Video out of focus - what's wrong?

[kramynot2000]

I think this is going to be one of those questions with a thousand possible answers, but I'll give it a try anyway...

I recently purchased an old aluminum housing with a dome port and an old Sony CCD-V9 camera off ebay to begin playing around with video. No instructions with the housing except for a little sticker that said to "Set the camera: close up focus in manual, zoom in slightly." So, I did that. Also, because I was diving in low light conditions (on wrecks in the Sound of Mull off the west side of Scotland!!!) I set the shutter speed to the minimum setting, 500. I don't have any lights yet. All auto focus, shutter, etc. were turned off.

Well, everything worked well but the pictures underwater are blurry, everything from a couple of inches away from the camera to the extent of the viz, which was about 5-15'. However, above water with the same settings, things are in focus! Weird. I actually have a shot of my dive buddy at the surface and the parts of him above the water are in focus but the parts below the water are blurry.

Anyone have any thoughts on what I did wrong? Was it the shutter speed that did me in? Low light? Also, I know I need some instructions on how to do this video thing so is there a dedicated video forum somewhere?

Thanks for any tips, thoughts, etc.

Tony

 

[David Evans]

Before you load your camera into the housing, put the camera on manual focus.

Zoom in on a subject about 7 feet away, and focus the camera on that subject.

Then zoom all the way back out. Load the camera and dive.

During the dive, don't touch the zoom. Just leave it alone.

You will hopefully find that just about everything from 4 inches to 40 feet will be in sharp focus.

Hope this works for you - works like a champ for me.

-d

 

[kramynot2000]

Thanks David, I'll give that a try!

Tony