Underwater Tripod.

[RockyHeap]

Good to see you in the GoPro forums Fdog, come back often ya hear?


I LOVE my ULCS arms, and put one on the end of 24" of pvc pipe for my gopro pole cam.


People don't know what they're missing until you twist or loosen that ULCS clamp underwater to get that camera/strobe angle JUST RIGHT.

major sweetness. Orgasmatrons don't come cheap. Me likes.

 

[fdog]

Thanks Dave!

BTW, not to dismiss using a conventional tripod. A full-size tripod is good to have if you're using a large housed camera, or, need elevation off the bottom.

Here's a photo of me from before the turn of the century, back in the days of film:

For long shutter times, like 1/4 to 1 second, I could get away with ~15 lbs of lead hung from the tripod head. More than 1 second, 20 lbs or more.

I used to use the heaviest aluminum tripod I could pick up on eBay, with a real ball head. You can end up with a decent "disposable" underwater tripod setup for maybe $120 or so.

Typical use for me was:

• Mentally frame shot
• Hover off bottom, place tripod w/ camera
• Simultaneously hang lead and dump air from BC
• Get into feet-high trim
• Compose through camera
• Camera set to self-timer
• Press shutter, back away
• Camera shoots after 5 seconds or so
• Back to camera, another shot

The feet-high trim is because you will begin to go feet-low as you look through the viewfinder. This way all you end up is horizontal, and don't stir up the bottom.

The self timer is because you will shake the camera, resulting in motion blur, if you are anywhere close to the camera.


All the best, James

 

[3D diver]

The panorama stitching threads here, and on the gopro users forum, have me thinking about this as well. Please say more about your kitchen rotator gadget? Pics? Link?

 

[toozler]

The panorama stitching threads here, and on the gopro users forum, have me thinking about this as well. Please say more about your kitchen rotator gadget? Pics? Link?

I made one using one of these from IKEA:

STÄM Timer - IKEA

Never used it underwater, but it works fine. I set the camera for 0.5 or 1s lapse mode. Here are some instructions, mine looks the same but instead of a coupling nut, I stacked and glued two washers and one regular nut to make sure the tripod screw wouldn't screw to far and break the thing apart.

[video=youtube;YhYjD-stgMY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhYjD-stgMY[/video]

Even easier is to use one of these (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30066725/) where all you have to do is glue a flat mount on the top - but, as I have read, the 3M tape on the mount easily detaches as its squeezed and compressed underwater. I opted for the "STAM" version mostly because its compact.

 

[3D diver]

Cool, thanks.

 

[RockyHeap]

My wife gave me my last Hero 2 only, sigh, only something like 5-7 days before our last June Week on the Kona Aggressor and Week on the big island, dangnabbit had to scramble to get lighting/tray and topside toys put together quick.


So quick in fact that I didn't have time to do the whole tripod mounted timer, but did get a timer put together just to set on a table or porch hand rail.



For rotary time lapse and panning, Buy a cheap wind up kitchen timer, and I used a Air-Tool Cut-off wheel to modify the (what was off the shelf it's slanted/tilted bottom of the timer housing) cut it flat/parallel to the timer dial (for video horizontal flat panning) then I just cut closed cell foam into a shape to hot glue or caulk to the timer dial knob, glued a large washer to that for a rigid flat surface, and quicky sticky tape mounted a GoPro mount to that.

Not "that" rugged or robust, but gets the job done, I'm wanting to do another Rev A or B to it for future 1/4-20 tripod mount capabilities.

Just some ideas of mine to share. $10 and some fun with shop tools gets you a rotary pan for time-lapse video work.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Thanks Rocky I think I have found a use for the 4K video mode lol.

Your Adhesive mount does have a few pretty big gaps in it so not sure how that will hold under water, I have used many adhesive mounts on my old DIY tray/monopod setups a while back and they were still hard to get off months later, but they were the flat mounts and sitting flush on the surface. I tried to use an Adhesive curved mount on a scuba tank but it fell of very quickly mostly due to the same reason as it wasn't quite sitting flush and had a few big gaps for water to get underneath and force it apart.