Question for scuba divers with UW video experience

[bhelms]

Hi all. I'm headed to Cozumel in about 10 days for a week of drift diving. It's been a while since I have been in open water so I'm taking a refresher course in preparation. Also bought some new gear "just in case"...

I'm hoping to venture into a new world on this trip as well - UW videography. Once I'm sure I'm OK diving again I want to haul the camera and light underwater and try my hand at it. I have some limited experience with a self-contained UW still camera, but that's about it.

I ordered an Ikelite housing (below) and have a camera that will work in it. I also ordered the small 15-watt light. Not the best but something to start. It should do OK for close-up. For the rest I will be relying strictly on available natural light. Fortunately the housing comes with a filter to enhance the longer wavelengths, and the camera I have does very well in low light.

Digital Video Housing for Sony Video Cameras

The question I have is about wide-angle lenses. Ikelite recommends one (the linked article gives reasons, notably decreasing the scattered light due to suspended particulate) and offers several choices, also linked. What do you recommend?

Anything else you would recommend or provide comments on? Any particular favorite spots in Cozumel (land or sea) I should check out?

TIA for any advice you can provide...

 

[bigdwoof]

I'll be in Cozumel myself in 2 1/2 weeks, staying at Scuba Club Cozumel. Enjoy yourself! I've got a Canon Mini-DV camera, and Ikelite housing. Although the camera came with a wide-angle attachment, there isn't room in the housing for it.

You will want to get close to your subject when filming. The auto-focus on my camera often focus' on the particles in the water rather than the subject I am aiming at, if I am too far away.

I don't really have experience with lighting. I mainly use the visible light, and the red filter on the lens. Take it off if less than 20 feet, or everything will look red in the picture.

Have a great time! I Hope I do too. I understand it's been a little chilly there lately too. Hopefuly it warms up in the next couple of weeks.

Bigdwoof...

 

[Bobby]

Don Landis should pop here at any time. He has a bunch of professional experience here as I recall.

 

[bhelms]

Tks both!

For bigdwoof, was my post what inspired you to join the forum? In any case, welcome, thanks for your reply, and have a great safe trip yourself! Looks like things are starting to warm up in Cozumel. We'll be at Hotel Cozumel, the one with the "biggest pool". I hope I can use that to play around with the camera on Sun. 1/24 before we start our dives on Mon.

Bobby - Yes I hope to hear from Don as well. He and I have PM'd on the camera part of this equation. I bought a Sony model that he seems to like. He got to play with one at CES '09 and compared it favorably to his venerable SR-12.

 

[TheForce]

Yeah, I suppose I have a bit of UW Video experience!

First of all, get the wide angle port for that housing! Very important. Domed ported lens is an absolute must for all photography underwater. It will improve your image detail several times. Improve color saturation and reduce particle scatter in the picture. It also eliminates the need to focus the lens since the focus point is on a virtual image on the inside of the dome rather than some distance between you and the subject. Focus once when you assemble the housing and leave it. Depending on the camera and dome ported lens, you may lose your ability to zoom. This is a minor issue as underwater zooming is rarely done and when you do zoom in with the camera you will find yourself saying I wish I hadn't done that!

Lights are the second most important part of the UW video rig. The bigger and brighter the better but they can get very expensive, often 4-5 times the cost of the camera. A 25 watt light will be good for 2-4 ft distance and just able to pop up the color a bit in deep water. In shallow water the 25 watt light will only work well in macro closer than 10 inches.
The lights I prefer were big. I used 2 250 watt halogen lights powered by F cell nicad pack that ran them for 30 minutes. This was good for lighting a whole diver 6 feet away for full color. I also had a second light I gave to my diver model in the shot. It was a 400 watt halogen with a spot that had about 25 ft of throw. It had a large canister batter pack strapped to the side of the scuba tank about the size of an aluminum 50. The camera shown below is one I made for my old small camera. I had a much larger one made for a full size betacam rig but it was very difficult to swim with being so big. The small rig has a single battery canister that powers the two lights for 15 minutes at 500 watts total. I also had single packs each for a full 30 minutes of burn time. The cave diver, Wendy is shown with the 500 watt light so you can see full brightness in the darkness of the cave. In those days, I had the reputation of having the highest battery powered uw light for a single diver in the world. There were brighter ones of 1000 watts but they were surface generator supplied.
The screen garbs were from my UW video series Video Cave Maps™ published in VHS. The middle picture is me. I put the camera down with it rolling tape while I fastened my main reel guide line to begin my dive into the cave. I am wearing a 50 watt spot light on the helmet. It is my main cave light and burns for 5 hours.

