I have a Sony RX100 in a Nauticam RX100VII housing that I want to complement with a wide angle action cam for video shooting. Until now I used the Sony for video, too, but filming (in 4K!) drains its battery so fast that it sometimes didn't last till the end of the dive. Also, I would like to have a wider angle for filming, at least occasionally. I want to mount the action cam on top of the Nauticam housing so that I can take photos while shooting video.

Some time ago I read or saw something on the web saying that under water, the DJI is better than the GoPro. Unfortunately I don't remember why, or where I saw that. Therefore I want to ask here if anybody knows both systems and can make a recommendation. Or any tipps what to consider beyond the cam itself, like what kind of housings are available for each model (to use up to 60m deep), or which offers the better range of attachment lenses and filters.

Edited November 22Nov 22 by wus

No info on DJI but GoPro is decent. I moved from a Hero 7 to a Hero 13 last year. This year I added a wet lens and HF1 lights, but I haven’t used the new rig yet.

Edited November 23Nov 23 by ACHiPo

21 hours ago, wus said:

Or any tipps what to consider beyond the cam itself, like what kind of housings are available for each model

You should bring up the Insta360 AcePro2 on your radar. It‘s slightly more capable than the GoPro and the Osmo with the out of the box footage.

Personally I use Insta360 AcePro (version1) as a small secondary cam and that one already smokes the other cams around. Due to the larger sensor and leica optics of the insta you already notice slight performance differences in the underwater optics.

I have tested AOI, Backscatter and INON underwater action cam optics and found the INON image quality to be slightly superior than the others. There was also a thread here somewhere on the forums seconding my personal impressions about the superiority of the INON action camera optics.

I switched from GoPro to Osmo Action and never looked back. Much less noise, better colors, better low light quality, intuitive and quicker menus, 3 to 4 times longer battery life time, no crashes.

2 hours ago, Jens H said:

I switched from GoPro to Osmo Action and never looked back. Much less noise, better colors, better low light quality, intuitive and quicker menus, 3 to 4 times longer battery life time, no crashes.

Whats the bitrate of Osmo action ?

Heres the bitrate on gopro 13 with labs firmware...

Dji Osmo action 6 from this video is looks inferior to Insta360 ace pro 2 released one year ago

The Osmo Action 6 loses focus and appears to have less detail

Edited Saturday at 07:04 PM1 day by Nando Diver

stop and zoom, Acepro 2 look much better

Edited Saturday at 07:00 PM1 day by Nando Diver

Another video 

Looks like the Full sensor marketing of Dji Action6 dont keep their promises....

Fiming in 1:1 or 4:3 the imaged is cropped 

I cannot comment on Osmo Action 6, I got Version 5. I had several GoPros before and never will get one again based on above mentioned reasons. I don’t know AcePro but I remember that I read some not-so-great reviews during my research in order to decide between Osmo and AcePro. Both are likely to have their advantages.

1 hour ago, Nando Diver said:

The Osmo Action 6 loses focus and appears to have less detail...

To the best of my knowledge, action cams have fixed focus lenses and, therefore, cannot lose focus. Osmo Action has a larger sensor than others and therefore a larger minimum distance to take your footages.

Matthias Lebo made a quite extensive comparison of the recent action cameras:

I made the following comment:

"DJI has really bad corners (otherwise colours look good), iPhone is the most versatile and it has a bit more background separation, Insta clips straight out of the camera are the best, but GoPro is surprisingly good, when there is enough light (but I would use a default -0.5 correction)"

My opinion hasn't changed. I can still spot the bad corners of the DJI videos. Another overlooked feature is the close focus ability (or lack of it). Yes, they are fixed focus cameras; therefore, the way the focus is set is very important. Many youtubers complained that even from an arm length their face is not sharp. Underwater, it's very important to move very close to the subject, so actually the smaller sensor of the GoPro is an advantage due to the larger DOF and better close focus ability (especially if we used video lights and marginally better noise is not an issue). This close focus feature can be improved with add on lenses (Inon or AOI). Now, you can use those lenses on Insta360 and DJI cameras, but they were originally designed to GoPros, so I guess they work better with GoPro. I used many action cameras including Yi 4K+, Firefly 8SE, various Insta360 and GoPro cameras (also tried DJI). Currently I use GoPro Hero 12. In my opinion, the difference in video quality among those cameras are not that big and the quality of the light, camera positioning and movement, quality of the water (visibility) have much bigger effects on the final quality. So those are all very capable cameras. My next camera will also be a GoPro, or an action camera with AF or some basic focusing change option.

No action camera is designed for close-up or macro photography. If you want to take macro photos regularly, an action camera is not the right choice for you! Before you start equipping your action camera with close-up lenses, etc., you're better off getting a camera that is designed for this purpose. I also had close-up lenses and filters on my GoPro so that I would be prepared for all shooting situations (Flip system from Backscatter). However, fiddling around underwater and, above all, the poor quality of the recordings despite everything annoyed me so much that I got rid of it all.

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by Jens H

1 hour ago, Jens H said:

No action camera is designed for close-up or macro photography. If you want to take macro photos regularly, an action camera is not the right choice for you! Before you start equipping your action camera with close-up lenses, etc., you're better off getting a camera that is designed for this purpose. I also had close-up lenses and filters on my GoPro so that I would be prepared for all shooting situations (Flip system from Backscatter). However, fiddling around underwater and, above all, the poor quality of the recordings despite everything annoyed me so much that I got rid of it all.

I'm not talking about macro videography, but a normal scene, or fish videos hugely benefit from a better close focus ability of an action camera. For real macro videography I use a Sony A6400 with appropriate macro lenses (but it's still lots of fiddling around).

Folks,

We all get our information online. For our passion, YouTube has certainly become—for better or worse—one of the main sources, and over the years, each of us has their own reference channels. However, however...

I would like to avoid exchanges of opinion about what is best turning into a competition of "who has the last link."

It would be great if we discussed things through our own personal experiences, and not through videos with sensationalistic titles made by people who film their dirty laundry in their bedrooms.

In short, I would like our forum to be a better place.

A place for the exchange of information and not an echo chamber for other people's opinions.

Ciao