Action cameras underwater

Action Cameras, like the SJCAM SJ8 Pro and SJ7 Star, record superb quality 4K 30fps video. Although they will never replace a large sensor video camera with manual controls, they are very impressive and convenient for underwater use.

Videos from St Leonards Pier showing off the 4K results. 

View in YouTube using Chrome for best 4K experience, Safari does not support 4K video

SJ8 Pro camera at 4K 30fps. 

Colour Balance - Auto (would be better as CLOUDY) 

with colour and contrast adjustments in Final Cut

Testing the Crelant VD90 LED flashlight

 with diffusers and 80A colour correction filter.

 SJ8 Pro main camera, SJ7 Star cut-aways. Both at 4K 30fps

Colour Balance - CLOUDY. Exposure -2/3EV

XiaoMi Mijia and ThiEye T5e 4K cameras at 1080 30fps
Colour Balance - AUTO. Adjusted in Final Cut

Diving again

I have been concentrating on RC planes for quite a while and the diving has taken a back seat. But the urge to get wet always remains.

Here are a few videos using GoPro style action cams, which do an amazing job for the money.
I really like the SJCAM SJ7 and ThiEYE T5e action cams.

2 camera solo video drysuit dive

In this video, shot with Nikon D7000 and GoPro HD2, I don a drysuit unaided, show the beach entry at Cottage Reef and meet some of the local marine life.

Shooting with a second camera like a GoPro can add an interesting cutaway viewpoint to the final edit. But some post processing of the auto exposure and white balanced GoPro footage is necessary.

Video via towed diver

This info is mainly for my own future reference.

I have occasionally needed to record video along underwater transects (that's a scientific term for straight lines running across an area of interest). For transects of 100m or so it's OK to swim it (on scuba), but for longer distances I have been towed behind a boat. A scooter would be the best option but not within the budget.

For the video to be useable towing speeds need to be very slow. Firstly so the diver can hang on and have some depth control and secondly so the image is not moving too fast.

In the past a Panasonic Lumix LX3 has given reasonable results, but this time I tried the Nikon D7000. I wasn't using lights so did a Manual WB measurement off the sand, and that worked well. Max depth was only 4m.

Camera setup was Tokina 10-17mm at 17mm to reduce the fisheye distortion, pointing down and slightly angled forward about 1m off the bottom. 1/50th sec Shutter priority -0.3EV and ISO 400.
Here's an example of the footage captured.

Better results would be achieved with a faster shutter speed (so that single frames would be usable), say 1/125th, slower towing speed, 0EV, more distance to the bottom, say 1.5m, and/or angling the camera 45º forward.


It was interesting to see thousands of Elysia viridis? slugs over the entire area we surveyed.

DIY Underwater Tripod

A major problem with underwater video is camera movement. Keeping still enough to prevent your audience getting seasick is not easy and for macro it's impossible.

So here's a basic idea for a tripod. Using my existing 8" strobe arms, clamps and a handle post attached to three Sea and Sea ball adaptors from Mr Leung of ebay again.

Here's a video of the first test in 2m vis and 10c temp. Hurry up summer!



To fit the balls to the handle bolts 2 adapter holes were enlarged to 8mm. Another hole was drilled in the tray to attach the third ball.

GoPro HD Hero 2

These tiny wearable HD video/still cameras are brilliant and reasonable cheap. Mine was $358  with free delivery from WetRez in Cairns.

It can record 1080 170º video, 11Mpx stills and time-lapse at a selection of frame rates with a fixed focus fisheye lens. It comes supplied with various mounts and a waterproof housing.

As is the GoPro can't focus underwater but a variety of add on lenses and tweaked housing are available for around $120.

Being tiny and light the GoPro can be attached to helmets, wrist and chest straps, kites, RC models...just about anywhere you can imagine.

Here are a couple of my early videos.

The sealed housing seems to fog up in the sun quite easily. Dessicant tissue pads are available to prevent this.

Gregarious Giant cuttles

Winter in southern Aus is giant cuttle mating season. These normally secretive relatives of squid and octopus become all outgoing and inquisitive.

They will often follow divers around and even occasionally come in for a hand shake, like in this video.

I was shooting stills at the time then quickly switched to video when the cuttle showed interest. With a bit more time i would have done a manual white balance and used -1.0 ev in Aperture priority for better colour and exposure.

D7000 Ikelite housing

I marvel at the ability of housing maunufacturers to make all those tiny camera buttons, levers and and control wheels available in the housing.

The D7000 Ikelite housing gives access to everything except the DOF preview button and dioptre adjustment. There's even a button for popping up and adjusting the internal flash, which doesn't make a lot of sense because the flash can't pop up enough to work.

The movie record button/lever has been moved all the way out to the right side of the housing and is easily operated by thumb without letting go of the handle. This makes movie recording smoother than with the camera itself.