Finally, the recommendation I would have for anyone is to be highly skilled scuba so that you don't task load yourself with addint the task of camera work. Cozumel is not for beginners if you will be going where I think you are going. It is deep lots of current and often choppy seas. This takes great skill getting in and out of the water with a camera makes it very hazardous. If your camera rig is not neutrally buoyant in salt water, get it that way before you go. Practice in a pool with it. Use a lanyard to avoid losing it if you drop it over deep water. Don't get bent!

 

[TheForce]

I saw this at CES and thought, if I were going to shoot just vacation stuff for fun this is what I would get. Then carry a hand held bright light for color. A common diver lantern with a 100 watt DWH Cinema flood bulb.

 

[bhelms]

Don - As always, tks for the great advice. There's apprarently no end to your technical experiences and competency !!

I've been thinking about this a LOT since I first posted. My skills are stale, hence the course I'm taking. I'll be in confined water this week for a couple of hours and will use that opportunity to also do a "dry" run on the housing (to only about 15' however) and brush-up on my skills. I'm anticipating Cozumel to be a challenge just to dive it without distractions. Most if not all boat dives will be drifts. I know the skill levels of the group I'm going with and I am certainly less experienced. Just keeping up with them - literally - might be all I can handle. If conditions are rough, well, the camera experience will just have to wait for the next trip. I won't be happy about that, but I realize the health/life of me and my buddies are always the top priority! Maybe one of the other guys will be willing to try it out. (Two of them are taking still photo equipment.) All three of them have been in Cozumel before.

I'll at least take the gear out on the boat with me. First dive (maybe more) will be completely sans camera. If I'm OK with that, then the next one (presumably shallower) will be with the empty housing for check-out. (I'll weight it to equal the camera.) Then if everything seems OK, the next dive will be equipped. I'll save the light for any night dives we might do, no drifting (if even available in Cozumel!) where I can try some mid- to macro stuff while stopped. There might be some shore dive opportunities as well where I can try some closer stuff. The little 15-watt light I have now will otherwise do nothing in wide mode. Unfortunately that's all the budget allowed at this point. We'll see how well that little Sony can do in natural light. Maybe on the shallower repetitive dives I'll have better luck with it.

I decided to hold off on the domed port for this first experience. The Raynon lens and adapter for the above-linked housing were a bit more than I wanted to invest at this time. I did however order an external WA lens/filter I can install while on the dive and expect to use that most if not all of the time while drifting. If things go well overall and I decide to continue with this then I'll probably upgrade to the domed lens.

The linked housing with camera is intended to be about 1 lb negative for stability according to Ikelite. Should I change that to completely neutral? (I could mount a styrofoam block to the bottom or such.) We have a half day at the hotel before the first dive day so I'll have more time for pool check-outs. If I make it just slightly negative in the pool water then it should be close to neutral in salt. I'll have a hand lanyard to strap around my wrist but I'm planning to also have a retractable cord attached to a ring on my BC and to the housing handle with a "beener" to prevent it from getting completely away from me if I let go of it. The boats are supposed to have platforms. If the waves are calm (I won't even try the camera if they're not) then I expect an assistant on board should be able to hand it/take it to/from me before so I don't have to enter/exit the water holding it.

Tks again for your advice...!

(PS - I re-upped with DAN and bought equipment insurance from them. Won't help if I lose the gear overboard, but will protect me from a flooded housing or theft, etc...)

 

[bhelms]

I made it back! Great first experience with UW videography!

Update for anyone interested: I got back from the diving trip to Cozumel essentially in one piece. I have some ear issues from not clearing properly (had them in prior dives) but I expect that to resolve itself in a day or two as in the past. Otherwise my 13+ year open water hiatus has been set aside in grand style! I was completely comfortable again on about the 3rd dive and I regained substantial buoyancy control by about the 5th. Ended-up carrying 20lbs. weight, more than ever but necessary on a drift for optimal control. I was eventually able to stride off the boat platforms with the camera/housing in my left hand, no issues.

All the equipment worked great! Got almost 6 hours of video spanning 12 dives. (The first was just a pressure test for the housing, missed a great turtle on that one!) Clearly amateur stuff but great to look at none-the-less and it will preserve my memories better than any still photos could ever do. The wide angle lens is a absolute must. The little 15 watt light I had was virtually useless on a drift but when I had still water and could take time to plant myself, remove the red filter, set up the light, and capture some close action, the colors really came to life. Interesting audio too! Still one repetitive sound I can't positively identify, probably just me clearing.

