Go Pro 4 Silver

[COMPASS DIVERS]

You definitely need a red filter from 3-5 metres!

 

[Ricardo V.]

You can adjust width in post processing too... you can reduce the width down from wide to medium or even narrow... to some degree. You can also crop and pan a shot. What can’t be done is go from narrow to wide.

Now to your question. Wide allows capturing something big like a wreck, much better than using medium or narrow. It offer a more suitable or favorable field of view if you wish to include divers, wildlife if present, and any action going on. Narrow views are more suitable for macro or when wanting to close in on someone like interviewing a person or showing some specific that otherwaise will distract viewers from what you want them to see.

I’m a macro photo enthusiast and enjoy capturing little critters. Viewers like the small things too. I find it fascinating as we can’t ussually see details unless they are captured using macro tools.

If you truly wish to share a sense of what a particular diving experience ended up being like, of feeling like your underwater, of being included or giving an impression to any viewer that you are there, it has to be using a wide setting, something that offers perspective, scale and position is space that viewers can relate to and place themselves into the action or to draw someone into a video. Narrow usually does not have as much potential for this as compared to wide.

The GoPro camera has a superwide setting which I would not recommend for a beginner. It’s worth exploring and it can be finessed in post processing with proper computer software, but it can also be just too wide where it has a counterproductive effect making scenes distorted, too far away to enjoy or with off putting proportions along the sides as compared to what is happening in the center of the screen.

Hope this helps.

Ricardo

 

[Ricardo V.]

Almost forgot to address one thing you touched on...You can also correct fisheye distortions using your computer if you find them to be too much.
Here is a link to GoPro Studio info on how to get that done. https://gopro.com/help/articles/How...the-Distortion-Fisheye-Effect-in-GoPro-Studio

Ricardo

 

[spoolin01]

Thanks, I agree with your thoughts on the appeal of video for capturing the experience, it's most of why I've largely abandoned still photography. I'm just never going to spend any time with post processing hours of video, or want to duplicate the storage requirements, so I'm grateful for the camera FOV setting options of the newer GoPros. Just doing some quick testing from my desk when I got the Silver 4, it didn't look like Narrow was a great deal narrower than Wide but it clearly rectified the image (not that it was truly objectionable to begin with either). My main wish for GoPro all these years has been for them to make one with considerably narrower angle, or even better a zoom lens. The Narrow setting is not nearly that yet, but to me worth the image improvement. Most of my video is just reef cruising, some spearfishing, and I've always been disappointed at how distant everything looks with the fish eye lens. Fine for overall impression, and things that can't move away quickly, but not good for pleasing capture of most reef fish.

 

[joe comproni]

I just got back from the keys, the diving was good but using the camera for the 1st time was awful. The camera I thought was on video was on time lapse 3 sec. When I watched the video it was all fast forward all I could do was laugh. I put the camera on video while I was diving I kept on going back to time lapse, another dive gone again all I could do at that point is laugh. So my daughter went to the go pro app and got the camera on the proper video setting and my last dive was on video setting have not watched it yet I will let you know. Is there any way I can slow those 2 dives down from time lapse? I did not have time to get educated on the unit before I left so that was my fault but I would like to slow the 2 videos down.