I thought I knew my wide angle lens well enough.

[yarik83]

Apparently young grasshopper has still a lot to learn. I had incredible dive at weeki wachee yesterday benchmarking and testing my goprohero3 black cameras.

I wanted to do apples to apples to apples so bear with me.

Setup:
Bonica HDDV 1080 30fps. Bonica wide angle lens. Bonica red lens filter.
Gopro Hero 3 Black X2. 1080 30fps. Polarpro red lens filters.

Wide angle lens opens incredible range of opportunities to a videographer but I never had to compare it against anything. On this dive it was a huge overkill. Let me demonstrate why.


Never mind the fact that lower image is not autowhite balanced but have a look at top row (both gopros with red lens filter, no protune, auto white balance) vs lower row autowhite balance bonica red filter.

First thing you will notice is what is captured. All 3 things were pulled from 3 simultaneous videos shot from same location mounted to same very 2 hander tray. Wide angle lens in this case acts like a strong pair of binoculars which is an overkill. On the other hand if this was a shark swimming there it would have been absolutely worth it.

This dive was used to test all 3 camera functions (had bonica for years) and it was very interesting to see what happens when you add lenses and filters and stuff like that. I knew that wide angle lens works in mysterious ways but never had 2 side by side images to compare.

Here is another really cool example. Notice how gopros are showing everything more or less as eyes can see giving depth into the shot. By comparison wide angle lens captures stuff on foreground and takes entire background and zooms it making shot double focus on 2 locations blending them into one area. Granted this is captured off moving image but you can see what its doing.


Unfortunately this was only a 1 tank dive so I did not get to try every bench mark I set out to do but at the very least I has a very thorough benchmark of polar pro filters. I will be uploading part 2 of my brutal polar pro review as soon as humanly possible (editing other stuff at the moment). Lots of good and lots of bad to be said. Given that I actually own 2 filters I will be giving hands on examples, provide comments etc etc.

 

[Interceptor121]

Maybe your wide angle lens is crap?

 

[yarik83]

It's the same wide angle lens I have been using for a long time, I just typically never film distance shots. Most of my stuff is like 0.5-2 meters away at most.

 

[ronscuba]

It's the same wide angle lens I have been using for a long time, I just typically never film distance shots. Most of my stuff is like 0.5-2 meters away at most.

Although the GoPro does great for super wide angle shots, it's kind of limiting. Scenery, wrecks, people, reef. Hard to get good shots of animal life. Most will not let you get too close and those that will are often too small for the GoPro field of view.

Kind of funny. For years, I wanted to shoot wider and wider. W/A lenses often cost so much. Now, we get super W/A for cheap and I want narrower. Guess you always want what you don't have or I have to start diving W/A destinations.

 

[Interceptor121]

The GoPro is a camera for memories. For real video you need to be able to shoot wide-medium-close-super close a camera with a fixed lens will never be able to do this
For years people considered 30mm behind a dome a wide angle in video now all of a sudden even 24mm seem to be narrow since videos have been taken with DSLR
For me a serious compact 24mm with a mini-dome covers 80% of cases and a diopter is really needed for 1:1 macro
A 100 degrees lens is only for large wrecks or close ups with whale sharks
In video you use mostly natural light so it is not an issue to step back a little
The gopro however is great for time lapse

 

[yarik83]

I am currently editing my weeki wachee videos and gopro footage came out spectacular. Downside is that stuff looks quite far away but still stunning. Weeki Wachee spring is crystal clear so you can see for 100+ meters and still see in perfect clarity. I got certified there in 2007 when they were doing cave explorations and this is my first time back since 2007. I will be posting my video(s) hopefully this upcoming week. It was such a good day it's not even funny. I kayaked for 4 hours in crystal clear river and then dove at the lagoon AND there was a mermaid girl practicing so I got her on cameras too ehehehe.

As a whole my trip was to test out my polar pro filters and going forward I think I am going to keep using my bonica for closeup stuff, use 1 gopro for wider angle stuff and point it straight. I will take my 2nd gopro and point it either up or down as needed.

Another interesting thing I noticed... after my manatee trip and weeki wachee trip is that side by side gopros produce different footage. They are only spaced apart like 30 centimeters or so (1 foot) but the way they capture shading is completely different. But this is all a part of exploration process so eventually I will have it all figured out.

 

[Interceptor121]

I was doing some timelapse tests and I got to accidentally take a shot with my camera on top of the gopro
I found out that in essence the field of view is the same than my Inon UWL105 so around 100-105 degrees
I then took the fisheye lens and shot a comparison and it is apparent that the gopro really only gets to around 100 degrees as the other pictures are much wider
Still great but is not as wide as it seems so your bonica must be really narrow