Need rec for a tray as well storage and battery for liveaboard

[Satrekker]

Afternoon everyone. I'm in need of some SB expertise. I've got a Hero 5 black that I've been using on a telescoping UK Pro 40. It does the job for the most part, but I'm fortunate to be heading to Cocos Island here in a few weeks for some liveaboard diving and would like to substantially improve the quality of my videos, so I'm thinking about a tray. A few questions:

1. I think I'd like to switch to a tray for better and more stable video. Any recommendations? I use the backscatter flip down filters with my GoPro.

2. I've got 2 batteries at the moment for the trip, so I think that should be sufficient. I can have one charging while I'm diving the other one, and the surface intervals leave plenty of time to chill out and change everything over. Do these sound sufficient?

3. How much storage should I take? Any recommendations on how to shoot? Time/resolution... etc.. Currently I have a 128GB micro sd and a 64GB micro sd. There will be 7 days of diving, and I'd estimate 24 or so dives. I really don't want to carry a laptop just to offload the video from the cards, so I'm looking for options. I haven't checked to see if the Aggressor Okeanos has a computer to download and burn a dvd, but I would probably prefer to have a backup plan even if one is available.

Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

 

[Satrekker]

Okay, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the Snake River Prototyping Tray and I added the torch arms. I probably won't use them much, but there will be a couple of night dives, and I'd like to get some white tip reef shark action on video! Thanks to the Chairman. I went off of his recommendation from another thread that I had found. Now I just need to get storage capacity, resolution, and batteries squared away.

 

[ReefHound]

Get more memory cards. We could find the storage for a minute of video at various resolutions and framerates, analyze what settings you might use, do a whole bunch of math and get a good estimate. But storage cards are cheap, especially relative to the cost of your trip. For many, Cocos would be once-in-a-lifetime. I wouldn't want to go there and then have to be extra judicious in what I shoot and be culling bad videos in-camera because I underestimated my memory needs.

 

[outofofficebrb]

I have been using a GoPro for a few years now. I would get a minimum of 4 batteries and account for 1 for each dive as a worst-case scenario if you leave it on the entire dive. Liveaboards aside, in case you cannot charge them for a variety of reasons, they will be right there ready for you if you do 4-5 tanks a day. Sometimes there isn't a convenient place to charge them on day boats or at dive shops or you won't have time to run back to the room, etc. I keep them in a dry bag or in a Pelican micro case.

I like to take video, up to 10-15 seconds at a time, and then pull stills from them as photos. You would then also have video if you want it. You can do longer stretches of video depending on the memory you have. I usually review the video at the end of the day and pull the stills off using my phone and the GoPro app. I save it there as a backup if I can't or don't want to bring my computer out of security or extra weight. In case anything floods or is lost, I'm not completely SOL. As an extra backup, if I find anything awesome, I will AirDrop it to my travel companion or SO to share as well.

Get more than one memory card so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket, or in this case, all your amazing dive video/photos in one memory card if it floods or corrupts, etc. As @ReefHound mentioned, it's a once in a lifetime trip for many and you want to have ample space!

 

[ronscuba]

If you do not want to bring a laptop, get a portable hard drive and check to see what kind of computer they have on the liveaboard. Backup footage to the portable hard drive at the end of the day.

You should be viewing your footage on a computer screen everyday so you can see what came out good, bad, adjust camera settings and technique to improve on the next day.

 

[Satrekker]

Thanks for the feedback! I've ordered 2 more batteries, so that will give me a total of 4. I will take my phone and ipad with me. That way I'll be able to review some of the footage if I want and even pull some photos. I will look into some type of portable hard drive solution to take with me, but I may reconsider and take a laptop. I ended up picking up 2 more 128gb cards, so with 3 of them and 1 64 gb card I've got about 14 hours of video storage at 2.7k at 60fps. I think this should be enough.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

 

[large_diver]

My GoPro travel scheme - 4 batteries. Although you can usually re-charge between dives, makes sure you are 100% covered.if doing 5 dives/day

I also have the SRP tray - very happy with it.

I have been using memory cards - I essentially bring 1 32GB card per day of diving (plus a few extras) and use a separate card for each day. This provides plenty of storage and also provides some level of risk mgmt, since a flood would only affect that day's footage.

I've started shooting 2.7k at 60 fps recently after using 1080/60 for the past few years......now that I have a new desktop computer with the processing power (and 4k display) to handle the file size. We'll see if my 32GB storage solution works when I go on a trip in a few weeks...although this should only be 3-4 dives per day.

My personal preference is to not start processing or looking at footage until I get home. When I am on a trip I want to chill out, nap, read a book between dives. Plus, waiting until you get home to process lets me re-live everything after I am back in civilization.

 

[Hoag]

In addition to having extra batteries, it is not a bad idea to get a silver "Sharpie" and put your initials on your batteries. I was on a liveaboard once and I went most of the week trying to figure out why my charger was only doing a partial charge on my batteries. I would put one in before I went to bed, and when I went to put a fresh battery into my camera, it typically was only charged to about 50%.

After a few days, I realized that there were two of us who had the same camera. My friend thought that it was his charger & batteries so he never gave it a second thought that he had fresh batteries every-time. It wasn't till he realized that he hadn't even unpacked his charger and he had been using my recharged batteries all week that we figured it out.

By simply putting my initials on my batteries & charger, I would have had fully charged batteries every time i wanted them.

 

[AZNetEng]

As others have said... more cards.

I use the Flip5 as well. So far still on a stick. Ill get a tray, probably in the off season this year.