Roatan With GoPro Hero3 Black X2

[yarik83]

I guess it is that time for shameless self promotion. Me and my dive club had an incredible week of diving in Roatan, Honduras in mid August. I have had some time to edit 387 gigabytes of scuba related footage and 37 gigabytes of other stuff that happened during the trip. All in all we had 17 dives including 1 night dive and 1 wreck dive. Most other dives were walls and or semi-walls ranging from 15ft -90ft. Deepest I got was 106 which was my deepest dive yet. I am not a big fan of deep diving so this was deliberate to ease myself into pushing boundaries of personal comfort levels. I am also not a big fan of night dives and in retrospect I would rather have dove 4 day dives that day. Visibility was variable. 100-200ft but clarity was 25-100ft with most of it around mid 30's. I have not looked at my dive computer since but I was the only person to dive with a wet suit in my group until folks started coming back complaining about thermoclines.

Place: Turqoise Bay Resort Inn. 3 dives per day on boat called Kassandra with captain JT and dive master Nelson. Company that did the scuba trips was called Subway Watersports.
Daily treck consisted of having to climb to room #17 about 25 vertical meters up gorgeously landscaped stairs surrounded by sights and sounds that will not be soon forgotten. I give this trip a 9.5/10. Only complaint was that someone kept taking down the hammocks grrr.

My goal with videography was to use both of my GoPro Hero3 Black edition cameras with PolarPro filters. Unfortunately (for them) folks traveling in my group purchased gopros at the airport and there were no filters available. After some persuasion I sold one of my filters and they traded it between them during the week. Essentially I dove with 1 gopro except for 2 dives. I wanted to benchmark filming in 2.7K with protune on (no filter) but I have yet to sort through that footage so can't report quite yet.

All filming done was in 1080 60fps with protune off. Goal is to create 3 zip line videos (done). 1 trip video (done) and 17 scuba videos. At this time I made 3 and I think I might have to curtail total number of videos to 10 but we'll see.

After I came back I ordered a glass version of polarpro so now I have one of each (acrylic and glass). glass looks more orange which is awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALpLgibRlIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gftDOTgR1nk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzI1VWECUSQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULiYp_LdHIY

If you are interested in seeing my zip line video done at Jungle Top Zipline Adventure please click on my signature and it will lead you straight to my channel.

 

[Reecard]

Nice videos, what video setting did you use: wide, medium, or narrow?

 

[EL Pistoffo]

Those were all really great videos. You did all that filming with a pole mount? If so, your pretty good handling that pole (no pun intended,lol).
I'll be doing a dive in Roatan in a couple weeks. Really looking forward to it now.

 

[yarik83]

I have a 2 hander tray mount that was made for bonica camera. I brought a pole with me to specifically shoot zipline videos but I did have it on 1 of my dives to videotape myself jumping into water and have a couple odd sideways shots. A traveling member of the group was checking his video footage on day 2 and expressed concern about shakyness. I volunteered my trusty pvc pipe and he used it for remainder of the trip. You can see him swim around with a midland xtc camera around goliath groupers using my pole.

To answer other question. Here are my settings:

Default 1080p 60fps wide angle full auto settings. I do not use protune. That being said and because of above mentioned circumstances I did test it in 2.7K with protune on. To be honest... now that I actually glanced at it... it is not that much of an improvement. It gives slightly larger angle so I get about 1.5 feet extra all around the frame but because of fish eye lens it is being wasted in my opinion.

Roatan is a wonderful place PROVIDED you umm... do not stray afar. Perfect example... we needed cash so hotel shuttle got us to french quarter. As we went to the grocery store while waiting for the shuttle some guy got into an accident on a motor bike so next thing you know a taxi came up and they shoved the guy into it (assuming to get him to the hospital). Traffic is crazy... traffic rules... umm... forget about those. Roads are absolutely insane. Up and down left right left right and pot holes are like 9 feet deep in places.

Next time I go there (summer of 2014)... I will totally stick around the hotel except for zip lining. I think I have explored everything I cared to explore. Diving is incredible. Island life... just stick to the hotel.

 

[EL Pistoffo]

Yarik, did you see any picture difference when you had Protune on? Why did you originally decide to not use Protune?

Yes, the traffic in Latin America is crazy. There are no rules to driving there.

 

[yarik83]

I bought my hero 3's right when they came out and I video tape pretty much daily. I have benchmarked my cameras from here to kingdom come and there were several decisive factors.

#1 Protune eats a ton of card space so with 32gb cards which limits my filming capacity.
#2 Protune requires setting your camera into that mode which is in itself a hassle.
#3 Results that you get from protune are barely perceivable to an average person.
#4 Protune is a one way trip. It is very hard to recover footage if it is bad. At least when you shoot with default settings you can force software to apply tweaks. Protune locks settings which it things are right. Granted most of the time it succeeds... I still think the jury is out of that one.
#5 I get pretty darn good result with default settings.

