Which video and housing for low viz?

[Indigo Scuba Africa]

I have spent the last 11 months using a Sea&Sea HD1200 compact digital camera to make videos of my husband's scuba diving students and customers. These videos I have uploaded onto youtube for them and burnt them to disk.

The camera has given me endless problems (buttons not working, frames being skipped etc) and it has now gone back to Sea&Sea. I don't hold out much hope of getting a replacement or having it fixed.

As I urgently need a replacement, decided to go for a Video camera that can shoot 1920 x 1080 hd video that can also take acceptable still photos that the students can show off to their friends on the internet (Facebook and our website).

We dive in murky green water ranging in viz from 4 - 10 metres max. Lots of particles in the water. Also pool sessions. Once a year we go to the Red Sea or Mozambique.

Please can someone make a recommendation of what video camera I should be looking at and housing? I am overwhelmed by the selection out there and based on the comments I have read over the past week on the internet, have an idea that the Canon HF200 with the Ikelite housing would be best for me.

Is the Canon HF200 right for "now" or should I be looking at HF20 or HFS20 (or 21s) and what is the difference? I am totally clueless.

And as I do a lot of shore entries, should I look at the Ikelite housing? I am concerned about what I have read on vignetting and the screen not opening up enough for me to see what I am shooting.

Am I thinking along the right track or should I consider some other camera? This is quite urgent now as we have a lot of summer customers who are dying to see themselves on film!

Hope you can help me please
!!!

Thank you!

 

[MikeMeagher]

I dive in the Puget Sound region of Washington state, USA. Very dirty, cold, and low light green waters here. Drysuit diving. I also dive in California, which has cold, temperate waters. Take a look at my youtube link shown below to see the type of videos that I've taken with my sony HC7 and Gates housing. I use a Fathom WP25 wide port, or sometimes a flat port with a closup diopeter, and also LED video lights. However my camera is a 1440 x 1080 not a 1920.

 

[Indigo Scuba Africa]

Hi Mike

Thanks so much for your feedback.

Awesome videos! I thought our water was green but yours is really green !! Our waters are between 12C(winter) and 19C (summer) and being thick skinned, can get by without a dry suit (although the older I get, the more I am considering it!)

I will check out the video camera and housing availability here (not sure you can even buy Gates housings in South Africa!). Everything is soo expensive here (e.g. the Canon HF200 video camera is R10 000 and divided by 7 = US $1428)!

Thanks once again!

Best wishes
Kate

 

[muckdiver@mac.com]

Take a look at SlashCAM: Digital Video online. It gives you to the tools to do camera comparisons. You can pick two camcorders and compare light levels (at 12 and 1200 LUX), plus some comparative charts/graphs. Check it out.

 

[diversteve]

Functionally there are two differences between the 3 models. All have the same electronics, same optics, and the same resolution. The difference is the internal storage capacity. The S21/S20 have some, the S200 uses external cards only.

HF-S21 Internal flash drive (64GB) or SD / SDHC memory cards (2 slots)
HF-S20 Internal flash drive (32GB) or SD / SDHC memory cards (2 slots)
HF-S200 SD / SDHC memory cards (2 slots)

The other difference is that the HF-S21 is the only model with a viewfinder.

I did a quick comparison of the three models (although I'm somewhat familiar with the Canon line - my buddy shoots an MF-200) using the comparison tool on the Canon website and that's the only differences I saw.

For reference, my buddy shot a week of footage on a liveaboard, shooting at least some footage on all 25 dives and almost filled 32GB. We carried a small external drive for storage/transfer purposes but never used it. A laptop with an SDHC card reader works well also. For AVCHD storage you'll need to buy Class 4 or better SDHC cards also.

Another consideration is that since all three are AVCHD format cameras, the computer requirements to edit AVCHD files are pretty extreme. You're going to want to have a Quad-core PC - or Mac equivalent with lots of memory and a good video card to get acceptable import and editing performance.

