HC1 tutorial

[paulpost]

Hi to everybody, I just bought a Sony hc1, I was afraid that pretty soon it will not be available anywhere. My question addresses to the more fortunate ones that had the chance to use one u/w, can I use it just out of the box in full automatic?
My housing is a MPK-TRV1 and is big enough to accommodate the HC1, but do not have WB control, I have zoom, focus and on and off controls and I dive in south Florida waters (blue waters).
Thank you

 

[diversteve]

You can use it in full auto. But the autofocus may "hunt" if you do. Switching to manual focus and shooting wide angle will prevent this.

Although last summer I used autofocus for effect, I was shooting reef sharks in bright blue water, with the autofocus on, it picked them up as blurs in the distance, and then locked on them as they got closer. Nice effect.

You'll need a red filter for your housing if it doesn't already have one.

I'll be shooting later this month and trying the suggestions found under "Improving Image Quality" in this review: http://www.hdvunderwater.com/EVO review.html
Paul(Wags) seems to be on the right track.

I've had problems when shooting up towards the surface where the camera seemed to oversaturate colors and yellow everything out - my old one did this also though.

There has been some discussion that if you power down the camera at depth and then start it up while pointing it at a w/b slate, it will white balance correctly. I haven't tried it yet.

 

[paulpost]

You can use it in full auto. But the auto focus may "hunt" if you do. Switching to manual focus and shooting wide angle will prevent this.

Although last summer I used auto focus for effect, I was shooting reef sharks in bright blue water, with the auto focus on, it picked them up as blurs in the distance, and then locked on them as they got closer. Nice effect.

You'll need a red filter for your housing if it doesn't already have one.

I'll be shooting later this month and trying the suggestions found under "Improving Image Quality" in this review: http://www.hdvunderwater.com/EVO review.html
Paul(Wags) seems to be on the right track.

I've had problems when shooting up towards the surface where the camera seemed to over saturate colors and yellow everything out - my old one did this also though.

There has been some discussion that if you power down the camera at depth and then start it up while pointing it at a w/b slate, it will white balance correctly. I haven't tried it yet.

Thank you Steve for your post, I have the Equinox filter mounted on my Kenko wide angle lens, what brand of wide angle lens do you use?
I hope that next weekend I'll go for a dive in Boynton area, I have a tip from Howarde, member of this board and I'll let you know how it went, on another hand how do you manage the editing, because I've tried to edit just a 9 min. clip and took 2hrs to render with U-lead 10+, lots of drop frames and pix-elation. As much as I can remember you use Vegas, don't you?
Paul

 

[diversteve]

Thank you Steve for your post, I have the Equinox filter mounted on my Kenko wide angle lens, what brand of wide angle lens do you use?

I don't use one.

I hope that next weekend I'll go for a dive in Boynton area, I have a tip from Howarde, member of this board and I'll let you know how it went, on another hand how do you manage the editing, because I've tried to edit just a 9 min. clip and took 2hrs to render with U-lead 10+, lots of drop frames and pix-elation. As much as I can remember you use Vegas, don't you?
Paul

Seems really excessive to me. Maybe your hardware needs upgrading? My last SD render was a 5min clip, it rendered in under 10 mins as I recall - to a WMV file. I use Vegas Movie Studio.