blobsthediver

Sharing my thoughts on the Fotocore MR5.5. First of all, abit of context on my use case. I do a on-and-off gig as a videographer on an LOB. This is where my gear gets the heaviest and most frequent usage. Time is scarce for me, I am often doing 4 dives a day, and for each dive I try to be on the first speedboat out and i come back with the last speedboat In between dives I have to sort through/edit footage, or fly my drone/take b-roll shots etc In summary, I think this a great monitor for amateur travel, but if you are shooting something more professional i.e. long UW shoots on rebreather plus multiple dives close to each other, then this may not be the best monitor given the charging is only via USB-C. Took a short video of the cable placement concern last year (sorry for low quality i deleted the original): https://youtu.be/DROZ9eLk_t4 What I like What I don't like as much / potential negatives 1. Brightness Extremely bright Major improvement versus my old Weefine 7” Pro. The official stats puts it at 3,000 nits, I dont know how to actually verify this but so far even in bright daytime conditions I generally only need around 50–75% brightness. At night I can run it much lower 2. Battery life Great real-world battery life I normally do 3–4 dives per day without charging between dives and generally still have around 15–30% remaining at the end of the day. Easily sufficient for a normal liveaboard diving day for me. There is always a worry that if the battery goes bust, I can't replace it 3. Charging USB-C charging - for me, convenient and I like it I don’t need to travel with additional batteries. Given how much dive/camera equipment I already carry, it makes life alot easier. I normally just charge once a day after the day's diving is done Vaccum seal affected when removing the charging cap to charge To plug in the USB-C cable, you have to unscrew the o-ringed charging port cap The vacuum seal is lost if the cap cover is left open over a period of time - e.g. when charging. The nauticam indicator has turned yellow and even red at times If you have to charge the monitor after every dive, this can be annoying to have to re-seal the housing everytime, but so far the battery life has been great enough that the monitor lasts an entire day of diving 4. Form / size Compact. The 5.5” monitor is MUCH more compact than the 7” Weefine I previously used. Easier to travel with Less drag underwater - especially in challenging conditions Smaller screen is the trade-off. A 7” monitor is easier for judging critical focus and fine details, especially for macro/manual focus. Scopes and overlays also take up more of the available screen. HDMI cable placement isn’t ideal — it protrudes awkwardly and makes cable routing less clean. 5. Form -> HDMI cable This is one of the biggest negative to me. The cable connector design is awkward and to me is a risk of breaking/snagging. See an older video I made last year where I talked about it abit more 6. Core functions More than good enough for me Has basically all the core monitoring tools, for me has waveform and peaking which are the 2 that i use the most

@RomiK I have been using the monitor for a while now - will share my thoughts in a couple of days

Will be heading to Galapagos this October on a LOB. I'm leaning towards not bringing video lights (2 x Keldan 8XR) for a few reasons: Most of the articles/posts I've read seem to suggest that video lights are probably not critical - either scaring the animals, or they would be too far in the blue anyway. Seal/iguana is shallow so ambient light would suffice Strong currents so no light setup is much easier to handle I am coming from Asia and this is part of a longer trip (will be in the Americas for ~2 months, potentially heading to Mexico after Galapagos), so lugging any non-essential/extra gear is a pain Wanted to hear from those that have done Galapagos - what was your experience with video lights? Did you regret bringing/not bringing? Any tips or advice would be appreciated :) Thanks in advance!

Super helpful table - thanks for this! I used to use the Weefine WED-7 Pro, currently using the Fotocore MR5.5 I quite like the MR5.5, happy to give a short review of it if anyone is interested

Hello from Singapore. I love scuba and I love videography. Thanks for setting up and maintaining this community - have learnt alot from the forums and hope to contribute a small bit back someday.