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I have the GoPro Hero 2 with GoPro UW Housing and want to know the best field of view settings. I only shoot 1080P 30 so resolution is not my concern.
I know when you shoot stills underwater, you want the widest possible angle if you are not shooting macro. The go pro 2 gives a choice of Wide, Medium, and Narrow. But are these actual zooms with the lens optics, or just magnifying pixels?
Also, is there a way to white balance the GoPro? I don't use a filter over the lens, so I need to cut my green cast in post.
Here is a sample from the Blue Heron Bridge in West Palm Beach.
I checked out your footage and have a few suggestions: The footage looked a little shaky to me so perhaps you should keep it on the widest zoom setting. Does the Pro 2 have image stabilization? That may help eliminate the shakiness also. You might want to reconsider using a filter instead of relying on post color correction because I noticed a lot of magenta in the surface wave reflections on the bottom.
with the hero2, shooting at 720P - 60 FPS will lose half the shaking, and yes I'd get a filter (pick any flavor of them) or at least don't push the reds so much in Post...............I don't remember pink sand getting stirred up by rays in Florida......
With a Backscatter housing and 55mm threaded Fantasea filter in Hawaii, I did zip zero nadda post color correction and the blue water colors were stunning.
For white Balance you may want to try the new ProTune modes in the latest firmware update, just beware that it isnt 100% stable with everyone's camera's yet so if you have issues you may want to go back to an earlier version. This will record in a raw style format at a much higher bitrate 35Mbps in the hero2 compared to 15Mbps and avoids most of the auto colour and image settings in the regular modes letting you set these in post rather then fight what the camera has already baked in to the file.
I dont know if the hero2 protune mode is cam raw as in the hero 3 or still auto but I think its meant to be locked raw though I haven't used the final firmware underwater as yet. I white balance using a slate that I will put in the frame at change of depths or light throughout the dive and then use colorista 2 plugin to set my wb in post. With normal gopro modes this does work ok to a point and much better with a filter so Im looking forward to protune in both the hero2 and hero3 black camera as soon as I get one.
I have only played with it a little bit but found it very helpful underwater but haven't shot anything interesting with it only some basic shallow water tests as the firmware I had was very unstable, as one of my cameras did need to get sent back due to an issue that may or may not have been caused by this firmware, its been out of action for a little bit but I will be shooting much more in Protune with the hero2 and hero3 black cameras as soon as I get them.
I am also holding off on releasing my filter comparison test until I also include some protune footage in it, as Im sure this will be a common question on my youtube channel so I will try and get some protune footage with all the filter options in the HD2 cameras too. To show how this effects the end results with more control over wb and more dynamic range captured with the new recording modes. As my older comparisons get quite a few questions on why I didn't use the newer stuff available even though many were published over 12 months ago I dont want to post a filter video showing how they work without also showing how protune effects the use of the GoPro with and without filters.
FOV wise I tend to prefer the widest setting the most, but also use medium a bit. With my tray setup I just use 1080p30 in the hero2 but for other less stable setups I have used 720p60 which avoids excessive motion blurring as the min shutter speed will be double that of the 30p modes, also reducing some negative rolling shutter effects. The faster shutter speed will however reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor if the light levels are poor so you really need to test out each of those modes and see what gives you the best results. 1080p30 with a steady tray setup will always end up giving the best overall results I think but here below I will include a video showing all the Hero1 and 2 modes underwater in one of my earlier tests. The narrow mode is a bit too noisy IMHO for any real benefit unless you have plenty of light, the FOV's are basically a sensor crop but as the sensor is 11mpx its not actually a digital zoom as such because the pixels arent being blown up.
The narrow mode is most likely just a direct 1920x1080 crop 1:1 from the center and the others are using more pixels with some form of interpolation (may not be the correct word) which is why they have less noise as they would use more pixels combined to generate each pixel in the video. So theoretically the narrow mode uses the smallest sensor area and so needs the most light for a better result. There is likely also a combination of binning and interpolation of the pixels in the other modes but this has never been made public about how it is done exactly.
Here is a video I made showing all the FOV modes and how they compare to each other on land, You may want to turn the sound down, as some of the effects used were a little or a lot silly and going by the comments most hate the sounds lol. It does show quite well how the modes do compare to each other but sorry for the sounds. Maybe I need to redo it but I will make something like this with a better scene when I get the hero 3 camera.
There is no option for raw or compressed in the Protunes modes, at least from what I have seen in the menus, but I only upgraded the Hero2 this morning.
As for the shaking, I was just hand holding the underwater housing with no bracket, etc.
How much available light does a filter cut down?