There is enough space around the camera, especially on the right side, to fit my leak alarms.

You do need to retract some controls when inserting the mounted camera to make sure it sits in place.
The view through the viewfinder seems to include more of the frame than my D80 housing, but I'll have to check that underwater, hopefully tomorrow.

D7000 hands on

I ordered the camera from Digital Camera Warehouse for a gold coin under $1300, delivered.

When it arrived the first test was to see what worked in my D80 Ikelite housing. Nothing was the answer, couldn't even close the housing with the D7000 inside. The camera body is just too thick, front to back, to fit at all. I was always going to buy a new housing but in the pursuit of knowledge I had to try. I have since ordered an Ikelite housing from Digital Diver for $1672 delivered. It arrives in a few days.

Why Ikelite? Well, I have all the ports, like the see-through acrylic and extra space for tweaking and I can afford them. Other housings like Nauticam, Subal and Aquatica may be smaller and sleeker but they are also thousands more expensive and wouldn't improve my photos.

One drawback with an Ike housing is that you can't pop the camera flash up and use fibre optic flash sync, but there are stirrings in my little grey cells that may overcome this. A future project.

Initial impressions of the camera.

The larger 3" screen is wonderful. The INFO button which fills the review screen with all the camera settings will be nice underwater for ageing eyes. I'm starting to find the top LCD screen difficult to read.

AF during video will be an issue. SLR lenses make lots of noise while autofocusing and that is all perfectly recorded by the mic, so you either have to ditch the audio track or prevent continuous AF for video. AF-S will be the way to go for me. You start and stop recording with the dedicated video button but you can tap the shutter button at any time to refocus.

I'll be leaving the "sticky buttons" or "Release button to use dial" option (f7 in the control menu) permanently on. That means you tap and release a button, like ISO or WB, and then make changes with the control dial. Much easier in a housing than trying to use both hands.

f6 in the control menu is another must for me. That's the "Menus and Playback OFF" setting, which means you can make A and S changes with the dials while image review is still on. With my D80 I was always trying to make quick exposure changes after a shot but would actually be flipping to the next image, very frustrating.

There are 2 user settings available on the mode dial which are used to save sets of commonly required settings. I have set U1 for intervalometer recording where I want the image size small, and U2 for RAW underwater with WB 5260K. Then I can leave the camera on jpeg fine and Auto WB for normal use.

The intervalometer is a blast. You can choose the shooting interval, say 1 shot every 5 sec, and how many shots up to 999. Using Quicktime 7 Pro you can turn the image sequence into a timelapse movie at frame rates ranging from 10sec/frame to 60frames/sec. Here's one of me painting our front fence. 3hrs in 17sec.

A playback frame rate of 25fps would give a 40sec movie from 999 frames.

AF for stills seems very fast and the shutter action seems lightning fast too. I keep expecting the second clunk of the mirror returning but it has already happened.

That's what has exited me so far. I'll chat about image quality and functionality underwater in the next instalment.

Nikon D7000 SLR

I bought myself one of these recently released beauties as soon as the price dropped in Aus. The D7000 comes highly recommended by some serious underwater photographers and I felt it was a worthwhile upgrade from my D80.

Here are some of the features that attracted me.

Full 1080p video with continuous autofocus. Don't know how effective that AF will be, I suspect it will be far from perfect and I'll be using it as single AF rather than continuous.

Live view, looking forward to trying it underwater.

Very fast AF for still shots (not live view), I'm expecting this to be great underwater.

14bit RAW which apparently means much smoother sunburst rendition.

Startlingly low noise at higher ISOs, which will be good for my split levels at 400ISO.

Intervalometer for time-lapse recording. This will be fun underwater and above.

2 SD card slots, for backup or overflow or separating jpegs and RAWs

3" screen and 100% viewfinder, both bigger than the D80.

More on how it all works in real life in the next post.

Merimbula Divers Lodge - Eden Tugs

After Jervis Bay we headed down to Merimbula (4hrs) to stay at the Diver's Lodge and dive the Eden Tugs. The Tasman Hauler and Henry Bolte tugs were sunk as artificial reefs back in the mid 1980's in 25 to 30m. The Tasman Hauler is intact while the Henry Bolte has collapsed but boasts more fish life. They're only a 5min boat ride from Eden wharf and about 150m apart.

The diver's lodge has 3 large two bedroom apartments for $29/person, 4 bunks per room. Absolute luxury as dive lodges go, and walking distance to great restaurants and the main shopping drag. We've stayed there twice and always had an apartment to ourselves. Excellent washing and gear storage facilities are provided.

Dive time was 8.30 at the Eden wharf, 20min drive, where we geared up with a Pro Dive mob from Sydney. They were also staying at the diver's lodge and doing a wreck course. The dive boat is a Niiad RIB with just enough space for 12 divers and 2 crew. It's a fast narrow boat that has no storage space for cameras, have to be very vigilant to protect cameras in the pre dive melee.

