I used a gopro 4 black before and have an Inon UWL-G140 for it. Just updated the age old camera with a gopro 13 I wonder what's the best option to fit the lens on the original gopro dive housing? Compatibility with my polarpro filters (basically gopro's stock diving & snorkeling orange/red filers) would be a fantastic plus.

Apparently I got two options: stock Inon SD front mask (haven't found a UK dealer yet): doesn't seem to be polarpro compatible nor has its on provisions for filter.

The Backscatter mount, here it says is compatible with Inon SD lenses (should be verified though). Maybe it doesn't work with the polarpro filters but at least I can buy the backscatter filter inserts.

I hope you can make that work. I haven’t looked into it in a while, but it seemed easiest to go for the Backscatter Flip filters, though there are likely better solutions out there.

Hi TomG,

The AOI adapter is fully compatible with the standard GoPro housing, from 5 to 13. I have one here.

In the box you have several mounts and ADRech states all the lens compatible with that quick release mount:

https://www.aditech-uw.com/en/shop/6750-aoi-qrs-02-mb1p-for-hero12111098765.html

IIRC latest Inon mount is not compatible (probably they changed it because AOI lens/mounts are cheaper 😉)

Old Inon mount a AOI works flawlessly in all 16:9 formats but they vignette on GoPro full sensor 8:7 format.

Backscatter mount is made by AOI and it's slightly modified to accommodate slide-in filters between the lens and the GoPro housing port. The lens is further away to leave enough space for the filter. I can't tell you if this increases the vignetting issue; I don't think so, but it's probably best to ask Backscatter about it.

Edited Friday at 09:46 AM3 days by Davide DB
Typo

1 hour ago, Davide DB said:

The lens is further away to leave enough space for the filter. I can't tell you if this increases the vignetting issue

! That's a perfectly valid point! Will test that handheld with some makeshift spacers. Also, if the lens is further out than the original optical design suggests, correction might not be as good as intended. Planning to use 4:3 aspect ratio at the highest resolution available.

So the Backscatter and AOI mounts are all compatible with Inon's SD bayonet? That sounds great.

Edited Friday at 12:00 PM3 days by GTom

3 hours ago, GTom said:

That's a perfectly valid point! Will test that handheld with some makeshift spacers. Also, if the lens is further out than the original optical design suggests, correction might not be as good as intended. Planning to use 4:3 aspect ratio at the highest resolution available.

Just send an email to BS and ask them.

3 hours ago, GTom said:

So the Backscatter and AOI mounts are all compatible with Inon's SD bayonet? That sounds great.

Never tried but according to all review and the ADTech website, yes.

@GTom AOI / Inon lens and adapters are backwards compatible on gopro (original case)

If you not in Rush, i would wait for the new AIO UH-ACT universal case for Action cameras with lens adapter built-in.

I expect the new AOI case to be more expensive than the lens adapters + gopro underwater case.

I would not go filters route.... Dive lights + gopro labs gives you much better results.

Check this account on instagram joe_chang41

Edited Friday at 11:16 PM3 days by Nando Diver

54 minutes ago, Nando Diver said:

I would not go filters route.... Dive lights + gopro labs gives you much better results.

Nando, let’s be fair: you don’t know the OP’s local environment or their specific diving habits, so please avoid being so categorical with your advice.

2 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

Nando, let’s be fair: you don’t know the OP’s local environment or their specific diving habits, so please avoid being so categorical with your advice.

ok

GTom, do you dive/snorkeling shallow? Tropics or temperate water?

For tropics and shallow dives a good filter is enough.

Snorkeling doesnt require any filter while deeper or temperate waters requires lights for sure.

1 hour ago, Nando Diver said:

If you not in Rush, i would wait for the new AIO UH-ACT universal case for Action cameras with lens adapter built-in.

That one looks interesting. Not super hurried but would like to get and test the gear before Summer.

37 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

OP’s local environment or their specific diving habits

Valid point, Lights are not ideal for some of my favorite targets: underwater landscapes & groups of people. Latter even in the pool might benefit from slight filtering if the subjects scatter 1 to 5 meters from me (subject to loads of testing though).

