Opinions re: SeaLife Underwater Cameras

[sytech]

I am a novice photographer but am very interested in being able to shoot underwater video footage.

I had been thinking of getting the Bonica Snapper HDDV model but just saw some footage taken in the video mode of the SeaLife DC800 and the video looks fine for my purposes. Go to:

SeaLife Underwater Cameras

My questions include:

I suppose the amount of time for video on this or similar camera would depend on the memory capacity and the battery life?

Has anyone had experience with this particular brand of camera and how durable is it? Would also like any reommendations for other digital cameras with video mode or camcorders themselves.

Thanks,


Sy

 

[robint]

Just my 2 cents ---- it just depends how much video footage you are looking to do. Still cameras take great still pictures and mediocre video, Video cameras take great video and mediocre stills.... just a general rule to think about. If you are going to do still photos primarily and don't care about doing real videos, just some short clips, then going with a still camera is more cost effective for you. If you want to do great videos of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or even more then you should look at video camcorders. There is a diffence.

robin

 

[sytech]

Your "2 cents" are very valuable to me.

I could see taking 10-15 minutes of video and collecting the footage. I have no interest in editing or such but as I said in my original posting the video quality of those scenes taken by the Sealife DC 800 seemed quite ok for my needs.

Do you have an opinion on the Bonica Snapper HDDV or similar?

Thanks,

Sy

Just my 2 cents ---- it just depends how much video footage you are looking to do. Still cameras take great still pictures and mediocre video, Video cameras take great video and mediocre stills.... just a general rule to think about. If you are going to do still photos primarily and don't care about doing real videos, just some short clips, then going with a still camera is more cost effective for you. If you want to do great videos of 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or even more then you should look at video camcorders. There is a diffence.

robin

 

[robint]

a few questions then - are you talking about taking 15 minutes of video on a dive, just turning it on and recording? And not editing it at all? Are these videos for just you or for sharing with anyone?
Are you planning to load them onto DVD to watch on your home tv? Or are you just going to play them on your laptop? Post them on YouTube or Vimeo?

Think about all of these questions for a few minutes.........

 

[diversteve]

Robin and I had the same thoughts - hers was just a 1/2hr. sooner...

What do you plan to show the video on? Your computer or a large screen (HD?)TV? The Sealife shoots 640x480 video at 30fps. So the frame rate is good but the video size is small. For comparison, an HDV camcorder shoots video at 1920x1080. Projecting the image from the Sealife on any regular television will enlarge all the pixels and it will be somewhat more blurred than the video shown on the Sealife website.

For a comparison, view one of the Sealife videos and right click and zoom in once on the scene. That's about the quality you would see viewed on a large screen television - maybe slightly worse.

I looked at the Bonica website but they don't list the resolution of their camera so I'm unable to make a comparison. Assuming that HDDV means HD, my guess would be that it shoots in 720P or 1368x768 resolution or similar since that's the minimum HDTV standard. It could also be a non-standard resolution, some of the lower end cameras are.

You mentioned not wanting to do any editing. Since the Sealife shoots .avi files, you will at least need to render them to a DVD unless you only plan to play them once off the memory card. So you're still going to have to copy them to a computer and convert them to play on a conventional DVD player. Since the Bonica seems to only shoot .mov (Quicktime) files, you may have a similar problem with it. Unless there's now a DVD player that plays .mov and .avi files - there probably is...lol.

You might also check with Sealife and see how many minutes of video you can store on a card. My buddy shoots short videos with his Canon, he gets about 8mins. per filled 2GB card as I recall. (Not sure about this but they're definitely under 10) - allowing that he's already shot some pictures. We were on a boat once and he had to d/l his card after every dive when he'd shot video. Kind of a pita.

A program like Nero Vision (there's a lot of others available also) will allow you to simply render your clips to DVD in a format that a regular DVD player will play. It's pretty much just select the files and use one of their standard menu formats, then let it render. Which can be minutes/hours depending on computer speed and amount of material to be rendered.

There's also some DVD players that play Windows Media files so you could also convert the .avi's to .wmv files if you have one of those. That's done with a file converter, I use one called Super - it's free for home use.

 

[bubble_junkie]

i shot a whole video using the SL reef master mini

not that bad

 

[tstormdiver]

I have a Sealife DC600. Not really a bad camera in it's own rights, but I think there's room for improvements. It's a relatively inexpensive camera set up, so great for a beginner set. It has many good features (mainly camera settings) that make taking pictures &/or video very easy. The down sides: It eats batteries. Usually I might be able to get 1 dive off a battery. Sometimes not. It will only take a 1 G card. That's about 300 pictures or about 15- 20 min of video footage (if your battery lasts that long). The only other thing I'm not crazy about is in picture mode, it has some lag time between when you push the shutter button & it actually takes the picture. I've gotten many fish butt pictures that way. After a while, you kind of start to learn how time things for that, but it seems there should be faster reaction time. Just some of my observations with the set up I have.