Let me take a small clip and upload it on youtube for your analysis. I will link it here as soon as its done processing.

---------- Post added September 9th, 2013 at 10:29 PM ----------

I guess I should add an asterisk to my previous comment.

Protune requires following methodology:
#1 set up your camera
#2 shoot in that format
#3 import to cineform
#4 export from cineform
#5 apply protune filter in cineform if applicable.

Or I can just shoot with a gopro without having to twiddle with any settings and import it to my timeline and splice and dice as I want.

As we speak I am making a short clip to demonstrate protune quality. Unfortunately on that dive there was no red filter (because I sold it) but this will still give a good enough indication of what I am talking about.

---------- Post added September 9th, 2013 at 11:50 PM ----------

Err. I stand corrected.

3 min 16 sec video in 2.7K at 30fps yields a 64 gigabyte video clip. Can't upload that to youtube. grrr.

Well and not you see limitations of modern technology. Which sort of brings me back full circle.

My plasma tv is 1080. Youtube allows up to 1080 with alleged resolution of up to 4K. Emphasis is on alleged... good luck seeing that. Average streaming capacity of cable internet will default users to 360p to 720p. 1080 will come back choppy or with buffer issues but if you let if buffer, majority of people will still view video on a small screen so cramming that many pixels into the video is redundant because 1080 shrunk down will look just as stunning as 4K shrunk to same size. When I watch my videos on my plasma tv via apple tv... quality is superb so I think I will stick to 1080p for a long time.

As for protune and 2.7K... so much for space efficiency. After tinkering with it a bit I figured out that corel exports to full resolution unless you set compression ratios on videos which in turn affects video quality so it is a catch 22. You film in high resolution and export in low(er) resolution...or at the very least if you export it with "on par" compression... output looks virtually identical to 1080 quality which makes all this extra work something of a wasted effort.

In other words this is even less of a motivation for me to mess with protune.

Having tried it... blues look too blue. Dark shades look too dark. It is almost as it it reduces brightness and contrast by a preset number while bringing out vibrant and very defined lines. Almost like it extracts every single think in the picture into its own layer. I think that is waaaay too much thinking required.

At the end of the day only thing I can do is to give it apples to apples benchmark which I can't do. Now that I have acrylic and glass filter... they are slightly different shades so that will not be a fair benchmark. Until I get those things resolved I will continue shooting without protune.

 

[DreamBanger]

Those are some nice videos. I always wanted one of those cameras to record myself. Seeing as you have the gopro 3 black, is it better than the contour model? I tried to do a bit of research but still cant decide which one to buy. Kinda leaning towards the gopro tho.

 

[yarik83]

It would be a fallacy on my part to compare the 2 cameras and rule one over other because I do not have contour camera to compare. Do not quote me on this but I think, I think contour cameras went bankrupt? That being said let's look at the broader picture.

Why do people chose gopro over contour or midland or sony or intova or whatever else is out there? What is it so special about gopro that is not so special about other cameras?

And the answer is simple... people feel passionate about one brand over other.

Let's say for sake of argument that all of the above mentioned cameras come with identical settings... why would a person pick A vs B vs C vs D camera? Consumer is looking for something that they could jerry rig to something else. Ok fine... all of those cameras have mounting systems but why is gopro chosen over others? I think it is because gopro actually listens to its customer base and gopro in many ways allows after market companies to twiddle with its own business model.

Perfect example. Right now most expensive model of midland XTC is equivalent of gopro hero 5 years ago. And the funny thing is that you can walk into a lot of sports stores or even places like walmart and best buy and some form of gopro competitor has its own little shelf etc etc... but people still reach for the gopro even though its twice as expensive. Every time competition upgrades, so does gopro.

Hero 4 model will be absolutely insane. Based on specs on A9 processor it should be pushing 120fps at 1080 and 240fps at 720.... miles ahead of the competition.

But as for your choice of camera... whatever you choose... there will always be someone out there with a better camera. That is inevitable. If I can get 80% performance of a $2,000 camera setup spending only $400... I am one happy camper.

 

[DreamBanger]

Thx, that was informative.

 

[yarik83]

I have finished editing all of my videos so will start uploading them. 18 total. 3 listed above and here is 3 more for your pleasure.

[video=youtube;QxUUsod7VWY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxUUsod7VWY[/video]
[video=youtube;wglxEDVqy78]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wglxEDVqy78[/video]
[video=youtube;EXj-Tl7CDEg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXj-Tl7CDEg[/video]