Edited Saturday at 02:18 AM3 days by GTom

12 hours ago, Nando Diver said:

I would not go filters route.... Dive lights + gopro labs gives you much better results.

11 hours ago, GTom said:

Valid point, Lights are not ideal for some of my favorite targets: underwater landscapes & groups of people. Latter even in the pool might benefit from slight filtering if the subjects scatter 1 to 5 meters from me (subject to loads of testing though).

Since we are being authoritative, for underwater landscapes and true wide angle subjects, and for shallow dives, I would actually forget lights.

I would also recommend going down the filter route for actual wide angle work on action cams at diving depths.

Reason is that the field of view on action cams is extremely wide, and your lights will be largely ineffective for anything more than about 2 m from the camera. And sunlight will overpower your lights in the shallows.

So I would save those lights for medium and close-up shots, deep and night dives, but forget about lights for wide-angle.

The key is to shoot in a flat profile (log), and to set your white balance point in post.
This approach is a tried and tested way which will give you much better results than any in-camera tweaking, including GoPro Labs customisations.

And yes, using a good filter does make sense for ambient light WA at diving depths, as it helps mitigate colour casts and achieve a more even colour balance in post in these shooting situations.
That is what filters are actually for, not for “bringing back the reds”, contrary to what many people seem to believe.

Using a filter gives better results than not using one when shooting ambient-light wide angle footage in a flat profile, as it helps manage the colour cast created by water’s filtration at diving depths when resetting white balance in post.
It avoids pushing WB to extremes when dealing with the colour cast (which distorts overall colour balance), preserves cleaner chroma information, and it also helps maintain consistency across shots/depth.

As a small reminder to the nay-sayers, filters are still commonly used on cine cameras such as REDs by professional, blue-chip camera operators shooting in specific wide angle situations.
Do you really think the capabilities of a cinecam shooting in REDCODE RAW are inferior to those of an action cam?
It's time to stop believing in miracles, shooting in RAW or in LOG does not suspend physics...
Neither do GoPro Labs hacks for that matter.

Back to actual action cams, check out this workflow for inspiration and more info on the subject:
https://waterpixels.net/articles/articles_technique/afterhours-magic-ambient-light-video-workflow-for-action-cameras-r161/

Regarding filters themselves, there are gel alternatives you can try (see above thread for links). They are inexpensive and will fit inside the newer GoPro dive housings, between the camera lens and housing port, allowing them to be used with any wide lens.

They will likely give better results than Polarpro filters, which were not really designed with an understanding of the effect filters should have on the ambient light spectrum, unlike more researched filters like the UR-Pro Cyan or Keldan Spectrum filters.

On white balancing in post, I will throw in a YouTube video of my own, since this seems to be a growing trend in action cam discussions. I am very much on the same page as what Mark is doing here with his GP12 log footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DRmzwaO7YU

No, he doesn't use filters but the logic is the same. And yes, I still believe a filter would still help for wide angle situations for the reasons mentioned above, even when shooting in log and using multiple gopro labs hacks, since log is just a flat profile, and not a miracle.

At the end of the day, a camera can only do so much underwater, and no, it's not just about boosting that red channel because reds are absorbed by water... It's not as simple as that, unfortunately.

cheers
ben

Edited Saturday at 01:30 PM2 days by bghazzal

On 12/27/2025 at 12:24 PM, bghazzal said:

Since we are being authoritative, for underwater landscapes and true wide angle subjects, and for shallow dives, I would actually forget lights.

I would also recommend going down the filter route for actual wide angle work on action cams at diving depths.

Reason is that the field of view on action cams is extremely wide, and your lights will be largely ineffective for anything more than about 2 m from the camera. And sunlight will overpower your lights in the shallows.

So I would save those lights for medium and close-up shots, deep and night dives, but forget about lights for wide-angle.

The key is to shoot in a flat profile (log), and to set your white balance point in post.
This approach is a tried and tested way which will give you much better results than any in-camera tweaking, including GoPro Labs customisations.

