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Honestly, my biggest piece of advice for underwater video: DON'T SHOOT LOG. Film in the standard picture profile. I see a lot of people using Log just because they watched a YouTube video recommending it, but Log is really designed for shooters on land. Here's the issue: with Log, you're forced into a higher base ISO. Underwater, we are already in a dark environment, so boosting our ISO even higher means most Log footage just looks really noisy. Plus, you basically need a pro colorist to correct it. The A7SIII already has great dynamic range and brilliant white balance at depth, so shooting in standard gives you a significantly cleaner image with great color right out of the camera. Give me underwater footage shot in Log and fully graded, and put it next to correctly exposed, white-balanced footage shot in the standard picture profile. Trust me, you won't see any difference. If anything, it's most likely that the standard picture profile image looks cleaner. These are my go-to baseline settings for great looking footage straight out of camera: Standard Picture Profile. Aperture: f/8 Shutter: 1/125 (because I am shooting 60fps) ISO: Auto ISO Exposure Comp: -0.7 (this helps protect the highlights of the surface) To be fair, those specific exposure settings are mainly what I use for wide angle, but the core philosophy is basically the same for macro and blackwater. Since you are shooting macro and blackwater with artificial light, here is the real trick: make sure you custom white balance to your video lights. If you do this in standard profile, it gives you incredible color accuracy right out of the camera so you don't have to fiddle with it in post at all. I have been shooting the A7SIII since it came out and it is still my absolute go-to workhorse for work. If you want to see the results, check out any video on Backscatter and you will see most of the underwater footage was shot with this camera and these settings. Hope this helps you avoid those editing headaches!

I was shooting an OM System OM-1 Mark I in an AOI housing Wide: -- Lumix 8MM fish eye -- BackScatter Hybrid Strobes Macro - -- m.Zukio 90MM -- Backscatter Miniflash-2 -- Backscatter OS-1 snoot on the blenny d

@Davide DB I was shooting 60P and 1/125. I THINK I was F/8 and also auto ISO. So you feel a bump to F/11 would sharpen it? The focus was the hardest part because of the thin DOF and the fact that the little suckers kept moving in an out of the focus plane. I tried to get a focus. Then as they came closer re-focus. The sideways movement was easiest of course. For the head-on shots, I was trying manual focus on the green slug and trying to time the focus changes as he got closer but that was hit or miss. The black one I backed off distance wise so the DOF was a little deeper. And of course every breath in changed my buoyancy and that made it hard to keep steady too. I'm retooling from OM-1 to Sony a7rV right now so will have to work all this out again next trip.

Thank you, I quickly color graded in Premiere Pro and without blurring it, I see slight focus different between the front fishes and the ones in the back, but it is very gradual and I do not find it an issue. On the contrary, I think it makes the image quite appealing.

Nicely done, especially for a first video. You are correct, macro video is challenging, which is largely why I keep trying to get better at it. I probably shoot 5 or 6 hours of video to get a good 20 minutes or so of usable material. Lots of material on the cutting room floor as you say.

Underwater 240fps (opinion at 3m34s in first video)

you can capture details underwater that are impossible to see with naked eye. You got a camera that is able to do high frame rates and you dont test it.

Ive sent you link with original file..see for yourself

My custom mode setting for Wide Angle is Standard LV and for Macro S-OVF. With OM1 you could add a third mode for CFWA.

I like the editing idea. The blenny watching what happens around it. At least that is how I understood it. Nice. I love videos that are not just simple slideshows of nice pictures. In general, macro images seem very soft to me, maybe too much. The focus almost always seems ok to me. On these little creatures we should always be careful to have the focus on the head, and preferably on the eyes when they have them. Maybe it depends on the aperture used? Here you really need F11 and beyond. And if you are at 50/60p you must be at least at 1/100 or 1/125 shutter speed. If you want to get a darker background, raise the shutter even more. The 180-degree rule is not so important underwater. Well done.

Well, I tried LV Standard and it was miserable. Couldn't see a damn thing, even with focus light and Atom Flash LED lights on. I'll use S-OVF, the histogram, and reviewing the shot on the LCD. Thank you for all the input. Adrian

They are amazing. It's the so called Golden Kelp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminaria_ochroleuca) and it's present on both shores of the strait but it's deep. It starts form 65m/213ft. The colony on the Sicily shore is the best (the ones filmed in this doc). Roberto Rinaldi filmed the Laminaria with his Canon C500 MKII. P.S. A tragic note. The researcher speaking in the video is Lorenzo Bramanti. One of the top experts on mesophotic systems in the Mediterranean and a researcher at the French CNRS. Unfortunately, Lorenzo died suddenly at the age of 52 in his home in Banyuls-sur-Mer, France, at the end of June 2026. https://reporterre.net/Lorenzo-Bramanti-chercheur-et-defenseur-des-forets-animales-marines-est-mort

Out of curiosity: what's the meaning of shooting @240fps?

This is in French but subtitles in English work. Some beautiful shots and i discovered that there are kelp forests in the Mediterranean?!!

