Shooting DVC PRO HD under water

M

Mark-P

Well-known member
I am taking a scuba diving certification course and would like to start shooting DVC PRO HD in the 50-60 ft under water range. I know the underwater housings are extremely expensive, though I think I could borrow one every so often.

Does anyone know where I could get info on how to configure the HVX for shooting under water? What do you white balance against? How do you adjust the other settings?

Thanks for any advice.
 
Hi Mark,

I've been working on a tv show with a lot of underwater footage. My basic equipment is HVX200 + gates housing + SPW44 port + green force lights. Unfortunately, there is not a straight answer to your question because it all depends on what you are shooting, visibility, how deep you're going, etc. I made a lot of research in order to buy my equipment, so I will try to focus on my personal experience.

I am usually documenting big animals, mostly big sharks in open water. With the swp44 port, I have a 120 degrees view angle, so i usually go with the zoom wide open and trying to position myself very near the action.

Usually, everything happens very fast, so it is difficult to make settings underwater, even focus or iris. When you don't know for sure the distance between the camera and the action, one way to go, is to let everything on auto and just point and shoot, working only with zoom. It worked for me with a huge tiger shark in South Africa a couple of months ago. Just be carefull with bottom to top shots.

Another way that will work fine is to hold the housing and focus on your fin before droping down and set iris to at least 5.6. That will work fine in shallow dives (25 ft max).

I usually use two presets for white balance, long before the dive: daylight and 3800k (that's the green force temperature). I can't imagine how to do it down below, with strong currents or 15 black tips swiming around you!

Other settings that works for me:

720PN gives me 80 min with 2 16GB P2 cards. I usually record everything and just press stop at the end of the dive.
B.PRESS in order to have less grain.

I have some shoots on:

www.aquanautas.com.br

There'sa 7 min show on "AQUANAUTAS NA COSTA RICA - Assista o programa" that I shoot on Cocos Island, in Costa Rica. Sorry, but everything is in portuguese. I have some english stuff on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRM2n650Ado

Hope you find my experience usefull!
Regards,
Tony
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top