And yes, using a good filter does make sense for ambient light WA at diving depths, as it helps mitigate colour casts and achieve a more even colour balance in post in these shooting situations.
That is what filters are actually for, not for “bringing back the reds”, contrary to what many people seem to believe.

Using a filter gives better results than not using one when shooting ambient-light wide angle footage in a flat profile, as it helps manage the colour cast created by water’s filtration at diving depths when resetting white balance in post.
It avoids pushing WB to extremes when dealing with the colour cast (which distorts overall colour balance), preserves cleaner chroma information, and it also helps maintain consistency across shots/depth.

As a small reminder to the nay-sayers, filters are still commonly used on cine cameras such as REDs by professional, blue-chip camera operators shooting in specific wide angle situations.
Do you really think the capabilities of a cinecam shooting in REDCODE RAW are inferior to those of an action cam?
It's time to stop believing in miracles, shooting in RAW or in LOG does not suspend physics...
Neither do GoPro Labs hacks for that matter.

Back to actual action cams, check out this workflow for inspiration and more info on the subject:
https://waterpixels.net/articles/articles_technique/afterhours-magic-ambient-light-video-workflow-for-action-cameras-r161/

Regarding filters themselves, there are gel alternatives you can try (see above thread for links). They are inexpensive and will fit inside the newer GoPro dive housings, between the camera lens and housing port, allowing them to be used with any wide lens.

They will likely give better results than Polarpro filters, which were not really designed with an understanding of the effect filters should have on the ambient light spectrum, unlike more researched filters like the UR-Pro Cyan or Keldan Spectrum filters.

On white balancing in post, I will throw in a YouTube video of my own, since this seems to be a growing trend in action cam discussions. I am very much on the same page as what Mark is doing here with his GP12 log footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DRmzwaO7YU

No, he doesn't use filters but the logic is the same. And yes, I still believe a filter would still help for wide angle situations for the reasons mentioned above, even when shooting in log and using multiple gopro labs hacks, since log is just a flat profile, and not a miracle.

At the end of the day, a camera can only do so much underwater, and no, it's not just about boosting that red channel because reds are absorbed by water... It's not as simple as that, unfortunately.

cheers
ben

thanks for the explanation about the filters

Heres a map where i learn to scuba dive, South of Lisbon, city cost named Sesimbra, theres about 10 dive centres, on weekends theres about 300 to 400 divers across all diving schools, in the summer its a lot more.

Its a Marine park with dedicated diving spots for scuba diving boats only

Cold green water all year round, diving spots are from 10m to 43m, average visibility is 5-10m in murky water.

Compass, Buoys, and dive lights are mandatory.

Theres no big pelagics, other marine life and macro are abundant between 15m and 25m.

Shallow dive spots are sand or soft corals, flora and rocks with little marine life.

We can get 30m visibility in November and half month of December.

This is not the Red Sea, Mexico, Florida, Indonesia, Osaka, Raja Ampat, Sipadan, where the water is warm and crystalline with excellent visibility where you can make use of the filters for underwater landscapes.

General rule over here (Sesimbra) : Its rare to see an underwater photographer or Videographer with filters, 99.9% use dive lights

Anyone that today ask me advice what gear should get for starter kit for underwater (video/photo) with efective results i would say:

Divevolk + iphone 13 pro or above + uwacam app (had color correction built-in )

its a good starting point that fits hundreds of divers needs, later its up to each individual pursuit their evolution in underwater photography or video.

Not everyone is looking for the holy grain of the perfect color correction, perfect picture, perfect video.

Edited Sunday at 11:43 PM1 day by Nando Diver

I also have being in 2 underwater video & photo competitions, in Porto santo 2024 & Madeira islands 2025, this last one CMAS World cup with +80 participants and didn’t see anyone using filters.

@bghazzal

Your filters approach seems the correct one balance the RGB/White balance for later correct in post.

But I dont agree about the part about gopro labs.

