Amphibico PD150 newby question

Newby question;

Having just purchased a second hand PD150 housing which has a fixed internal filter, I would like some advice from past or current users.

How do you shoot in blue water (surface and all depths to 50M), do you just leave the filter in and manually white balance reqularly or do you fit a blank filter holder instead?

My rig is made up of an Amphibico PD15o housing, 100 degree aspheric lens & Sony VX2000e camera

Cheers

Des

It all depends on your water conditions, in perfect blue water at lunchtime with no cloud in tahiti i could get to about 40m whilst using the red filter before the gain would kick in.

If you dont want to use the filter either get a pair of calipers and take it out, or just dive without the filter holder , and keep an eye out for vignetting and zoom accordingly.

It's a great setup, and will last a long time.

Simon

Hi Des, in blue water I would leave that filter in and manually white balance regularly on a white slate, a white fin, or the palm of your hand. It's going to get noisy/grainy below about 30m but this is far outweighed by the richer colours you're going to achieve shallower than that. If you take a look at my site (www.bubblevision.com) just about all the 4:3 day-time video on there is shot with the VX2000 with the flip filter in place and manually white balanced.

I would only flip the fliter out when I turned my lights on (to stop everything going red) or when at 40m or deeper, trying to keep the gain down to prevent excessive grain/noise.

Hi Simon, Nick,

Many thanks for the advice.

I am off in early May to dive the Brothers & Elphinstone on a southern Red Sea liveaboard, so there will be lots of early morning dives and the light may not be the best.

One other question, when trying to shoot half & half (surface / water) would you recommend leaving the filter in or out?

Cheers

Des

For half-in-half-out I would definitely leave the filter out.

Unless you want that nice sunset effect .........hahaha