Marty Cerven
Contributor
In the 2 you dont get the option for cam raw so its not quite as big a benefit for UW use, also it tends to get a bit noisy compared to the black and black plus especially in lower light. If using protune on the hero2 you will need to add software noise reduction to most clips but in the black's the only time I have had to is when shooting in outside in very low light. Diving wise as can be seen in my truk lagoon video above there is very little noise considering the depths but shooting the hero2 in protune got quite a bit noisy in regular daylight diving at around 15-20m when using protune and I shot a black beside it with no noticeable noise. Without cam raw though the main underwater advantage of having a stable white balance is lost and so the extra noise and workload may not be worth it for a fairly minor end gain in image quality especially if you going to be viewing it on yt where its re compressed to lower bitrates. Grading footage with random white balance fluctuations is pretty tricky and results will still not be so great and why I dont use auto white balance for any of my underwater or even above water use anymore.
I dont use this as Id prefer to set frame rate myself and its not that hard to see with your own eyes when its too dark to shoot in 60p, I do like the battery life in the plus much more and 2.7k narrow is an interesting option to have but otherwise there isnt much between the 2 and I will be using eith regular blacks or plus though when I need a longer run time the plus would be my choice for sure.
