 |
IF YOU ALREADY OWN A VIDEO CAMERA, by searching the Internet you can probably pick up a housing for a few hundred quid, and get under water to try your hand at filming. But is this the right move, or simply money down the drain? Will the results you get encourage you to keep going, or disappoint you and kill off your enthusiasm? In short, can you afford to cut corners when getting started in underwater video?
The short answer is - probably not. There is nothing wrong with simple housings at the bottom of the price ladder, but to achieve good results you need more than a casing to keep your camera dry under water. You need to be able to access a number of vital camera controls easily. You need good and flexible optics on the housing to achieve the best results. You almost certainly need a good lighting system.
In addition, the housing must be user-friendly, and it must suit your exact needs. There are many decisions to make.
If you are simply buying the housing for a bit of fun, by all means go for the cheap and cheerful option that will produce images for you to share. For good-quality images, however, a cheap housing may be a false economy.
The fundamental decision is whether to buy a housing with electronic or manual controls.
Taking the electronic route means that all or most camera functions are handled through a single control pad, usually on the grip of the housing.
This is the most attractive option at first sight. A manual housing uses mechanical control rods in positions that correspond to the controls on the camera, and this often means that you have to release your grip on a handle to access a particular control.
The electronic control pad is compact, neat and very easy to use, but it does have one major drawback - reliability is not guaranteed. When working well, there is nothing better, but if something goes wrong, unless you are a skilled electronics technician you are simply stuffed!
And you can guarantee that the electronic glitch will occur in the middle of that Red Sea liveaboard trip or expensive foreign dive holiday, and wipe out all filming for that trip.
Also, the repairs when you get home can be very costly. One well-known brand of housing is so unreliable that I know professionals who carry whole spare control units to hedge against the high risk of failure.
Manual controls may be less user-friendly, but there is little that can go wrong with them. You quickly get used to them, and when it comes to balancing reliability or convenience of use, I now choose reliability every time. I've had too many trips ruined by unreliable electronics letting me down!
Housings vary massively in size and weight. Modern digital cameras produce fantastic results and many are very compact, so don't assume that the bigger the housing, the better the quality, unless it is to house a specialised camera such as the Sony PD150/170 range used by so many professionals, and now, too, the new high-definition cameras.
But you needn't make such a big investment at this stage, and larger housings have disadvantages, particularly if you plan to take your camera overseas, because you will inevitably face excess baggage charges on many flights.
As a rule, the larger the housing, the more water it displaces, so the heavier it needs to be to become neutrally buoyant in the water. For your first purchase, therefore, look at some of the more compact models that can be carried in your hand baggage on an aircraft.
I would always advise getting your hands on a housing before buying - and dive shows offer a good opportunity to compare a number of different brands.
One tip is to take a pair of neoprene gloves with you. Controls that feel easy to use in a warm showroom may not be as user-friendly when you're wearing thick gloves and your fingers are cold.
Which camera functions can be controlled through the housing? In addition to on/off and record/standby, the essential ones that you will want to access easily under water are those that allow you to select between manual and auto focus and zoom/wide angle.
If any of these have to be pre-set before entering the water and cannot be accessed during a dive, your ability to get good footage will be severely restricted.
As your skills progress, you may also want to be able to focus the camera and to adjust white balance manually.
However, at entry level having either of these controls is not essential, and on the basis that the more controls, the dearer the housing, they can be regarded as good optional extras.
Automatic white balances provide very acceptable results, and switching to manual hold when the camera has automatically focused is a convenient alternative to manually focusing it yourself.
Many modern cameras have very good built-in macro filming capabilities. However, for really tight, close shots it is nice to have the option of a little extra, and this can be achieved by use of either a dioptre or an external "add-on" macro lens.
A dioptre is a simple, screw-on magnifying filter that you can buy in any good camera shop and it comes in a variety of magnifications from +1 to +4. It screws onto the camera inside the housing, so if you plan on taking this route, you need to ensure that there is room in the housing to add dioptres to the camera.
The more expensive alternative is the external "wet" add-on macro lens - it may cost more but it leaves the decision open throughout a dive as to whether to film wide angle or macro.
Finally, just how good is the image that the camera will produce in the housing? This depends on the quality of the port on the housing through which the camera sees and films, and unfortunately the only way to gauge this is to try the housing.
While specialist ports can be bought for very wide-angle or macro filming, these can be extremely expensive. For a first purchase, a compromise is best - a port that allows a good wide field of view but that will also produce good close-up images.
In addition to camera and housing, other items of equipment are essential.
Without a filter, at any depth below 10m your image will look washed-out and colourless. Water absorbs colours from the spectrum at different rates and red is the first to disappear, so below 10m that colour is absent.
This is in why so many sea creatures - particularly nocturnal ones - are red in colour. Evolution has exploited this simple law of physics to provide them with a cloak of invisibility!
To compensate for this when tropical bluewater diving, a red filter is needed, and for green water, a mauve filter. If using lights, you will generally not need a filter, however, so you must be able to switch easily under water between using the filter and doing without.