I had once problems with condensation on a Nauticam 140mm domeport in a cold mountain lake on a rainy day: reason was a 120N extension where screws were missing (from factory). Few droplets of water came in (maybe half or quarter of a teaspoon), not enough for the vacuum or moisture systems to react, and this caused the condensation...

Hello all I've begun my transition to Sony with the A7SIII, and I'm curious as to what people using this camera or other Sony cameras ended up using when it comes to video shooting profiles. I've been digging into the archives, and there was a lot of excitement back in the day about S-Log3, but I shoot mostly macro and blackwater-type video, so it's either artificial-light dominant or fully artificial light (BW). I'm not convinced shooting in log will add much other than the hassle of handling ETTR exposure. I plan on keeping S-Log for ambient light or mixed lighting (ie wider shots), which will come one day when I'll have a wide lens, a boat trip planned etc. Not for now anyway. I finally got the A7SIII in the water yesterday for two test dives and shot in HLG3. Hybrid log seemed like a good compromise for grading: excllent dynamic range, but without LOG's exposure/ ISO issues. However, I'm not impressed by how it behaves in post. I'm on FCPX (no, I can't run DaVinci due to a big fat hardware issue - I need a computer update and don't have the cash for one at the moment), and the HDR-to-SDR 709 conversion is underwhelming. Dynamic range is certainly there (wow), but other than that, there is still quite a lot of work needed after the conversion. The image is still pretty much flat (not much changes), which could be due to Final Cut, but who knows. Other than trying to recover clipped highlights, I might not need as much DR. I don't really lift blacks and it's heresy for BW. Colours need a lot of saturation lifting, which is great for precision, but then again I could start with something of a less flat-base to grade with. Long story short, I can make HLG3 work, sure, but the question is: should I? This first test has made me wonder if I should shoot in standard picture profiles instead. I've read recommendations for Cine2 and Cine4, asked AI to search for published material, but it ended up hallucinating verbose pseudo-technical garbage that went nowhere, as usual with LLMs... I'm really curious as to what actual humans out there are actually using in this situation. Actual hands-on experience. I understand artificial light / macro / BW video is not the most common shooting scenario, but I'm really happy to hear what people have used, are using, or would use in such a situation. On my previous camera, the Lumix LX10, I was shooting in Cine-D with flatter settings, which worked fine (of course there were no log options, which narrowed it down quite a bit ˆˆ) Thanks!

It doesn't exist on their website so....

I have the GR140Pro and the G165II and my understanding, so far, is: No lens - focus between 50cm to 6m - perfect for general underwater landscape GR140 - focus between 15cm to 2,5m - perfect for walls/reefs wide sceneries G165II - no reference available but I expect something between close-up and macro. The question is how deep is its DOF. I hope for something like 10-60cm, anything less would not be for me. I will test the three configurations and see but in principle I like the idea of having some light softness outside the focus range because it directs the view on the subject. Maybe because I come from photography background, I have never been a fan of infinity focus, on the contrary, I always considered it as a defect. I believe the M1 has to be used differently than other action cams, paying more attention to focusing and framing, just like in photography, but that it not necessary a negative thing and I can understand that for someone it could be a problem. It is not easy to change the way we are used to do things. Of course, for now these are all theories, until I bring all below the surface and test them. One more week to go.

I am not sure I've understood the purpose of the blurry adjustment in post. Can you post also the clip with unadjusted blurry?

Ask and answered.

Is it possible to rig an AOI quick-release lens holder to an AOI cold shoe mount, possibly something like this or this? I plan on taking out the M52/67 threaded mount and rigging the quick-release lens holder to the cold shoe in its place. Originally, I bought two QRS holders to mount onto my arm sections to store my wet lens and macro diopter for when I'm not using them. However, I realized this would cause an uneven weight distribution which might make maneuvering the arms a bit more difficult, and I would not be able to fit enough floats on the arms to make my setup neutrally buoyant. I also figured I would need only one lens holder as I would probably be using either one wet lens or the other at a time, but not neither of them. Alternatively, I could mount the lens holder on another arm section attached horizontally across the handles of my tray, using triple clamps to attach both the horizontal arm section and both my arms. However, this solution is more expensive, so I am trying to make cold shoe solution work, if possible. I believe the QRS lens holder probably will be able to be bolted onto the cold shoe in place of the threaded mount, the problem then would be will the QRS holder be fixed in place on the shoe or will it spin. In the QRS holder for Ultralight arms, the lens holder is held in place by two prongs where the lens holder screws into the arm mount. I noticed on the threaded cold shoe lens holders that there are two holes that look like they might be used to interface with similar prongs. If anybody has both of these mounts on hand, could you test this for me please? PS: If you have the single QRS mount (as opposed to the twin mount), I believe you have to take the square nut out of the lens holder, which you might not want to do.

I see extensions which allowed Nauticam N120 to be used on a Marelux housing, but nothing for the other way round.

Nauticam focus gear for Sony 16-35 f4 ZA OSS. Tested in the pool and on a shallow (25' or so) dive. Works well with the Nauticam zoom gear co-installed. It's designed to work with the N100-N120 35.5mm adapter with gear knob. https://makerworld.com/en/models/3033166-nauticam-focus-gear-for-sony-16-35-f4-za-oss