Hello all,

I'm finally getting back in the water, and here's a little clip I shot in Okinawa on my aging GoPro7, with the AOI UWL-03 wide lens and a Rosco filter, in 4K 60fps.

Water might still be a modest 23°C, but spring is here and ❤️ is in the air...
Courting Ijima's turtlehead sea snakes (Emydocephalus ijimae) at Gorilla Chop, Okinawa main island, Japan

To get into kitchen stuff - we are on an UW imaging forum after all - this is my second dive after a long moving-to-Japan-in-winter-life-stuff hiatus, and also I'm testing a brand new drysuit, so didn't bring my faithful Lumix LX10.
But I did carry my old GoPro 7, mounted with the AOI UWL03 wide lens and a filter-gel inside the housing, with the idea of testing what is one of the most promising replacements for the illustrious UR-Pro Cyan.

Alas, conditions were really not ideal to test the filter gel, with cloudy murky - if slightly blueish - water and a slightly ridiculous depth ranging between 2 to 5 meters...
So yes, clearly in the no-filter zone, but it is what it is, as ruthless lawmaker Mr Murphy always says...
The "deeper" shots, on the sand, didn't require as much as a stretch to re-white balance in post (which does affect the highlights), and show the filter's potential a little better.
I need to confirm these observations on a ̶n̶o̶r̶m̶a̶l̶ ̶ deeper dive, with a side to side test, but the Rosco seems to be the one I was looking for 🤞

Cheers and happy bubbles!

Ben

Edited May 3May 3 by bghazzal

It's almost time to update the filter thread then!

Plain old Gopro without oil snake... good job indeed!

I wish I had a beach dive like this here 😝

Well done sir! Cool little study.

18 hours ago, Davide DB said:

It's almost time to update the filter thread then!

Plain old Gopro without oil snake... good job indeed!

I wish I had a beach dive like this here 😝

Thanks! Yes, the filter seems to be the Chosen One - I'm also really happy with the AOI wide lens, really solved the corner issues, and closeups do seem sharper than before, really a game changer for action cams!

Beach diving here has a lot of potential, but is a little complicated by parking and/or water access issues... Can you park close enough to the entry point to lug your gear, and can the point be accessed without too much of a trek on sharp rocks, not to mention tide/depth issues.

But it's just a learning process and I'm definitely not complaining 😄

12 hours ago, humu9679 said:

Well done sir! Cool little study.

Thanks Craig! It was a fun watch - spent 15 minutes with the snakes - a lot going on under rocks that I didn't put in the clip - at some point another male tried his luck but got chased away... fun times 😄

Hey Ben,

This is amazing to see. I loved my Go Pro 7 and got great results with it, but nothing as awesome as this!

Well done and look forward to seeing more of your work.

Maria

11 hours ago, Maria Munn said:

Hey Ben,

This is amazing to see. I loved my Go Pro 7 and got great results with it, but nothing as awesome as this!

Well done and look forward to seeing more of your work.

Maria

Thanks so much for the kind words, Maria! It was such a lovely encounter — really enjoyed it 😊

As for the GoPro: I’ve been rowing,against the no-filter-needed tide since the GoPro4 days...
Personally, I find that pairing a well-designed filter — like the late, great UR-Pro SW Cyan — with a locked white balance (WB "native," which locks it and offers a wider spectrum than Rec.709 used in other modes) and the “flat” color profile (minimal camera adjustments) yields the best results in ambient light, if you’re planning to do post-production work.

The thinking is: while you can't white balance manually at depth on these cameras, you can still re-balance the footage afterward by setting the white point in post — and that’s when the image really comes to life.

Sure, you lose about 1.5 stops of light with the filter, but it still helps a lot, as having a filtered, warmer base-image (and this is also where the filter's design / curve is important) reduces how much you have to stretch the color channels to restore colour balance in editing, making for a more natural, balanced and pleasing final result in most cases.

In my experience, it beats letting the camera struggle to figure things out on its own underwater at typical diving depths.

I actually expanded on this in a thread here: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1380-shooting-action-cams-with-a-red-filter-in-flat-profile-and-manually-white-balancing-in-post-production/

It’s definitely more hands-on, and not in line with the current auto-everything trend — but for those willing to put in the extra bit of work, I think the payoff is worth it, to get the best these cameras have to offer!

Cheers!

Edited May 5May 5 by bghazzal