Check how conveniently this can be done with your set-up. A filter may be either outside or inside the housing. If it is external, where does it go when it's not in use - does it store easily or simply flap around? Would it be easy to lose under water?
If internal, make sure that it is simple to use and to remove, as conditions require. If it has to remain attached throughout the dive, this may cause problems with your footage.
Lights are essential for almost all filming under water. What you can't see, you can't film - and lights act to restore the natural colours absorbed by the water the deeper you go, as well as being essential in wrecks, caves, overhangs and to film on night or even dusk dives.
Your decisions will depend to a degree on the type of filming you plan to do. For macro work, small light-heads on flexible arms with a separate power source are ideal.
For wide-angle work, larger light-heads with a wide angle of beam are needed to provide a smoothly balanced light across the whole subject.
A wide range of lighting systems is available. One big debate is whether to use HID or halogen lights. HIDs go down well with professionals because of the white light produced.
These lights are also more widely popular, because their high efficiency means that they can be operated with smaller, lighter battery units.
This is a great advantage, both for convenience of use under water and also when considering baggage weights when travelling.
Despite this, I still use a near-obsolete halogen lighting system when I am doing macro work.
It is cheaper, particularly when replacing bulbs; the light intensity can be varied using a dimmer switch; and, by using the camera's white balance function, a good natural colour balance can still be achieved.
If you can see a coloured image through the camera viewfinder when yourcamera is in the housing, no monitor is required. Most compact cameras today have colour viewfinders, so for most of these an external monitor is a luxury, not a necessity.
But if the viewfinder image is black and white, a monitor is essential if you are to have any idea of whether the colour balance of the image you are taking, the lighting and the filter are correct. You must be able to see exactly what the camera is recording.
Whether you need an external monitor or not to be able to see your colour balances, check the quality of the image you can see when filming. Without a good, sharp image, it will be difficult to focus the camera precisely.
The golden rule is this: if you already have a video camera, fine, but if you don't have one, don't go out to buy one and only then try to find a housing in which to use it. This can be a very expensive mistake to make, and can severely restrict your options. Study the housings available, decide which ones you like, and then ask which cameras can be used in those housings.
With so many manufacturers in the market, how do you decide on which brand to choose? Your initial contact with the manufacturer or its main stockist can be revealing. A gruff reply and a general lack of interest on its part is a good indicator of what you can expect by way of aftersales service. A helpful, informativeand friendly response is more encouraging.
And ask around, not only among your friends but, if you can, professionals in the industry, as their recommendations can be valuable. Don't worry about asking stupid questions - we all started out with zero knowledge of the market.
You need to be sure of good aftersales support and service and that spares and accessories will be easily available. I have come across amazing differences between dealers, ranging fromprofessional to downright unhelpful. This is where personal recommendations help.
Some dealers offer complete packages, including camera, lights and housing, and sometimes these can represent a better deal than buying each element separately, because the dealer is making a small overall mark-up on the package rather than a big profit on each item.
I checked one such package at the London International Dive Show and found it impossible to beat by buying the components individually.
But whoever gets your custom, make sure to try the equipment and know that it works for you. There is no substitute for "hands-on" shopping for underwater camera equipment.
The future would appear to be all about high-definition cameras. Last year I was diving with one of the world's top underwater film cameramen. He was using a high-definition camera that cost £100,000 and a purpose-built housing that needed surface power support and took two men to lift into the water.
Today you can buy a high-definition video camera for as little as £2500, and the first underwater housings for these are on the market. Watch this space.
|
|
Housings vary hugely in size - don't assume that the bigger it is the better
Good buoyancy control is essential when finning over distances looking through a viewfinder
I have selected a number of options from across the range to give some idea of the costs of various packages, from entry-level to the top end. These are just a guide to what is available. Camera models change incredibly quickly, so remember - select the housing and then find what cameras it will take.
An entry-level Ikelite housing for a Canon MV750i
Gates housing with 80¡ port for the Sony PC-1000
the Greenforce Squid 30 lighting system with Gates VX2100
and Niterider twin HID lights (mounted on a Gates housing)
An entry-level Ikelite housing will set you back £560 and a Canon MV-750i to go with it will be around £345.
Moving up the market, a Gates housing with 80° port for the Sony PC-1000 will cost £1730 and the camera itself £789.
And if you really want to get ahead of the pack, a Gates housing with dome port for a Sony High Definition FX-1 will leave you with just £10 change from £3000, and the camera to go in it will set you back a further £2500.
Lights similarly vary in price - from the Ikelite Pro-Video Lite II 100W at £425, through Niterider twin HID systems from £1000, to top-of-the-pile Greenforce Squid 30 systems starting at £2500.
John Boyle's book A Step-by-Step Guide to Underwater Video is available from Underwater World, 020 8943 4288
|
|
You've got a video camera and now you want to take it under water - everybody's doing it! All you need is a housing - and lights, and filters, and perhaps a monitor. John Boyle, who makes award-winning underwater films for a living, guides us through the process