Hero3 Black testing underwater

[yarik83]

Unfortunately I do not have a thin hood. I have a 6 mil hood for my 5 mil suit but can't use it in warm water. If anything my head always get hot during warm water dives so I personally prefer diving without it. Last time I was at blue grotto and devils den caverns everyone in my scuba club was shivering with their 3 mil suit combos and I was pouring sweat. Halfway through the dive I just pulled my hood back.

I'll have to look into some sort of skin suit hood thingie. Goal is to not have to think about it at all while diving.

---------- Post added December 1st, 2012 at 07:37 PM ----------

can someone please explain me why SRP charges an arm and a leg for their red lens filters? There are kits which allow you to replace go-pro glass permanently for $14. Most red lens filters go for $30 ish... so why does SRP charge $75+? seems a little steep if you ask me.

 

[Gombessa]

Well my black just arrived at the shop. It is going to be a couple weeks before I can play with it. I now have a combination of rigs to hold the black, the 2, and my intova. Hopefully in the next couple I weeks I can do a comparison in some very low light, a cave.

My LDS just got their shipment in today as well! So mine is charging up right now. The low light performance is hugely improved over my old FlipHD.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Unfortunately I do not have a thin hood. I have a 6 mil hood for my 5 mil suit but can't use it in warm water. If anything my head always get hot during warm water dives so I personally prefer diving without it. Last time I was at blue grotto and devils den caverns everyone in my scuba club was shivering with their 3 mil suit combos and I was pouring sweat. Halfway through the dive I just pulled my hood back.

I'll have to look into some sort of skin suit hood thingie. Goal is to not have to think about it at all while diving.

can someone please explain me why SRP charges an arm and a leg for their red lens filters? There are kits which allow you to replace go-pro glass permanently for $14. Most red lens filters go for $30 ish... so why does SRP charge $75+? seems a little steep if you ask me.

You can make a basic chinstrap for the headband and not need to worry about a hood, thats what I use when wearing it head mounted as I only wear a hood when are water is very cold.

Regarding SRP pricing on filters they use URPro filters which are as good as you can get for underwater use and I would rather pay extra for a quality filter then waste my money on something that has poor optical qualities or filter performance. Just have a look at land based filters you can get a cheap and nasty generic off ebay but many people would much rather pay the extra to get the best performance they can get, still considering URPro are generally regarded as the best with only magic filters being a close competitor.

Good luck finding either brand at much less then what SRP sells the URPro range for

All other brands selling URPro filters are at pretty much the same price as SRP, you can buy generics or copies quite a bit cheaper but like I said you get what you pay for.

Here is the Magic Filters price list in pounds so the 55mm at £50 is $80 usd
M A G I C - F I L T E R S

Not sure which ones your talking about when you say most go for $30ish as neither of the 2 highest regarded and proven brands are close to that price and they are the only ones I would realistically consider, unless that extra $50 was way over my budget. But I would likely also find a cheaper hobby then underwater video if that was the case lol. I spend close to $50 on a round trip to the beach and back in fuel so its all relative and a single boat charter dive is $60+ so its not the cheapest hobby but I gladly pay what I need to as I think its well worth the costs for the enjoyment I get from it.

I have tried most of the cheaper options so far and have yet to see anything that matches the URPro range so I stick with them, some are closer then others but in the end if you buy 4 $30 filters that may or may not be good enough for what you want you would have been better of just getting the proven brand from the beginning.

Much like saying why would you buy a video light from Light and Magic at $350+ when you can get another for under $50 or why would you buy a Canon 5D mkIII for $3000 when some other camera on ebay is selling for $50. Not everyone wants the cheapest product you can possibly get if it means sacrificing quality, but that's all up to the individual and that's the reason why you have so many options to choose from to cater for people of most budgets nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything.

GoPro is bringing underwater video to many more people which is a great thing and the main reason I started using them, not because I couldn't afford a full underwater camera setup but I was more scared about destroying a $3000+ camera with a rookie error hoping to rather learn from such mistakes at cheaper price. I wanted something smaller and more compact too which the GoPro can do and at the time I couldnt justify spending 3 times the price of a camera just for the housing alone without all the extras, this is when talking $1000+ cameras with housings close to triple that price and then you need lenses and everything else so the $400 gopro ($300 for my first one) sure was a much more attractive way to get into UW video for me and many others.

Though its a cheap starting point I always have been looking for ways to get the most out of it and many of these things arent exactly cheap but nothing is overly expensive if you compare it to how much you'd be paying for everything on a larger setup.

 

[yarik83]

My Bonica Snapper HDDV costs me a pretty penny. Between all the doo dads my camera setup is worth about $1,100 USD. My red lens filter costs $30 but that number got me spoiled over the years. Many manufacturers charge a lot more so I see how that number could be more. ;-( That does not make me feel any better but ohh well.

I chose not to use dedicated video dive lights. I have 2 big blue 250 lights attached to my setup and obviously they are not the best thing in the world but they do a lot better than no lights. I have long struggled with decision to buy dive lights and I just can't justify the cost. It seems that it would not be a good way to spend my money considering that 99.9% of my divers are always in sunlight in tropical region. I live and dive in Florida and also in Caribbean so it is rarely a "need" to have dive lights.

I keep watching youtube videos and have to admit all the go-pro fanatics have unlocked mysteries of how to mount the camera. One interesting thing they have done is flipped mounting locations. That gives me a lot to work with actually. My main camera is a little front heavy so I will probably have to mount gopro a little set back to balance that out.

My next big scuba trip is March 26-April 2 to Cozumel, Mexico so I have plenty of time to iron out the kinks before then. My scuba shop teaches during winter also which will give me ample opportunity to experiment with setup by filming students.

