GoPro 11 Settings

[Dan]

Bring it down to 4K 120fps or 2.7k 240 fps if you want some super slomo shots. 5k anything will eat your SD card and battery up quick.

Yes, bring it down to 4K, but at 30fps is good enough to keep the high image quality at low light. 120fps is way to fast for underwater video. Here’s an example of 4k 30fps of an octopus hunting crab. I slowed the motion down 10x and it still look pretty smooth to me.

The video I edited down to HD quality for YouTube. Having in 4K, I can zoom it to 200% and I would still get higher resolution than HD.

 

[Dan]

A caveat about Backscatter is they sell Flip filters, which are no longer necessary if you correct color in post.

I replaced the red filter with +15 MacroMate lens for shooting small critter. For example the Bluespotted Jawfish (size of a thumb) at 5:50 of the video, below. The video clips were taken at 4K 30fps and post process them down to HD for YouTube.

 

[ScottsdaleSteve]

I replaced the red filter with +15 MacroMate lens for shooting small critter. For example the Bluespotted Jawfish (size of a thumb) at 5:50 of the video

Your footage of the Jawfish with the +15 MacroMate is amazing! Makes me want one. Couple questions since you ditched the red filter:
1) Do you ever shoot WITHOUT the light and Macromate? If so, do you miss the red filter? What White Balance do you use?
2) Did you find settings that let you get great wide angle shots as well as Macro shots on the same dive? (considering how little you can change settings underwater?). For example, I read you should change the zoom to 1.4x for Macro, but it seems that might not be ideal for wide angle.

 

[Dan]

Your footage of the Jawfish with the +15 MacroMate is amazing! Makes me want one. Couple questions since you ditched the red filter:
1) Do you ever shoot WITHOUT the light and Macromate? If so, do you miss the red filter? What White Balance do you use?
2) Did you find settings that let you get great wide angle shots as well as Macro shots on the same dive? (considering how little you can change settings underwater?). For example, I read you should change the zoom to 1.4x for Macro, but it seems that might not be ideal for wide angle.

Answers:
1) Yes at shallow & bright sunlight. That Blue Spotted Jawfish was shot without video light.

At depth & lack of sunlight & night dive I use my 3000-lumen SeaLife SeaDragon 3000, as shown in my Cleaner Shrimps video, below.



Since MacroMate lens subject is usually within 2-4” away from the lens, I have to dial down the light intensity to the lowest intensity (1000 lumens?).

I’m not worried about backscatter since the water column in front of the lens is not much. If the subject is about a foot or farther away then I would not use the MacroMate lens and use the video light. If there are lots of particles in the water columns in front of the GoPro, then I remove my video light from the GoPro mount and shine the subject from the left side so the particle reflections won’t bounce onto the GoPro and creating the backscatter.

I like the SeaLife SeaDragob 3000 video light because, not only it’s bright enough for what I need with wide angle beam, but also it can be removed from the camera mounting in a single button press. I can hold and shoot the GoPro with my right hand and remove the video light from the GoPro mounting and shine the subject from the left with my left hand.

I use Shotcut for my video editing (including White Balance, zooming, slowing down the motion, etc.). since 2018. It’s good enough for me and it’s FREE. You can find plenty of Shotcut tutorials in YouTube, for example this one, below:



To do White Balance in Shotcut, you just tap the section in the video clip that you want to edit (a red frame will be shown on the section to indicate that section is ready for editing) and tap on Filter, tap on White Balance and choose the temperature level. The default one is set at 6500. If you want to cool it (put more blue tone), just slide the temperature bar to the right or type a higher number like 7500. Likewise if you want to make it hotter (put more red tone), you slide the temperature bar to the left or type a lower number like 5500.

In addition to White Balance, there are other video filtering options such as Brightness, Contrast, Color Grading that I use a lot to improve the color and remove the hazy look that GoPro often put out when visibility is limited. With those 3 parameters, I can make the green water becomes less green, blue water becomes more blue, 80’ visibility becomes 100’ visibility.

2) I set it to Wide for all of my shots regardless whether it’s for wide angle or macro.

 

[passeparici]

Here are some additional thoughts on my testing…

I shot at 1080P, but in the future I will shoot at 4K. Why? 1080P videos looked great and resulted in reasonable file sizes. BUT…Screen grabs from a 1080P video are only 2 Megapixels, whereas screen grabs from a 4K video are 7 or 8 Megapixels. I discovered I like grabbing photos from my videos, and an 8MP grab lets you crop and still have enough info for a good print. (Yes, you can switch to PHOTO mode underwater, but that's a pain in the butt when you can just grab a good photo from your video).

I shot at 60 frames/second, and this was really useful to slow “fast fish” down by a factor of 2 in post. I can see why, in certain situations, someone might want to shoot at 120 frames/second so they can slow it down 4X in post. 60 frames/second was good enough on my test dives, but perhaps I would wish for 120 frames per second if was lucky enough to see a shark or manta.

Shooting 4k at 120fps you are going to use a lot of SD cards. Your battery will not last a long time and your camera is going to struggle with light. 2.7 k at 60 fps is a good compromise, even for still pictures you could get from you videos (especially if you look at them on your PC)

 

[broncobowsher]

The 120/60/30 FPS, does that play with the exposure time? I know the 120 can't be any slower than 1/120 second. But does the GoPro automatically stretch out the exposure time at slower frame rates? I just remember my old Hero4 was really good at blurring stuff from too long of an exposure and moving around. Didn't notice it with the Hero10, but I also added more light at the same time.

 

[passeparici]

Here’s an example of 4k 30fps of an octopus hunting crab. I slowed the motion down 10x and it still look pretty smooth to me.

Sorry Dan, it is NOT smooth at all ! 60fps reduce to 30 with post processing gives good result but you cannot just reduce by 10x from 30fps...

 

[Hatul]

I replaced the red filter with +15 MacroMate lens for shooting small critter. For example the Bluespotted Jawfish (size of a thumb) at 5:50 of the video, below. The video clips were taken at 4K 30fps and post process them down to HD for YouTube.


View attachment 825697

Very nice video. I like the way you combined explanatory text into the video. I use a similar setup with the flip Macromate 15 and video light, except I have mine on a selfie stick. The stills, were they taken in photo mode of the GoPro, or taking from video?
Adam

 

[Dan]

Very nice video. I like the way you combined explanatory text into the video. I use a similar setup with the flip Macromate 15 and video light, except I have mine on a selfie stick. The stills, were they taken in photo mode of the GoPro, or taking from video?
Adam

I always shoot in video mode in 4K 30FPS. Then screen capture any Kodak moment, like this:

Screen capturing a 4K video would still get me a pretty decent picture resolution in a big screen TV.

The flip hinge locking mechanism of the Macromate 15 lens gets worn out after awhile. It can easily bump into, annd flip the MacroMate lens onto the GoPro lens when you don’t need it, and ruin your shot. To avoid that situation, I intentionally set the video light handle to interfere the flip swing.

When I want to shoot Macro, I just do the following:
1) tilt the GoPro down a bit,
2) flip the MacroMate lens onto the GoPro,
3) tilt the GoPro back up,
4) center the critter on the back display, and
5) shoot the video.

After finish shooting Macro, I just:
1) tilt the GoPro down a bit,
2) flip tge MacroMate back to the locking position,
3) tilt the GoPro back up.

 

[ScottsdaleSteve]

I use a similar setup with the flip Macromate 15 and video light, except I have mine on a selfie stick.

Curious...how do you mount your GoPro and video light to a selfie stick? Can you explain or perhaps post a photo? Thanks....