Which setting do you use? Or should i use...

[jamienicholson101]

First off, i have the Hero 2.
So i'm heading to Fiji next week and i'll only have a few days to get some good snorkelling footage, i recently bought the dive housing and will be using a 14" pole to get in the cracks and up close to the critters coral and fish.

I've read alot of different things, that i should film in 720 and 60fps and WIDE to minimise stutter and shakiness as much as possible. But with the extra wide setting you have to get exceptionally close to the object for it to fill the picture which might be a challenge.

I read a good idea is to put the gopro upside down on the stick for extra stability and film it that way, do you think this will give me enough stability to up the quality to 1080 with 30FPS? Or should i be filming in 60FPS anyway?

I'm trying to minimise my trial and error mistakes as much as possible as i don't really have much time to experiment whilst i'm there!!

EDIT: Should i also be filming with Protune on to maximise post production colour correction or not?

Cheers

 

[reebok]

I am very new but was in the same situation you were. I shot one video in 60fps and one in 30fps. they were with two different cameras (hero3 white and silver) and I had a horrible issue where the auto white balance on the h3white went monochrome green on me. after that I vowed to shoot only in camraw white balance (which necessitates protune I believe). in my most recent video I did almost no color correction whastsoever, only dimmed the contrast a bit in post. that was using a www.eelvision.com BG filter though, which makes a big difference.
as far as 60fps, the only time I thought it made a difference was when I had a quick shot of a turtle head (I couldn't actually see it, I put the camera under a ledge hoping to get the shot) and afterwards I put it in slow motion in the video to get it more screen time. that definitely made a big difference. otherwise I can't tell between 60 and 30fps.
as far as the pole, it's hard enough to keep it straight and balanced while it hangs upside down, I couldn't imagine trying to hold it right side up. just remember to put your gopro in upside down mode.
video examples are below. video 1 shows the monochrome green the gopro did to all my footage for that first dive, plus the 60fps slow motion example with the turtle's head. video 2 is the protune/camraw with only contrast correction. video 1 is handheld, video 2 is shot using a pole. all the details should be in the comments on the youtube site, but ask if you have any other questions.

[video=youtube_share;grdQUjy9Bxw]http://youtu.be/grdQUjy9Bxw[/video]
[video=youtube_share;EINPDxaheEY]http://youtu.be/EINPDxaheEY[/video]

 

[jamienicholson101]

Thanks for the reply, i love the clarity on that second video but i think its abit shakey. What angle setting did you shoot on? Do you think i should bother with a filter at snorkelling depths?

 

[reebok]

it's definitely shaky. it was a combination of length of the pole, current, buoyancy, lack of skill, etc. it was on wide. I know www.eelvision.com offers a snorkeling depth filter, but whether you need it or not is beyond me. the second video was at 70-80'.
I definitely would not use a regular filter for snorkeling depths. it will have a pink/magenta hue. you can see it on the surface and the bubble shots.

 

[rcaqua]

FWIW, I think your main challenge will be to "get down" at the level of your subjects (or even a bit under them): taking video from above will not be very satisfactory: best results are generally obtained by getting down low, very very close to your subject (use the W setting) and trying to get a bit of "blue" background.

Confirm best not to use a filter in such shallow waters.

Good luck!

Rene

 

[Limey72]

I use a gopro 3 so I am not sure how similar the settings are on the 2. I have been shooting in 1080 at 60fps with protune on and white balance set to raw. You can then do a little color correction in cine form post. On a side note there are several editing suites that will allow you to save a picture from your video but will save them as bitmaps ( not good if you use the wallgreens app to print them). You can import the bitmap into paint on the start me u and "save as" changing it to a jpeg. Hope that helps and good luck.