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Hi Marty thanks for the info. few more questions if I may. the head mount on all the videos that I have seen has bubbles of air interfering with the video. how do you get rid of this problem? if you can will you please post a picture of a head mount with protractor and a pistole grip mount as well. I am going to Cozumel in December, so I want to make them before I get there. I just had my engagement proposal done underwater and we coming back for the weading. Thank you for your input.
Hi Marty. Thank you for responce. Few more questions if I may. The head mount gives you bubbles in the video. How do you eliminate this problem. can you post a picture of head mount with protractor and the hand held gun grip that you use? Also what software you use for white balancing? Up too what depth you have the intence redness from the filter?
Thank you for your time to ansver this
r3 is my favorite resolution to shoot specially in lower light conditions. But when it comes down to processing the video if you don't have a decent system r4 and r5 will bring it down to its' knees while r3 is much more manageable.
All things being equal and ideal, r3 still is nicer looking in playback than all other modes. And while r3 does get a little vignetting, applying a little zoom or stabilization will get rid of it without degrading the video too much.
Hi Marty thanks for the info. few more questions if I may. the head mount on all the videos that I have seen has bubbles of air interfering with the video. how do you get rid of this problem? if you can will you please post a picture of a head mount with protractor and a pistole grip mount as well. I am going to Cozumel in December, so I want to make them before I get there. I just had my engagement proposal done underwater and we coming back for the weading. Thank you for your input.
Engagement underwater is interesting, same for wedding and first night then lol.
This started out as a short reply but has got a little out of handsorry
The Protractor I use to set the angle of the camera for when I head mount it. I had issues getting the angle right the first few times I used it and wasted a bit of footage, I did some testing at home and found a couple of angles that work well for head mounting and get pretty much what your looking at. I found that standing upright, I try and set the angle so that if I hold my hands straight out at in front of me and make it so they are in the middle of the video frame then the angle will be very close to where I will be looking, also lying down on a bed or sofa with your hands straight out and set it so that they are also in the middle of the frame similar to a normal dive position. I find this angle to work very well for a standard dive where I will be looking ahead and swimming along it will frame what I'm looking at quite well, this also works when upright in the water looking at other divers or bigger fish lol. I then use the protractor to take note of the actual angle the camera is at when its in the perfect position so before I dive I can setup the headband and do a quick angle check ensuring I have it aimed properly.
When doing a dive like my scallop videos where I will be looking down more I set this angle pointing down a little lower so it gets what im picking up with my hands in the middle of the shot, my normal angle is a bit high for this sort of dive and it misses most of the action, which I found out after a few attempts at filming that video lol.
Terrible light used EOM housing no filter water was very green but the video turned out pretty cool still. Here software white balance doesn't help as without a filter there is just no enough detail in the other colour channels so all you end up doing is amplifying noise. I find with a filter it gives much more to play with in post and its much easier to get rid of a little red in shallower sections then it is to create reds that haven't been captured in the first place.
Scallop dive, lower angle head mount, no extension and some bubbles
Shark dive, no filter EOM housing good vis 25m+ 15-20m, head mount my normal angle badly bubble effected in sections but they add a little suspense.
To get the bubbles out of the shot with the headmount you have to use the extension mounts which come with the helmet hero package to push the camera forward of your mask and ahead of where the bubbles will be. It does look rather stupid when you go with that setup and your dive buddies are sure to have a good laugh when they see you geared up. But it does provide the smoothest video when shot in r3 as your head works much better as a stabilizer then I can ever manage by hand holding the cam even with my little custom hand mount. The disadvantage is you cant get all that close to the fish but I have had some great results with the headcam, unfortunately all my cool dives with headcam where with the standard setup which had the bubble issue until I tried the extension method.
Here are some pics of this setup I also use a chin strap to secure the headband as its not safe enough on its own underwater, this is just a simple strap I took of an old sports bag that had 2 steel loops I can use to adjust and tighten the strap. I tend to pull the strap back so its more under my neck but this can be wherever it feels comfortable to you and makes the headband much safer to use underwater. On its own the headband can come off very easily with just a slight bit of current or even your own bubbles can be enough to release the headband and you most likely wont feel a thing.
I don't have a photo of my hand mount atm I will try and get one tomorrow when I get home and post it here.
