Light & Motion HC3 review

Tonight I have been playing with the "Easy" button to figure out if it is usable.

As mentioned above, the one time that it would be useful is, at the end of a dive, on surfacing, the camcorder settings would all be set for an underwater situation. In my case, this would usually mean focus locked at the distance of the last shot, Exposure shift probably at -1 and WB at MWB probably set during the ascent phase at 9 to 5 meters. Pressing "easy" would quickly enable surface footage to be shot at auto-focus, auto-WB and auto-exposure. Of course, one should never touch that "easy" button during a dive.

What does the "easy" button reset? From my testing it resets the camcorders controls to auto-focus, auto-exposure and auto-WB and turns off any "shift" settings. It also resets the "DISPLAY" menu to VCD (Why, Mr Sony, why?), removing all the data (e.g. battery time, tape remaining) from the housing's external monitor. Let me be clear on this last point because there was some misinformation earlier in this thread: The easy button does NOT turn off video output to the housing's external monitor. It only turns off the display of the data (the text that appears over the video image) to the external monitor. You still see what the camcorder is capturing.

What it does NOT reset is the REC LED (still off), BEEP (still off) and the P-Menu Setup (still set to your preferred settings).

This last one is important and can ease some of the hassle of getting the camcorder back to the way it was before you pressed "easy".

By modifying the P-Menu to include everything that you might like to set before a dive, you can quickly overcome any negative effect of the "easy" button. For example, my P-menu now includes the DISPLAY menu so I can quickly set it back to V-Out/Panel. It also includes Exposure Shift so I can set it back to -1, a setting I use for most dives. Of course, these can only be done between dives, by taking the camcorder out of the housing so you can get to the full VCD menu. Hence the golden rule: only ever use the "easy" button after the dive is over.

If you thought that you would ever want to use "Easy" underwater, you can change the P-Menu so that you can recover all its resets back to your preferred underwater settings. To do this you would replace "Smooth slow record" on the right-hand side of the first P-Menu with DISPLAY. Then, even if you pressed "Easy" underwater, you could set the DISPLAY setting back to V-Out/Panel using the external plunger. You can set all the other settings through the manual control dial. A bit fiddly but at least you'd be back in action.

So, I would like to suggest that the "easy" button is not as bad as first thought and can play a useful role for the underwater videographer in some circumstances.

I also learned tonight that becoming familiar with how the P-Menu setting function works is a useful way of tailoring the HC3 to your specific requirements.

Regards

Peter

Using the Momentary Auto Focus button, I pointed the housing at an object about 5 meters away. The image in the monitor looked like it was in focus. But the HC3 displayed the manual focus symbol and 0.2 meter. No matter where I pointed the housing, doing a MomAF appeared to find the right focus but the focus distance displayed was always wrong - way too close. I guess that this is caused by the wide angle optics fooling the distance calculator in the camcorder. The camcorder is focusing very close to compensate for the apparent image coming through the SWA lens.

Peter, you're right. Because the front port is actually a lens it's giving you a virtual point of sharpest focus that can't be related to the real-world units. That's horribly put because I don't know the technical terms but hopefully you know what I mean.

The Bluefin FX1 with the 80 degree lens does a similar thing. It more often than not focusses at 0.3m in good light if you hit momentary auto focus.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the wide angle lens is increasing your depth of field so you might see variations from say 0.1 to 0.5m and it might not matter too much, everything may still be sharp. Need to check on a big monitor though. HD/HDV is very unforgiving of poor focus. Personally I'm running on auto focus most of the time and just kicking in manual focus for macro shots that need it, or momentary auto focus if I'm shooting a pelagic that isn't giving much contrast to keep the auto focus sharp.

HD/HDV is very unforgiving of poor focus. Personally I'm running on auto focus most of the time and just kicking in manual focus for macro shots that need it, or momentary auto focus if I'm shooting a pelagic that isn't giving much contrast to keep the auto focus sharp.

I am planning to become a bit more "anal" about using the Momentary Auto Focus feature. Momentary Auto Focus is so easy and reliable on the L&M housing that, unless you are planning a pan shot with varying focus distances, the Momentary Auto Focus just seems to make sense for a lot of shots.

Recently I was in a shallow cave with a pair of nurse sharks. I was up-close and wanted to do a tracking pan from head to tail. There was plenty of light, the shark had a distinct outline and so I figured auto-focus would handle it. I took the shot three times to make sure I had it right. In all three takes, when the camera panned over the center of the large shark, the image filed with grey shark skin and the camera hunted. It only hunted for a split second but it is obvious in the footage. So I had to split it into two clips in the editor and trim out the hunting. Still nice, but would have been better as one long pan from head to tail. Momentary Auto Focus would have solved the problem.

New resolution: press Momentary Auto Focus often! <S>

Regards

Peter