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FOV wise I tend to prefer the widest setting the most, but also use medium a bit. With my tray setup I just use 1080p30 in the hero2 but for other less stable setups I have used 720p60 which avoids excessive motion blurring as the min shutter speed will be double that of the 30p modes, also reducing some negative rolling shutter effects. The faster shutter speed will however reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor if the light levels are poor so you really need to test out each of those modes and see what gives you the best results. 1080p30 with a steady tray setup will always end up giving the best overall results I think but here below I will include a video showing all the Hero1 and 2 modes underwater in one of my earlier tests. The narrow mode is a bit too noisy IMHO for any real benefit unless you have plenty of light, the FOV's are basically a sensor crop but as the sensor is 11mpx its not actually a digital zoom as such because the pixels arent being blown up.
with the hero2, shooting at 720P - 60 FPS will lose half the shaking, and yes I'd get a filter (pick any flavor of them) or at least don't push the reds so much in Post...............I don't remember pink sand getting stirred up by rays in Florida......
With a Backscatter housing and 55mm threaded Fantasea filter in Hawaii, I did zip zero nadda post color correction and the blue water colors were stunning.
A filter takes away approximately 1 f-stop, as the GoPro has fixed aperture and shutter speed this means higher ISO that may result in lots of noise in dim light
Video lights are useful however you have to take into account that there are no lights on the market that can illuminate the whole frame of the gopro at its widest settings
Lights and filter are mutually exclusive. Take also into account that lights are for close ups really of things like a mid size fish or a turtle or frogfish, you won't be able to illuminate a whole wreck
A filter takes away approximately 1 f-stop, as the GoPro has fixed aperture and shutter speed this means higher ISO that may result in lots of noise in dim light
Video lights are useful however you have to take into account that there are no lights on the market that can illuminate the whole frame of the gopro at its widest settings
Lights and filter are mutually exclusive. Take also into account that lights are for close ups really of things like a mid size fish or a turtle or frogfish, you won't be able to illuminate a whole wreck
Good points. I was thinking of putting together a dual flood setup to try to cover more of the frame and lighten up shadows.
As someone else suggested, I can always shoot a whiteboard at depth and color balance in post. That would be a way to get around the light loss and noise issue.
There is no option for raw or compressed in the Protunes modes, at least from what I have seen in the menus, but I only upgraded the Hero2 this morning.
As for the shaking, I was just hand holding the underwater housing with no bracket, etc.
Protune mode on is only a raw style format, in settings you have the option for Protune on/off with on you get the raw flat image at 35Mbps with off you get the regular modes your used to in the GoPro at around 15Mbps with all the auto image and colour settings done in camera. There are currently no WB option in the latest hero2 firmware and its meant to be a locked wb in this mode. As I dont have my hero2 cameras atm I haven't tested this firmware underwater properly yet.
There is no mechanical focusing or zoom its all fixed, its the same as if you get a photo in 11mpx and then crop from 3840x2880 the central 1920x1080 pixels. The medium mode will use a larger crop off the sensor and the wide uses the full width of the sensor but crops the top and bottom to get the 16:9 video mode. The actual methods of how these are done and what type of interpolation or binning is used in each mode is unknown publicly in the gopro cameras.
I use the tray by Snake River Prototyping, I had tried a few DIY options and before that had ok results but with a proper 2 handed tray it does make it much easier to shoot steadier uw video. Holding the underwater housing in hand with no other mount is almost impossible to shoot steady video with gopro, I did a trip to Thailand and didnt bring have the tray yet or even my DIY monopod so the footage was all over the place lol and I wont be going away without the tray again.
I noticed a funny thing on my last filter test dives that using the filter with my video lights did correct the WB issues using the normal video modes +filters and awb at deeper levels 25-28m (non protune) then when I turned the lights off the wb remained much better. This will be in my video but I just need to get a bit of protune footage to finish it off to see how that works. Surprisingly the AWB does a pretty good job dealing with the extra light using this image as in the examples below both with my 2x Sola 500 photos on and filters including just a clear lens as they are labeled.
Not that you would deliberately use a filter and lights in a cave but I am surprised by the results and its very hard to tell any of the shots apart when using the lights in complete darkness. The shots outside I think did better with the filters on then without when using the lights and none of these shots have had any software correction all just as they came from the cameras. The last 2 pics show a bit more of a red tint with filters but this could easily be corrected in post so I wouldn't say you have cant use filters and lights combined.
Same as this video I made a while back with lights and swcy urpro filter at very shallow levels at less then 5m max depth.
Im not saying you should use lights and a filter combined but its not something you absolutely shouldn't do, and from the videos where I never turned on the lights the AWB had more issues then when I did turn them on and then off. With no filter though as soon as the lights went off so does the any colour but the AWB was helped greatly to set itself better using filter after the lights where used.
Once I do some more Protune testing I will upload all of my test footage.
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and going by the comments most hate the sounds lol. It does show quite well how the modes do compare to each other but sorry for the sounds. Maybe I need to redo it but I will make something like this with a better scene when I get the hero 3 camera.