Theres option at gopro labs software that can replace traditional ways of improve underwater challenges in action cams

Example:

Corner Distortion - DIVE=1

native WB - WIDE=1

Red filters - WARM=x

Noise reduction control - NR01=x

Its just a matter of testing them like you did 20 years ago with filters.

The mathematic algorithm on gopro on native WB has evolved over the years and is different from model to model.

The smart guys at xtremestuff mention that in their blog post.

https://xtremestuff.net/introducing-the-gp-tune-transform-for-gopro-footage/

again thanks for your tutorial about filters/RGB.

Edited 19 hours ago19 hr by Nando Diver

I'm also guessing you haven't seen many divers with wet wide lenses attached to their action cams in the wild either?

Edited 19 hours ago19 hr by GTom

Im leaving some links for anyone interested in Gopro WB parameters from diferent models.

https://colour.readthedocs.io/en/v0.3.10/colour.models.rgb.dataset.gopro.html

GitHub

Difference between Open-Source and Commerical Transforms...

What is the difference between these open source Protune Transforms and the commercial GP-Tune Transform? For reference and clarity, the open-source transforms are based off the NATIVE to sRGB colo...

Important: Whilst all GoPros appear to use the same Color Matrices, the raw gains applied for Native White Balance are different between the various imaging sensors and even within the models using the same sensors.

The resulting XYZ Matrix will be different for each GoPro model.

There will be slight color variations when the "Native" color transforms (based off the IMX117 sensor & HERO5 Black) are used across the different GoPro iterations.

The Rec.709 Gamut based transforms should work across all variations regardless.

GitHub

GitHub - xtremestuff/protune-transforms: GoPro Protune Fl...

GoPro Protune Flat & LogB ACES IDTs and YRGB Transforms for DaVinci Resolve (Based off HERO5 Black) - xtremestuff/protune-transforms

5 minutes ago, GTom said:

I'm also guessing you haven't seen many divers with wet wide lenses attached to their action cams in the wild either?

Wide wet lens have being more common in action cams.

With small m67 adapter they can be used in full sensor cameras or smartphone cases.

They have being so popular that AOI and INON recently released their Pro models lens for action cams (ZD)

Nando, I feel we have already had this discussion.
Quoting places I have worked at and attempting to use that to discredit what I write is not a counter-argument. It does not address the substance of the technical points being made.

If you are diving in an environment with no ambient light, or shooting closeups or macro then shooting in ambient light is not really an option. That is self-evident.
However, this does not invalidate what I have written on ambient-light shooting. It simply defines the limits of a specific environment and/or shooting style.

And please note that there are specific approaches for shooting ambient in greener waters, including filters specifically designed for greener water (magenta filters), that you have not tried or meaningfully experimented with.
On that basis, dismissing filters, or generalising from your own specific shooting conditions to everyone else, is simply not justified.

Closer to your home base, I have dived and filmed in ambient light in the Mediterranean.
While I do not currently have access to that action-cam footage, which is archived on my hard disks in France, shooting in ambient light with filters is entirely feasible there - I did so in 2016 last, on a GoPro4 at the time - and yes, I used a filter.

I cannot show you the footage, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I was primarily diving Port-Cros, including sites such as La Gabinière, which should be familiar to a European diver like yourself. I was shooting mérous (groupers) bécunes (local barracudas) and topography mostly. Far from the tropics, but certainly possible.
Filter or no filter, people also shoot successfully in ambient light or mixed-lighting in Spain (Costa Brava) and in Atlantic locations such as the Azores and Tenerife.

Conversely, to return to my home turf, if you are diving a 51 m wreck like the Donator, or training in quarries such as Bécon-les-Granits, to site locations I have also dived or trained at, then artificial lighting is clearly the correct approach. The same applies to diving in Brittany, night dives, or... your locale apparently.

This is not disputed and never has been. The issue is not whether lights are sometimes required. The issue is that diving in conditions where ambient light is not viable does not justify dismissing other valid approaches to ambient light shooting.

When you make statements such as “I would not go the filters route… dive lights + GoPro Labs gives you much better results” conflate your personal constraints with general principles.

