - thanks, it looks great!

 

[Rderige]

Am planning to buy either the red snap-on filter from SRP or the red and magenta snap-on filter from Polarpro. Need help, guys. Which filter is better?

 

[iluvtheocean]

i'm curious about about the new ones from polarpro here -- any of you guys that received the "giveaway" ones tried them out yet so we can have a review of them?

 

[paulw]

I received mine and it looks great but unfortuantly my next blue water trip isnt for a few months, I will post a video when I return though.

 

[PolarPro]

Hey Guys, So obviously this answer is going to be one sided, but here is our rationale. We have been researching and developing the color and materials for this product for the last 5 months. We finally found the perfect light transmission for the filter and a very durable clear acrylic for the material. The SRP filter is going to provide great color correction and looks like it is built very well. A few things we tried to design around was
1. Keeping the LCD screen readable.
2. Keeping the mode button more exposed so operation with 5mm gloves on was still possible.
3. Producing our own color so we would not have to pay another company to do it.

The SRP filter seems to block the entire LCD screen, the mode button looks to be pretty covered up which would make operation with gloves difficult (By looks not testing). They also have to pay UrPro to produce their filters which certainly will increase product cost. We have had great results with our filter and the difference between the two as far as color correction is very similar. We are not going to try to bash on SRP because their filter seems to be a good quality filter. We tried to keep the price of the filter in line with GoPro's pricing. It was a little difficult for us to wrap our heads around paying $83 for a filter, for a Dive Housing that costs $49.

Of course We believe our product is much better and SRP is going to think their filter is Well worth the extra $54.

So those are the features/design we were going for to make our product competitive and in our view better.

I think it will be interesting to hear everyone else's thoughts on this, we will definitely be able to base our future products on these thoughts/reviews.

Thanks to everyone for weighing in

 

[iluvtheocean]

Any plans for a snap on macro lens? I do like the price point and the red would have been useful last night -- the water was soo blue last evening we only went down to about 100 though. had it mounted to my light using the flat adhesive and the camera came unstuck between the 1st and 2nd dive. can't wait to see if i got anything useable tonight when i get home.

 

[PolarPro]

We just filmed a comparison video between the two filters yesterday in Laguna, CA.
Visibility was 25 to 30. The SRP filter seemed to have a problem when depth was greater
than visibility. Granted their filter was not made for low visibility, however when depth was
the same as visibility their filter seemed to perform well. Our Filter held its own throughout the
entire dive and performed just as well/better in the shallower depths. The results certainly surprised
all of us here.

Just to reiterate-there was no color correcting/editing done, all video is Raw from the cameras.

Here it is: Polar Pro Snap-On vs SRP "Dome Filter" GoPro Hero 2 - YouTube

Look forward to the questions,

Jeff

 

[Marty Cerven]

We just filmed a comparison video between the two filters yesterday in Laguna, CA.
Visibility was 25 to 30. The SRP filter seemed to have a problem when depth was greater
than visibility. Granted their filter was not made for low visibility, however when depth was
the same as visibility their filter seemed to perform well. Our Filter held its own throughout the
entire dive and performed just as well/better in the shallower depths. The results certainly surprised
all of us here.

Just to reiterate-there was no color correcting/editing done, all video is Raw from the cameras.

Here it is: Polar Pro Snap-On vs SRP "Dome Filter" GoPro Hero 2 - YouTube

Look forward to the questions,

Jeff

That is more just the Hero2 awb bug coming up more then anything else and I have seen it happen with all filters I have used including in my multi cam filter tests. Here is an example from the other day this is at 18m using the hero2 with protune on and the SRP CYD filter the wb was fine all dive down to 30m but then at this point when following the fish up and getting the sun in frame it freaked out.

[video=youtube;g6NrVeTiPHU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6NrVeTiPHU[/video]

I have seen this being a similar pattern and when using multiple cameras the one that will get the most sun into the frame tends to freak out the most. This also appears to stay around for a bit but if using video lights and shooting away from the sun with a filter on the wb will tend to correct itself and when the lights are off it will be back to how it was in the first part of this video.

It does make it quite hard to do direct filter comparisons as whenever the wb freaks out that footage is pretty useless and I hoped that protune may have fixed this issue with the Hero2 but its still there. I dont know if its always just caused by the sun as there may be other variables but this is the most common when using a filter, it also happens when a filter is well out of its depth limit but the URPro can handle 25m quite comfortably in decent light so at the depths of your test id just put that down to the wb bug.

At the depths of your test I have rarely ever seen a URPro filter do that badly and Id be surprised if you would get the same results again.

 

[divebrasil]

Hi, do you have a video shot with the filter on blue tropical waters? Thanks.

 

[PolarPro]

That is more just the Hero2 awb bug coming up more then anything else and I have seen it happen with all filters I have used including in my multi cam filter tests. Here is an example from the other day this is at 18m using the hero2 with protune on and the SRP CYD filter the wb was fine all dive down to 30m but then at this point when following the fish up and getting the sun in frame it freaked out.

[video=youtube;g6NrVeTiPHU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6NrVeTiPHU[/video]

I have seen this being a similar pattern and when using multiple cameras the one that will get the most sun into the frame tends to freak out the most. This also appears to stay around for a bit but if using video lights and shooting away from the sun with a filter on the wb will tend to correct itself and when the lights are off it will be back to how it was in the first part of this video.

It does make it quite hard to do direct filter comparisons as whenever the wb freaks out that footage is pretty useless and I hoped that protune may have fixed this issue with the Hero2 but its still there. I dont know if its always just caused by the sun as there may be other variables but this is the most common when using a filter, it also happens when a filter is well out of its depth limit but the URPro can handle 25m quite comfortably in decent light so at the depths of your test id just put that down to the wb bug.

At the depths of your test I have rarely ever seen a URPro filter do that badly and Id be surprised if you would get the same results again.

Hi Marty, I am not sure that I would call it a WB bug as the other two cameras did not have that issue. That was the color of the footage from all 30 or so of the clips we have past 35 to 40 feet. I do not think direct sunlight is to blame because we were at a depth that was greater than visibility and that absorbed a majority of the direct sunlight. A depth rating on a filter is always going to be relative to the visibility. THe SRP filter should not encounter these WB issues when diving in high visibility water. But you can see that the filters performed very similar at the shallower depths with more light penetration.

Thanks for the feedback though Marty, where was that video shot at? That place looks really cool.