Davide DB

Yes, maybe it’s just that I didn't apply myself enough. I've never used a glass mini-dome with the fisheye. All my attempts at shooting video with the sun in the frame turned out unsatisfying and milky. I also noticed that the port has to be perfectly clean on the inside. The Pana 8mm was able to focus on even the smallest grain of dust internally.

For video, the situation is slightly different. If the story I have in mind requires divers, I try to find an experienced buddy. Sometimes we agree beforehand on the movements and whether I want his lights visible in the shot. Occasionally, I even hand him a couple of torches to try and create some interesting lighting effects. This only works if the buddy is a photographer themselves or has some video experience: they immediately understand the shots I’m aiming for and act accordingly. In these cases, we make it clear from the start: we descend on our own and intentionally break away from the rest of the group. The problem starts when I focus exclusively on marine life or, even worse, macro. When I ask who wants to dive with me, usually everyone disappears 👻 I’ve even become a running joke at my local dive center. People say: "You're a PITA just like Davide and his camera!" 😀 Photographers in the group are a whole other story: I avoid them like the plague. My footage with a photographer flashing nearby looks like Baghdad in 1991! In the end, despite having been a radical GUE diver, the filmmaker in me dreams of a solo diving future! ☠️

100% agree. If you wait for the next big thing, you'll be waiting forever. That's just how tech works.

Are you sure that all those info contained in the xmp sidecar file is not in the MP4 file? No I haven't used it since. I was about to buy it, but then I saw several posts on the forum from people who hadn't heard back from tech support in months, and news that the company had been acquired. So I stop. I managed to get a pirated version 😇 just to test it out, and I have to say, it did everything I needed. I could even select subclips within a single file and assign different labels/keywords to each one. When I exported to DaVinci, the metadata and subclips were all there. It was awesome. The search was fast, but if I remember correctly, you had to re-insert the backup drive to search because the app doesn't have its own database; it only works with proprietary sidecar files in hidden folders next to the video files. I eventually uninstalled it because I didn't want to buy it and waste time cataloging my entire archive with a product that seemed EOL (End of Life). Now there's this news about an update last September. Can we really trust it? The fact remains that for my basic needs, Digikam might be just as good. It’s been around for 23 years, uses standard XMP metadata, and even if disaster strikes, its database is open-source and Digikam has a massive community behind it. P.S. I've never saw Catalyst Prepare/ browse software. I want to avoid vendor lock-in at all costs. I used Edius for years before moving to DaVinci, and it had its own proprietary asset manager. If I had relied on that for my archive, I’d be totally screwed right now. That’s why I’m looking for a brand-agnostic solution

My buddy and I have spent the last six months working exclusively on this documentary, commissioned by the Università Politecnica delle Marche as part of MAPA - MArine Adriatic PArk Project - Interreg Italy Croatia. The goal is to raise public awareness about the richness of sandy environments, which have always been dismissed as barren deserts. Yet, the majority of professional fishing worldwide takes place right in these habitats. Specifically, there’s a long-standing effort to promote a Marine Protected Area in front of Mount Conero, in the Adriatic Sea. I hope the university publishes the full video soon so I can share it with you. For now, here’s the trailer. PS: I know I don’t need to explain this to you guys—you’re all muck diving addicts anyway! 😁

Thanks for the update and nice rig! Post a few more photos if you can. Maybe the double buoyancy arms are overkill. The topic of trim has been coming up a lot lately. Ideally, you want to concentrate the buoyancy around the camera body while making the lights neutral at the same time. The goal is to avoid having the upward lift out on the arms as much as possible; that way, when you move the arms, you don't shift the overall balance—or at least, you minimize the effect. As Chris mentioned, the real issue is the torque on your wrists when you're tilting up or down. You end up fighting that force with your wrists, which isn't ideal for smooth video. P.S. Would you mind if I merge this post with your original thread where you first shared the photos of your setup? I’m really interested in your Azores experience. I’ve been thinking about it for a family vacation with some diving on the side. Would you mind opening a thread? 🤩

Hi Oriane Welcome aboard I hope you'll enjoy the forum. Nice to see another mediterranean buddy! I Miss Lavandou and Porquerolles. I went there countless times during the 90s and 2000s. I truly miss those days. Ciao

100% agree

Yes, I saw it. Very strange. I asked Pavel to give us some feedback. I hope he replies

No, it's not a typo. Marelux USA and Europe prices are 1:1 dollar/euro and Marelux Europe website specifies prices are VAT excluded.

Are you sure? I sat through hundreds of posts debating NiMh and Lithium batteries in total silence, soso I’ve earned my right to talk about this ! hahahaha I'm joking of course!