An accurate framing is actually straightforward: in your diving conditions, shooting in ambient light is not an option, and you therefore prefer close-up shooting with lights. That is exactly what you are doing, and well, good for you, but don't use this to discredit something you do not do or have experience with.

Regarding your comment that you do not see people using filters, I think this also reflects a widespread lack of understanding of how filters are used correctly, for best ambient light results. That knowledge gap is precisely what we are trying to address here, for people interested in approaching this effectively and experimenting further with it, and one of the reasons I wrote the article, for people interested in experimenting with this approach before drawing conclusions.

And again, if BBC camera operators use filters in specific ambient light shoots (and/or mixed lighting) on cine cameras shooting in actual RAW - and no, not only in tropical blue water locations, well, it is not because they are behind current technology, but because there way to do this effectively, and, more importantly, an actual reason to do so.

It is also incorrect to treat lights and filters as mutually exclusive. Using ambient filters on lights, combined with a lens filter to achieve a proper ambient-light white balance with supplementary artificial lighting, is an established and actively researched approach. Keldan’s approach is a clear reference point. Again, there is a way, and a reason, to do so.

All and all, I think it is important to situate one’s experience accurately. Limited exposure or understanding of a technique simply does not confer authority to dismiss it like you do, and you should be mindful of this when giving advice.
As an example, just recently, you were dismissing Log shooting because you were unaware that it must be converted to be graded properly, a point that had to be explained to you in this forum. This is similar.

Furthermore, consuming large amounts of YouTube or similar content does not substitute for a practical, experience-based perspective.
I strongly believe that technical claims such as the ones you make should be supported by your own demonstrated results, rather than being backed primarily by references to influencers or online content, which you often post as justification, including in the replies above.

In this, I would join the suggestion which has already been made to you to on the forum to stop posting loads of videos of variable quality to justify the points you are trying to make.

Instead, it would be much more interesting to show us how you, Nando Diver, are incorporating what you are learning here and there and how it helps your underwater videography, what results you are satisfied with, and why.

Especially if you are going to make affirmative claims and offer authoritative advice, as you quite often do, then please show us the goods so that we have something concrete to discuss, rather than indulging in pleasing but ultimately disconnected speculation, which is often what purely theoretical technical content amounts to.
Anchor your advice in your actual experience and use your own footage to support it.

Based on what you have shared so far here and on your channel, your footage is predominantly close-up work under artificial lighting.
That is entirely valid. As a side-note-, while I write a lot on shooting in ambient light on action cams, as this is what I was primarily doing the past 10 years, I primarily shoot with artificial light myself, as illustrated by what I post here or on my channel.

However, this specific background does not qualify you to make authoritative or dismissive statements about ambient-light shooting on action cams, particularly on approaches you have not even attempted to experiment with.

Beyond your local conditions, which are unusually restrictive and do not necessarily apply to the original poster, there has been little meaningful experimentation with alternative approaches, including ambient-light shooting during trips such as your Red Sea dive trip, which offer excellent conditions for ambient-light work for instance.

This is not intended as a personal attack.
If anything, it is a call for greater precision, humility, and personal investment when discussing technical methods on the forum, so that we can offer something more constructive than the volume of average or outright misleading information found online, especially on YouTube.

All this to say I stand by everything I have written, including regarding GoPro Labs. The tweaks you are experimenting with do not replace a true manual white balance performed at depth, or the effects of a well-designed spectrum filter. It just does not function this way.

Shooting in RAW or Log, or applying GoPro Labs parameters might certainly be useful tools, they do not magically suspend physics.
Let's leave it open for the OP to gather information, experiment and decide what works best for him, before locking him into a ready-made solution.

And lastly, while “good enough” may indeed be good enough for some, it is not a reason to settle for it simply because it is easier.
Let’s leave that to the talking heads who produce more talking-head videos than actual underwater content worth engaging with. There is already more than enough of that around, and it would be good if this forum could remain a place that offers a constructive alternative.

cheers

ben

(ps - sorry to the OP for the off-topic slide, forums can be as slippery as a well-oiled eel...)

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by bghazzal