Marty, in your experience, have you found benefits in using snap on filter vs flip up filter? I figure it might be a little tricky snapping the filter on to my head mounted camera so wondering if I should wait for backscatter to make hero 3 filter.

 

[Marty Cerven]

With the old gopro dive housing main thing I didn't like with the bs flip is that it made it a complete pain to open the housing as the bs flip blocked some access to the housing latch with it installed. It needed a tool to loosen it so design wise I wasnt a huge fan, colours out of the magic filter are very nice at the shallower end but I prefer the URPro working that extra 5-10m deeper then the magic filter on the flip. The flip is also limited to just one filter as is the hero2 dive housing SO by SRP so overall I really like the Hero3 blurfix3 snap on as it lets me use just about any filter I want easily both above and below the water. This gives the benefits of the original blurfix and great choice of filters but also let you clip it on and off very quickly as well as threading filters to it if needed.

Inserting it is very easy as is removal and though i haven't tried any wet filters headmounted, I prefer the regular blurfix non removable filter for that as you dont have any bubble issues that you may get with a wet filter option for head mounting.

Bubbles from your reg may get trapped inside a wet filter but as I haven't tried a wet filter head mounted yet its more a basic theory then something I have actually observed. When I tried all the dive housing wet filters they all needed clearing after first going underwater if they were already mounted as you go under without none of them avoiding bubbles. Its the one main negative of a wet filter, in regular use you wont get bubbles in there after the initial submersion point but head mounted with the bubbles hitting the camera with most breaths it could be a bit of an issue with any wet mount options.

With filters I'm not just saying because some charge more then others they must be better but in my use so far nothing has really matched up for end image quality and colour performance of the URPro or Magic brands. I haven't tried all generic filters as there are hundreds around but of the half dozen or so others I have they haven't quite matched up to those 2, at the main point of colour correction and that is the quality of the colours and overall image quality through the entire frame.

 

[yarik83]

My filter for bonica is what could be considered a wet filter. Usually what I do is I just in the water, get situated, my group goes down and while dropping I equalize and check my gear, computer etc etc. Once on the bottom I untwist my wet filter, let the air bubbles out...snap the filter back on. Very first time i had to do it I thought it was a huge chore but years ago when hours of my footage were ruined due to bubble being captured in hours of footage. That straightened me out right really quick. Now I feel deprived if I don't check my filter. And at the end of the day it turned from a chore to regular equipment check.

Here is one of cheaper filters I was talking about. Now I know I know... you get what you pay for... but footage does not look that bad... (even though they digitally mastered it to make it look better than SRP stuff).

GoPro Accessories - GoPro Lenses & Filters, GoPro Microphone

[video=youtube;vNoQHMEh00Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNoQHMEh00Y [/video]

[video=youtube;nT4BD7h5ePM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT4BD7h5ePM[/video]

 

[yarik83]

Here is how I mounted my cameras so far. I will experiment with camera settings and head mount over next few months to see what works best.

 

[MarkOfInsanity]

Newbie GoPro Hero3 Black user here. I am about to get the H3B, and will take it diving (first to Belize in a few months). I have no legacy gear (for better and worse). I've searched the interwebs and found a lot about various red filters, and it seems the new SRP gear makes the most sense. BUT...I am just not understanding how to think about the BlurFix3 SO vs. the URPRO Cyan (CY) filter. Both are on the same page of SRP's website, both are $77. Do I need to buy both? Sorry for the newbie question, thanks for your expertise!
Mark

 

[Imprint]

This isn't so much a post about how the Hero 3 performs under water more about my recent experience last week.

I just got back from a live aboard on the Great barrier reef last week. I took my trusty hero 2 and my mate took his brand new hero 3 black edition.

My Hero 2 worked flawlessly, his new Hero 3 however was nothing but a hassle. It worked fine the first day of our trip, but from then on all the camera did was record the first few minutes of footage then corrupt the rest of the footage on the card, to make matters worse his camera would stop working once we went below 20metres. It would lock up and not turn on/off until the battery was removed. There were a few other people on the boat with brand new hero 3's and the same thing happened for them once they started going deeper than 20m. I'm not sure if it was just a weird coincidence but 3/4 Hero 3 cameras on the boat all suffered the same problem.

For my friend it was just from bad to worse, on the second last day of our trip, his case flooded below 20m and killed his camera, we sat it in a bowl of rice for a couple of days but it was too far gone.

http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/196314_10151137021455965_1551334470_n.jpg

It was disappointing for my friend as he didn't really get any footage at all, hopefully GoPro will be helpful in trying to replace the camera.

 

[sharkshark]

Oh, god, that's miserable... Sorry for your friend.

This isn't so much a post about how the Hero 3 performs under water more about my recent experience last week.

I just got back from a live aboard on the Great barrier reef last week. I took my trusty hero 2 and my mate took his brand new hero 3 black edition.

My Hero 2 worked flawlessly, his new Hero 3 however was nothing but a hassle. It worked fine the first day of our trip, but from then on all the camera did was record the first few minutes of footage then corrupt the rest of the footage on the card, to make matters worse his camera would stop working once we went below 20metres. It would lock up and not turn on/off until the battery was removed. There were a few other people on the boat with brand new hero 3's and the same thing happened for them once they started going deeper than 20m. I'm not sure if it was just a weird coincidence but 3/4 Hero 3 cameras on the boat all suffered the same problem.

For my friend it was just from bad to worse, on the second last day of our trip, his case flooded below 20m and killed his camera, we sat it in a bowl of rice for a couple of days but it was too far gone.

http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/196314_10151137021455965_1551334470_n.jpg

It was disappointing for my friend as he didn't really get any footage at all, hopefully GoPro will be helpful in trying to replace the camera.