Question Starter camera

[Thunder Struck]

I just googled it, looks interesting.
Though I am a little worried about bricking a $1k phone if it leaks.

I'd use a second phone. Killing my primary phone and not having access to things like that 2 factor authentication to try and get anything done until you can get a replacement phone would not be ideal.

On top of that there is a limitation of storage. iPhones don't have removable media, so if you are somewhere remote where you can't upload you videos to the cloud to off-load them, you'll need to figure out a storage solution. AFAIK some Android options have micro SD memory cards you can swap out easily for more storage when needed.

Spent a week in Fiji and with the GoPro I about filled 2 256G cards and 2 64G and some 32G cards. Mind you a lot of that is crap that will be tossed when I sit down to review it, but it's still there needing to be stored until that happens. The resort did have Wifi (Beqa Lagoon) but I wouldn't say it was blazing fast and can't imagine upload speeds would be very high. There was also an option of cell phone data but it was pretty weak on speed and could be costly depending on what your provider options for international.

 

[Thunder Struck]

$500 will get you a nice start, but beware, once you start, it's hard to quit.

A lot of good suggestions here. You could probably find a used Sealife with a strobe for $100 or so. Either that or get a Gopro with a housing and filter and play with that for a bit. The idea is to see if the picture bug bites you. You will either get bored and abandon the whole thing, or you'll start looking for for better equipment. Good luck.

So on that note I've been playing with the GoPro for a number of years, starting back when the GoPro 4 Black was the cat's pajamas. Since then I've gone to the GoPro 11. Then a Backscatter tray to make it easier to hold and steadier as well as being able to mount some lights, a pair of Orcatorch D710V video lights to start. Of course that meant arms and ball clamps. A sharp wideangle lens and macro lenses on bayonet mounts to give me more versatility was also in order to which I also got the corresponding arch for the tray to mount to.

Walking around at DEMA last year and thinking about the newest GoPro 13 I came across the Insta360 folks. Hey cool, I can mount this on top of the camera tray and film 360 for the whole dive (good battery life on that 360 BTW even if it eats storage like its free). But it does catch some cool shots and as a backup for when I miss something with the GoPro.

I decided what if I had a little more light? The Orcatorch are listed at 2k lumens and an opportunity presented itself to obtain a pair of Kraken Solar Flare 18,000 lumen lights along with a couple extra batteries and the fiber optic links and remote control unit enabling me to control the lights and adjust them from the tray. Holy smokes these put out some light at full throttle. But these were purchased with my next video upgrade in mind...

Which turned out to be the purchase a Sony A7SIII. Of course the Nauticam housing costs more than the camera does, then there's the ports and whatnot, more batteries.... Hoping to get the housing and a basic port setup for the kit 28-60mm f/4-5 lens I have early next year while I work on just getting the fundamental skills and knowledge of running this camera on land. Then I'll worry about getting my 90mm macro lens underwater further down the road for those nudis we all love.

Oh and I need a place to put all this footage too. Just with all the GoPro and Insta360 footage I've got the requisite external USB SSD drive as well as a pair of mirrored 6TB drives (down to 1TB free) in the PC but now I'm looking at a Synology 4 bay NAS with 4 12TB drives in RAID 5 to give me 36GB of storage that would also be cloud accessible to me that I can VPN into or others that will contribute to editing the videos (like the neice that majored in video production and volunteered to help me edit video muhahahah) . This of course requires me to upgrade my router to one that has a 10Gb/s port to realistically support this. And I'm sure I'll want to up my internet speed to better allow remote accessing the data and sharing out to others.

Yep, start with the GoPro. See where it takes you. If you are lucky you'll remain blissfully ignorant and be happy with the GoPro footage never stopping to ask yourself, "what could I do to..." Just get a GoPro, a couple 256G cards, four extra batteries and dual charger (BTW, don't charge the batteries in the GoPro if you want them to live longer happier lives) put it on a selfie stick, and be happy. Sign a relase of liability for your dive buddies, significant other, friends and whoever you know to slap you into next Tuesday if you ever pose a question about upgrading your gear.

 

[wizbangdoodle]

Thunder Struck has obviously been bitten by the bug. Beware, it might happen to you.

For me, I want decent videos and pics, but I really didn't want the camera to take over the joy of diving. If you've got a big rig, it can demand most of your time. I'm not fooling myself into thinking that I am some National Geographic video guy. As a matter of fact, I have many terabytes of video that I had every good intention of making into neat little video clips, but I haven't done it. So I just video cool things I see and keep it simple, for the most part.