RocketGir1:
Hi there,
I'm headed to Bonaire in Decmeber, and I'm interested in purchasing an EWA-marine bag for my Canon GL-2. I'm attracted mostly by the price (~ $400); if I were loaded, I'd buy a full enclosure for my dSLR and take still pictures. What I want is the ability to take pretty good (but not fantastic) movies in shallow water. Has anyone had experience with this set-up? Do you have movies I could look at? What happens if the bag fails (it's only rated to 33', so this seems like a possibility)? Do you need lights to shoot decent video? If so, what do you recommend?
Thanks,
Kathy
Personally I'd be wary of putting my $2000+ camera in a $400 plastic bag and diving with it. If the bag fails you've got a couple seconds to get the battery off before it fuses to the camcorder or the electronics are damaged.
I shot hours of video last summer in Bonaire without lights, it's bright enough there that you can shoot to about 60-70' in most areas. You've got to use a red filter though, otherwise everything will be too blue. With a housed system, you can see the light fall-off in the viewfinder so you'll know when you're too deep.
The thing to realize about filming in Bonaire is that due to the structure of the island, most reef structures start at about 25-30' and drop to 120' or more. A lot of the bottom from shore to about 30' is mostly scattered coral and coral rubble.
So to film anything good you'll be close to the max depth of the bag, if it leaked you'd never get it out of the water in time. About the only place I can think of that would be shallow enough that's also interesting is the first couple of piers at Salt Pier - if I remember right the first one was about 15', the second maybe 25-30' and then it dropped off after that. With the new port rules, you've now got to pay for a DM-escorted trip there.
Also Bari Reef - I show it in my log as 15-70'. There was some fairly interesting stuff in about 5-10' of water near the trashed pier of the closed resort next door. I filmed a family of squid in really shallow water, but they won't be there in winter. The reef probably started at 20-25' or better there also.
There's also some shallow sites on the east side of Klein, we filmed turtles under rocks in 15-20' or less at Jerry's, but most boatdive profiles there start deeper and drift into the shallows at the end.
Bonaire Dive & Adventure/Fisheye Photo on Bonaire lists housed Hi-8 system rentals for $35/day on their site. I also heard maybe Buddy's does. It seemed to me that everybody shooting video that we saw had their own personal gear.
http://www.discoverbonaire.com/dive/photoshop.htm#Video Equipment Rental Rates