On the flipside add a Blu-Ray burner and you can offer your customers HD videos. You can also downgrade to SD (standard DVD) format or Youtube, AVI or any of the web formats as needed during editing. Since the source footage is HD, they'll be slightly better also.

My buddy edits on a machine with an Intel I7 Quad-core processor, 8GB of ram and a decent ($200?) video card. He doesn't have any problems.

One other consideration is that the Ikelite housings are series specific. This is due to the need to position the mechanical controls to allow access to the camera functions wherever the mfr. decides to put them. So their model #6096 will only support the three current models, the previous 3 models HFS10/11/100 used the #6095 housing.

It's a small consideration until you need to replace the camera in the future in case it floods - the housing will be immune to damage since it's mostly plastic/rubber glands but you may not be able to find a camera.

That's part of the appeal of electronic housings like the Amphibico, Light & Motion, Ocean Images etc since they're more future-proof - generally you just plug them in. And also partly why they generally cost a lot more.

fwiw, I've only owned electronic housings but I have handled several Ikelite and Gates housings - they're quality products.

 

[diversteve]

Should you be interested in the Gates this appears to be their only dealer:

BITTENBYSHARKS
Travel & Photographic
Claudia Pellarini-Joubert & Leon Joubert
202 Capel Lodge
184 Koelman Road, Ashlea Gardens
Pretoria
Gauteng, 0081
South Africa
bittenbysharks

Also, I don't know anything about this company or their products but they are in S.A.:

http://www.isdsa.co.za/Housings.html

Since they're using the LANC protocol, it would require the use of a Sony camera. Depending on their implementation, that could be any of a number of models.

 

[MikeMeagher]

Just remember to shop for the housing first,.. as that will dicatate what camera to buy. Theres lots of cameras out there, but very few housings being made.

I will say one thing about my experience with Gates.. the people at Gates, especially Pam in sales.. has been suberb about service. Any questions or issues.. she has resolved fast. I had an issue where the White balance control didnt properly match up with my touch screen control on the camera ...Seems Sony made a slight change. (I had purchased a housing that had sat on the shelf at a dealer in texas for a while), Gates new exacty my problem, sent me the upgrade to my housing to fix the problem promptly. Problem solved.

Another reason I went with a Gates.. was the ports offered. The Fathom brand optics.. is very good. No vignetting, no soft focus areas, right on.

I was determined to get a camera that had manual white balance capability. That dictated my choices as well. I use my manual White Balance setting all the time. I set WB to a slate. It makes a difference in my videos. Something worth considering.

I prefer a tape based HDV format camcorder over a AVCHD format. I've heard several stories of how editing AVCHD file requires a top of the line computer. Many people think going to AVCHD will improve their postproduction workflow, but some find out that it becomes more as they have to make sure to have redundant data backup, some have to convert teh files to a M2T working version in order to edit. I am working just fine editing my HDV tape stuff using a 4 year old dual core pentium. And for me, on long dive trips hauling around a couple of boxes of HDV tapes is way easier than hauling a laptop and card reader and external drive.

 

[orm]

Regardless of which camera you chose, are you aware of the computational overhead of dealing with 1080p?

It will be wasted if you're burning it to DVD (MPEG-2) and upload times to Vimeo and Youtube can boarder on the insane at times.

Just pointing this out.


I've just done a round of research in this area and had the Panasonic SD700 (or it's equivalent) in my sights, but there wasn't a suitable housing for it that I liked.

The second on my list was the Canon HF-s21, just for their low light performance.

I nearly bought a second hand VX2100 in a Gates housing as they're pretty bomb-proof, great footage and cheap as they're only SD, but the thing that put me off this was no 16:9 native recording.

I ended up getting an Aquatica for my DSLR, but that's another story.

Good luck with your quest!

 

[Indigo Scuba Africa]

Awesome feedback, thanks so much! Definitely lots to consider and think about!

Hope this info is useful to others too!

Thank you!