I also had some issues with the inside lens/port fogging-up in the latter dives. I need to find a reliable way to deal with that. The large dissicant bag I added inside the housing no-doubt helped but I guess it was getting saturated towards the end of the week.

Now I need to learn how to edit it all down to a nice half-hour long story. I have come far, but have so far yet to go...!

 

[TheForce]

Glad you made it back OK.

AS for fogging up, that has to do mostly with where you assemble the camera inside the housing. You need to do it in such a way that prevents condensation inside the housing- obvious, right? but not so obvious on the technique.

Here's the problem, You assemble the camera in the warm moist air trapping the warm moist air inside the housing. Then when you go underwater the water temp is cooler and you cause the moist air ( 100% humidity ) in most tropical environments at 95 degrees to be exposed to water temps of 80 or less. This causes the housing to "sweat" inside.

I would prevent this by first assembling my rig inside the cool dryer air of my hotel room and never open it up on the boat or outside in the warm moist air. If it was really humid outside and I knew the water temperature was especially colder, I would warm the camera up with a hair dryer in the room so that it would not appear like a block of ice that would condense the air trapped inside the housing.

The desiccant is a good idea if it were enough. Unfortunately, it is usually too small quantity to do any good. Plus, few people dry out the desiccant in an oven before use. Consequently, it is usually ineffective. I never used it, rather just used good common sense in preventing trapped moist air when assembling the system.

 

[bhelms]

Tks Don. I had assumed the environment where I assembled the camera/housing was the primary factor in the condensation issue. But my usage patterns were similar from day-to-day and the fogging only became a problem toward the end of the week so I was looking for additional factors. Another observation - only on the last dive did I see visible condensation inside the clear housing itself. The other times it was restricted to the lens. Condensation wouldn't begin to appear until about 30 mins. into the dive (as seen in the resulting video, not so noticeable while recording until extreme), of course getting progressively worse as the dive continued.

I assembled everything in the room before heading to the boat, but between dives I would swap cameras in the boat thus exposing the insides to humid air. There were 2 reasons for that: get a fresh battery in service and get the latest files out of harm's way until they could be backed-up. I wasn't completely faithful on the latter, but the battery issue was a potential literal show-stopper so I figured I had no choice. I ran the cameras for the whole dive (usually recording), surface to surface, thus consuming 40-45 mins. battery time on the first dives each day. The batteries I have (3 NPFH60s and 1 NPFH70) wouldn't last for complete consecutive dives that way.

I also thought about baking the dessicant bag but had no way to do that. It was a large one, like the size of a 2 lb soft (shot) weight except longer and narrower and it slid in nicely on the top of the camera towards the left side. My buddy gave it to me the first time we installed the camera and I had it in the housing constantly for the duration.

Interesting what you mentioned about warming the camera, which I had not considered. Another observation I had was that once I completed a dive and shortly thereafter opened the housing, the camera was noticeably warm just from use in a confined space. I assumed that was from both the HDD and LCD backlights running continuously. (With these 500/520V cameras both displays are working at the same time when the flip-out screen is reversed, same with your SR-12?) There was never any moisture on the cameras that I could detect, and I assumed that the heat from operation would be a positive influence on preventing or reducing condensation, but apparently just not enough.

Possible answers: get at least 1 NPFH100 battery that would last easily for 2 dives (the housing appears to be milled-out to accommodate the length of that battery), and have several dessicant bags baked and sealed so I can use a fresh one each time.

Like I said above - still lots to learn...!

Tks again...

 

[TheForce]

You're on the right track! My camera was a bit larger and I resolved the battery issue by using a custom made stick of D cell nicad. The only issue I had with it, even back in the 90's and 90's was the batteries looked like a stick of dynamite with a fuse hanging out the end. It always would get the airport security people ( before TSA) excited. But these batteries would run my camera for 3-4 hours! I have a FH NP-100 and it runs the HD cam for a really long time. I suggest you get one to avoid opening up the camera between dives on the boat. I didn't know your desiccant bags were that big. If you could have a fresh one each day that should work too but I think sealing up everything in the room in dry air, especially with a hair dryer to warm up the camera too should work best.

The main problem with camcorders on the boat is when you take them out cold from an A/C room and they hit the warm moist air the cameras themselves would have condensate and cause the dew sensor to shut the camera down. This is why I would always heat the camera up before exposing it to the 100% humidity outside the hotel room.

You make me homesick for a good dive. Unfortunately, my health ( pacemaker) prevents me from scuba these days. But, I have made one, one-man deep sub dive since. And a two man sub dive with my wife two years ago.