The vis was 15 to 20m allowing for great wide angle shots. A big school of 60cm kingfish provided thrills on the Henry Bolte. Much better than the 5m green snot we had last visit.

First dive was on the Tasman Hauler then back to Eden for the surface interval, then back out to the Henry Bolte.

$120 for the double dive with your own gear.

Tug dive photos here

For this trip I really wanted to concentrate on wide angle and video. I used my Nikon D80 in Ikelite with 2 Inon Z220 strobes all on manual and Sigma 15mm fisheye, and Virg's Panasonic Lumix LX3 in my old Coolpix 5000 Ikelite housing with a UK Light Cannon HID torch for video.

I took Virg's Macbook and edited video as the trip progressed. This gave me something to do during down time and show off to the non photographers each night.

Rich and I used drysuits, highly recommended, and although the water temp was 20c in JB and 18c on the Tugs, it made the between dive times warm and comfortable. Wetsuit divers shivered.

Next time I'll take my ali backplate rather than heavier SS just for easier handling out of the water, and use an occy neck sling or velcro retainer rather than the useless mouthpece plug.

Panasonic Lumix LX3 underwater

I have an old Ikelite Coolpix 5000 housing (circa 2003) which doesn't get much use these days, so I thought I'd try to fit my wife's wonderful Panasonic Lumix LX3.

It's a great still camera but also does 16:9 HD video and has a really nice 24mm wide lens.

With a minimal amount of tweaking, the camera now fits and I can start and stop the recording.
I tried the flat port first but that gave too much fringing and pincusion distortion so changed to the dome port with excellent results.

After 2 dives, one video and one stills, I'm thinking this is a brilliant compact underwater.
With this bodged together housing setup I don't have any controls other than shutter release (and manual flash output on my Inon Z220 optically triggered) so I used Aperture priority (f/8) with -2/3 EV (to reduce ambient exposure) and Forced Flash (which limits shutter speed to no longer than 1/30th)

Results are sharp all the way out to the corners thanks to the dome port.

Getting the camera into the correct position involved moving the tripod mount hole (and the base plate) to the left and further forward. The the camera had to be as far forward as possible without clashing with the long shaft of the knob on the left of the housing and the lens had to be concentric with the dome port.
This took a little bit of gouging and fiddling of the hole. Once I got the position right I flipped the base plate over and drilled one accurate hole.
Then added some thin plastic strips and tape to to the base plate lift the camera up a little.
I then carved a shutter release knob extension from an old nylon chopping board.

More photos and video here

Mares Puck dive computer

My Aladin Sport went "ERR" last week meaning a new battery is required. S'posed to last 10 years but ours have not gone much more than 5 years each. Problem is you have to send it away and pay more than $200 for the replacement. So, it was it time to upgrade.

I looked at scubastore.com, based in Spain, and found this Mares Puck for 158 Euro delivered. That converts to $289!! Locally you would pay $690.

This computer does Nitrox, Bottom timer and displays water temp. All features the Aladin didn't have.

Ordered it Saturday and it arrived today, 4 days, via Germany, London, Melbourne, Geelong.

Amazing.

Here's a short video of it's first dive.

Squid-bait cam

Here's a bit of underwater video fun. Tweaked the Stingray housing so that I could leave it on the seabed with some bait dangling in front.

This 2 min video is the first attempt. Next time I'll extend the rod and position it to be more central.

Fibre Optic recording indicator

Here are the latest tweaks to the Stingray housing.

The previous magnet record switch was somewhat unreliable due to alignment and flexing issues. It was also very difficult to hear the camera beeps so I was never really sure whether it was recording.

Handles and a flexible loc-line strobe arm have been added.

The magnetic switch now works by pushing or repelling a "finger" through the housing-back and I have added a fibre optic "light pipe" so I can see when the red record indicator appears on the LCD screen. This fibre optic bundle comes from a $10 fibre optic lamp found at Toy Kingdom in Geelong West.

More photos here

Magnetic record switch

Here's what I came up with to stop and start recording underwater. The magnets came from Jaycar, a magnetic handy strip for less than $15. This plastic hanging strip contains about 8 magnets encased in a long plastic strip which can be cut to length.

An external magnet attracts the internal magnet operating the right angled lever. More photos here.
Works like a charm, if everything lines up properly.

The camera beeps to let me know if it's starting or stopping record mode.

UK light cannon 100 as video light

I adapted a stingray housing to fit my Canon MVX430 DV camera, which worked pretty well, but it really needed a video light.

These excellent HID dive torches are available for around $300 posted on ebay from lightcannontoys

Here is a 5 min video from Cottage Reef showing the Light Cannon in action.

I'm now working on a magnet switch to operate the record button while underwater. At the moment I have to start recording before the dive and just let it run for 1 hr. Makes editing a pain.