I use adobe premier pro CS5 on windows 7x64 and I tried a few plugin trials along with the tools that come with cs5 and eventualy settled with the colorista 2 plugin. This works very well and can be very simple to use as a simple eye dropper white balance along with dozens of other colour correction settings if you want to tweak it a little more. Mostly I have just used the eye dropper white balance which I just click on something I know is white and it does its magic. This can be used to correct on land shots with a red filter if you want to get some boat video of entry or exit. I find around 5m and up is in bad need of white balance and below that if not looking up at the sun its not needed as much, If I had a slate I could film for a few seconds when I get to different lighting levels or depths this would be much easier as without an exact white object its a bit of a guess.
Here are a few screen grabs with and without software white balance right images are the original untouched shots with a UR pro cyan filter.
On the boat, its not perfect here but does make the shot useable still. In the video I added a few more effects to this and used it as part of the intro.
End of dive shallow water maybe around 3-5m
Looking up at the Barracuda around 10-13m
Some snorkeling side by side frames right is original with UR pro cyan filter 0.5-2m
At deeper depths depending on how the gopro decides to go with its auto white balance I haven't needed to do much to most of these videos, some needed a little but most where pretty well white balanced already and I didn't have much to use for white in the shots so was better of as is most of the time.
Hi Marty. This is an awesome response. Thank you. I got some good ideas from your info and will implement them on my next dive. I did like the scallops video. It is green, but very cool, has some kind of surreal feel to it.
Very nice comparison of the white balance frames vs UR pro cyan filter. I will remember to keep some thing white with me for comparison.
The head strap does have a funky look lol, But I see how can it solve the bubble issue.
i do have a feeling that the neck strap is a choker. and it goes right on both of your Carotid artery's diminishing oxygen supply to the brain. I will try to do it like a hockey chin strap coming down from the helmet but with out the helmet.
Thank you one more time. It is nice to have some help when you starting.
BTW the SRP has an other filter not the Cyan, but the one for green water/algae situation.
I do not understand how the head mount is more stable then a hand grip. you do turn the head from side to side, but you can keep your hand steady with your head turning. Plus you have an advantage of coming close to a small marine life. The only downer that I see is that one hand is occupied at all times.
Just be carfull. If you are looking at the GoPro 960 it will shoot everything except 1080p, but you can not add the LCD to it. I just wanted to let you know. I like having the LCD for some close up shots. I shoot most of my stuff in 720p 60fps but would not buy the 960 due to not having the LCD option. Just what I would do. Good luck and have fun with whatever you get!
Here are their prices:
HERO® Cameras
$179.99 HD HERO 960
$259.99 HD HERO Naked
$269.99 HD Surf HERO
$299.99 HD Helmet HERO
$299.99 HD Motorsports HERO
It is hard to find them much cheaper than this but it is possible. Also remember that you are going to need a flat lens for under water, and there are some out there that come with a flat lens already. Shop around you can get the Naked and use the base in the packaging for a hand mount and buy other mounts later. I the long run you are probably going to want the LCD. I did.
Im pretty sure that the gopro 960 is also limited to 720p30 and cant do 60fps.
Regarding the green filter the guys at SRP have been kind enough to send me a full set of filters as they liked some of my videos I only got them when I got back from thailand and havent been in the water with them yet. I think the green will work well in the waters at home which tend to be more green then blue most of the time, I will take them both out and see how it ends up.
Also the shallow water cyan should be interesting for the shallow stuff, snorkel level diving shouldnt need any correction and the amazing thing about this filter is that it looks exactly the same as the regular cyan filter to the eye but when I tried it on land it had no red tint to it that I could notice. I think I will take this one out for a little play with the seals again.
Regarding the headstrap being smooth, what I means is it doesnt suffer from any handshake but as it follows your head you dont want to be looking around too much. Its great for trickier condition dives where you dont want to be holding a camera and you can just enjoy the dive recording all without needing to think about it. Hand held is better if you are diving with the main intent of getting vidoe and set up shots but head mount you are free to just dive.
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thanks for the info. few more questions if I may. the head mount on all the videos that I have seen has bubbles of air interfering with the video. how do you get rid of this problem? if you can will you please post a picture of a head mount with protractor and a pistole grip mount as well. I am going to Cozumel in December, so I want to make them before I get there. I just had my engagement proposal done underwater and we coming back for the weading. Thank you for your input.