Fair point! If you're a photographer who just occasionally shoots video, pretty much anything works. But if the whole reason you're diving is to shoot video (like the OP here), then no, it’s not just about the person or their style, at least not mostly. Forgive me for being a bit of a nerd, but I’ve spent years watching you photographers obsess over every single screw on a strobe... 😂 so give me a break and let me do the same for video! 😜

I was looking at Marelux's European and American price lists, and we’re clearly living in The fabulous world of Amélie now, where housings cost more in Europe than in the US 😆

Hi Conrad, No, in the end, I didn't take the plunge. There were so many options, so expensive and complicated, that I played dead like an opossum in danger 😁 Let me try to summarize what I’ve gathered on the subject. Let's just say the path branches out significantly depending on several factors. To name a few: Local vs. Cloud use Personal vs. Shared use Windows / Mac / Linux You also need a tool with specific features for video that guarantees enough long-term reliability. I could spend months cataloging everything, only for the software company to go bust after two or three years, leaving me with a useless database. Working in the software industry for 30 years, I can assure you this happens much more often than people think. Kyno is school case. My use case was personal use, local storage, and Windows-based. You have to be careful with local use because some products only manage catalogs on a single hard drive. While that’s limiting but still doable for photos, it's simply impossible for video. I keep my videos archived on duplicated, offline drives. Initially I actually wanted to use Lightroom, since I've been using it for years for my photos and family albums. The major issue was that importing videos took ages because it kept trying to create smart previews for all the files. Not only did it take forever, but it often failed or caused my computer to freeze. It's a real shame because I was already familiar with its powerful tag and metadata management. Plus, you are tied hand and foot to Adobe regarding a limited supported video formats. I might be wrong, but even now, there's no hope for ProRes HQ and ProRes RAW. Choosing a video DAM is no easy task. Long story short, for my specific needs, this was the short list: Kyno (The "Zombie" is back): After being practically abandoned for years, it’s back with new updates. It’s the only one truly designed for a video-first workflow. It allows for "sub-clipping" (tagging specific segments of a clip) and can inject metadata directly into DaVinci Resolve. It’s perfect if you need to "pre-edit" or cull footage before moving to the NLE. AbeMeda / NeoFinder (Win/Mac versions) This is the "disk indexer" per excellence. It’s incredibly fast at creating "snapshots" of offline volumes. If you have 20 external drives on a shelf and you need to know which one contains "Clip_0042.mov" in two seconds, this is the tool. Keep in mind, metadata and tags/keywords yoy add are still in a proprietary database. DigiKam (Open Source) It's a big big project. It's the open source version of Lightroom and it has been active for over 20 years. Even if development were to stop today, the software would keep working, and the database (SQLite or MariaDB) is open and readable. There is no risk of proprietary lock-in. but more importantly, it can mirror every tag and metadata into standard XMP sidecar files***. While it started for photos, the latest versions (v9+) use FFmpeg to handle ProRes HQ and even ProRes RAW previews. It’s the database nearly futureproof because even if the software disappears, your metadata lives in plain-text XMP files right next to your videos. And last but not the least, it's free. Among the three, Kyno is the one designed specifically for video and the one I loved the most. However, the fact that it was basically declared dead for about three years after the company was acquired really made me stop and think. *** a note about XMP and a database while managing indexed files Imagine you add an "interviews" tag/keyword to your Clip001.mov files. When you type "interviews" into software like digiKam or Kyno, the information is instantly saved in the Database, usually a single file on your PC, such as digikam4.db. The tag is inside a system file on your main Hard Drive for speed. When you search for "interviews," the software doesn't scan all your external hard drives; it queries its internal database, which is tiny and very fast. The limitation: If your database gets corrupted or if you uninstall the program without having a backup of the database, the "interviews" tag vanishes, even if your videos are safe and sound on the external disk. To avoid the risk mentioned above, professional software uses XMP files. Since writing metadata inside a video file is slow and not supported in all formats, the software creates a small text file with the same name as the video but a different extension. Example: Video: Clip001.mov Sidecar: Clip001.mov.xmp or Clip001.xmp. The tag is written inside this text file in a standard XML format. If you open the XMP file with Notepad, you will clearly see the word: <dc:subject>interviste</dc:subject> It is for security and portability. If you take that hard drive to another computer with different software, such as Adobe Bridge, that software will read the XMP file and know that the video has the "interviews" tag. If you spend months tagging your historical archive in digiKam and two years from now you decide to switch to Kyno or another MAM, you won't have to redo all the work—provided you've enabled XMP sidecar writing. The new software will read the XMP files and import the tags automatically. P.S. before you ask, no Adobe Bridge doesn't work!

The aluminum build quality seems good and, basically, they seem to be "strongly inspired" by Nauticam’s design choices. However, the devil is in the details, so we don’t know anything yet about the design and durability of the buttons and levers. I also still find it difficult to navigate their port chart; the info seems scattered across several web pages. I would suggest hiring a good web designer to start with! 😁 Actually, we need alternatives that help lower prices and basically make this hobby accessible to as many people as possible. It feels like we are heading in the opposite direction instead. Then there's the lock-in factor. Switching systems usually forces you to rebuy all your gear, which is a huge financial hit.