Video with a P&S camera?

[friscuba]

I'm curious as to how many divers with the newer point and shoots ever even try the video function many of them have.

I picked up an Oly sp-350 and have been playing around with it. Today I shot a couple minutes of video. It was reasonably OK, the manual white balance even worked with it. It probably can't compare with a dedicated video camera for anything more than e-mail or basic web stuff, but it isn't bad if you aren't trying to produce anything sellable or viewed in large format.

Anyone out there use their video capabilities on their digi-cams much?

later,

 

[kapula]

I've shot some video with my canon a70. Tried that once or twice with 8080 aswell but sticked to shooting stills. Actually I've got quite nice clips of manta encounters.

 

[RockyHeap]

Just got back from Belize and an Oly SP-320..........taking videos is way cool, but hope you have a big memory chip. a 50-60 second video is about 140 MEG with audio on.

Great for moray eels gasping, turtle encounters, and spotted eagle ray fly bys.......

Set your white balance to "cloudy" day, in auto mode the background blue water was turned a tad pink with it trying to force the reds at depth.

30 frames per second at 480x640 resolution.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

I've got a few videos, they are OK-ish. I can put 25min on a gig card - LOL. Its sad that I know that.

 

[Jamdiver]

I've shot some video with Canon powershot A610, it's pretty good underwater.
Can record at up to 640x480 and 30 fps.
I believe that the Canon S70 and S80 can record at 1024x768 pixels.

I haven't tried setting or modifying white balance when shooting video in fact i'm not even sure if that option is possible for me.

Anyway i've been pleased with the quality of the underwater footage that i've taken with it, only possible drawback is that the video files are HUGE!!!

Have a look here at some of my videos, nothing special..., just me goofing around u/w.
Note that the web version of the video is vastly inferior and further compressed as compared to the unedited video from the camera.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1599553699354608092&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6431816428995421350&hl=en

 

[CompuDude]

Video with my S80 is really good, actually. Best thing to do is shoot a lot of short clips and edit them together later. 640x480x30fps gives great results, easily as good as better video cameras, tho perhaps not as good as HD cameras. Big files is sure true, but once you edit down and convert to DVD it doesn't matter anyway. Only catch is you're generally stuck with available light unless you have a big HID light (20+watts), although my light cannon does pretty well in a pinch.

 

[friscuba]

I forgot to post a link to the video I tried. The sp-350 only records 20 seconds at the highest resolution, I have no idea why they did that, so I wen't with 15 frames per second. This video is compressed beyond that for internet purposes.

It still appears quite useable to me for just having something to look at.http://kona-scuba-diving.blogspot.com/2006/07/scuba-diving-conditions-are-great-in.html

 

[Larry C]

That's pretty decent Friscuba. A little noisy in the background. Was it natural light or did you use your dive light or what?

 

[jagfish]

I'm with Compudude...
Video with these little cameras rocks. I use my small SONY T3 to shoot all my video and it comes out very satisfactory for my purposes. As he said, I also shoot short clips, 10 seconds or less in length and edit it all together. The quality gets downgraded in my software as I try to make them small enough to be downloaded reasonably from my website.

Here is my page of downloadable videos...
http://www.discoverydiverstokyo.com/Download.html

 

[friscuba]

That's pretty decent Friscuba. A little noisy in the background. Was it natural light or did you use your dive light or what?

Natural light, about 17-20 feet deep on a clear day, white balanced off the sand. You could see how the white balance kicks in as things get closer. the last coral head was gettiing a bit shallow so it appears pretty red as I dove over it. Much of the noise is from the compression. You Tube wants files under 100 mb, this one was originally at 144 mb, I knocked it down to about 50.

I tried some stuff today, but the camera got hot in the sun and the housing fogged up a bit, so nothing focused correctly.