Gates HC-7 Housing: Field Report

[lots of great info]

 

Cheers, Simon

Thanks Simon - really appreciate the information! I too did not expect the the HC-7 to be the be-all/end-all, but I've been pretty happy with the performance so far (after only 17 dives). I was looking for something with a few more bells and whistles and more compact design then my JVC HD10US/Gates HD1, and I've definately found it with the HC-7. As always though, the quality of the output depends more on the person using the tool and understanding it's limitations, rather then the tool iteself. With input like yours, hopefully others will be able to produce some pretty good results with this camcorder.

BTW - anyone interested in a JVC/Gates HD1 combination (with tons of extras!)???

I currently have a Sony PC330 and Ieklite housing which I cracked at 250 ft last month, it is time for an upgrade.

I am looking at the HC7 and Gates housing. How does the HC7 compare to the PC330 in low light?? that will at least give me a benchmark for compairing.

I live in Seattle and do alot of deep dark diving. I have two 21W HID's, will this work ok with the HC7???

Where is the best place to purchase a system???

Any input would be appreciated.

Hi guys

No problems on the info - I will try to post some screen shots or even a couple of sample clips over the weekend, but these will literally just be mt2 snapshots as I don't have a workable HDV editing system yet.

I'm not sure what the low light abilities of the PC330 were, but I have used a PC350 before so that should give you some idea. Head to head in my opinion the PC350 was much better in low light than the HC7.

I do say that with some qualifications though, but this may get a little confusing so please bear with me! (I know what I want to say, but can't phrase it well) I think the main problem for these HDV cams is actually that their nicely lit footage is so good that when you get low light and something not as good then it becomes unacceptable.

If you actually looked at footage side by side on test HDV to SD, same situation, same dive etc etc, then the footage from the HDV cam might actually be better than that of the SD cam. But when you then compare that HDV footage to the excellent well lit HDV footage that you can get, then it's an order of magnitute lower in quality. For example where with SD you may get a drop in quality of 50% with HDV is seems at time that you get a drop nearer to 90%. Not exact science here, but hopefully you get what I mean.

Make sense?

Cheers, Simon

....

If you actually looked at footage side by side on test HDV to SD, same situation, same dive etc etc, then the footage from the HDV cam might actually be better than that of the SD cam. But when you then compare that HDV footage to the excellent well lit HDV footage that you can get, then it's an order of magnitute lower in quality. For example where with SD you may get a drop in quality of 50% with HDV is seems at time that you get a drop nearer to 90%. Not exact science here, but hopefully you get what I mean.

 

Make sense?

 

Cheers, Simon

That's a nice explanation. I completely agree.

Well, it's been awhile since anyone has posted any fresh HC-7 footage, so I thought I'd post a short segment. This is part of an Intro I'm working on for my Cayman Brac trip. The video is really fast and is still very much work in progress, so I don't recommend the clip for anyone who gets seasick easily

Back In Brac

Ha ScubaBob, that was different! How to make the wobbles work for you Love all that panicking marine life (tut tut).

The actual quality of the video looks excellent. I know it's all pretty shallow and in good light but that's a great advertisment for the HC7.

960x540 @ 3.16Mbps. Wow.

Yes it does give a good idea of quality from the HC7 in clear bright water and the quick cuts hide the wobbles and out of focus stuff..... but good work there Bob...

We got a guy here with a HC3 in a Sea & Sea, it's so tiny

I like to use Rain-X to make the water bead up and run off my lens. This comes in handy for above / below shots or shots just out of the water. Anyway, I wanted to make sure it was OK to use with my new Fathoms SWP25. Gates checked with Fathoms and this is there reply. This is for glass lenses and it is important to use the proper lens wipes to apply and wipe the haze off.

We heard from Fathom, the Rain-x will not harm your superwide lens coating. Let us know how it works for your shoots.

Best wishes,

Karen

Karen M. Ellerbrock

Gates Underwater Products, Inc.

5111 Santa Fe Street, Suite H

San Diego, CA 92109 USA

(858) 272-2501 Office

(800) 875-1052 Toll-free

(858) 272-1208 Fax

mailto:Tech.Sprt@GatesHousings.com

http://www.GatesHousings.com

Don't Take a Chance...Take a Gates!

I've used Rain-Off, which I think is the same, on the glass port of my L&M Bluefin. It works for a dive or two. It comes with a nice soft cloth in the box.

Thanks Nick and Wags for taking a look at the video. Yeah, it's different trying to emphasize the shakes instead of trying to mask them It's amazing the results to get when add rum into the post-production workflow

The footage varied between 20-80', but definately was taken in some nice clear warm water. Still looking forward to putting the camera through some tests in my local waters, where conditions are often far from ideal.

Ah, I should try that. A few bottles of Chang before opening Vegas

I like to use Rain-X to make the water bead up and run off my lens. This comes in handy for above / below shots or shots just out of the water. Anyway, I wanted to make sure it was OK to use with my new Fathoms SWP25. Gates checked with Fathoms and this is there reply. This is for glass lenses and it is important to use the proper lens wipes to apply and wipe the haze off.

We heard from Fathom, the Rain-x will not harm your superwide lens coating. Let us know how it works for your shoots.

 

Best wishes,

 

Karen

 

Karen M. Ellerbrock

 

Gates Underwater Products, Inc.

5111 Santa Fe Street, Suite H

San Diego, CA 92109 USA

(858) 272-2501 Office

(800) 875-1052 Toll-free

(858) 272-1208 Fax

mailto:Tech.Sprt@GatesHousings.com

http://www.GatesHousings.com

Don't Take a Chance...Take a Gates!

Mini Dive, thanks for that info! I was trying some over under shots this weekend and was wondering what I could use to get the water to run off the fathoms ports.

HDV in clear bright water is wonderfull and much better than DV.

Like simon said take them down into lower light and it falls apart more than DV.

Have any of your guys taken the single CMOS cameras down on a nightdive with lights?

Luved the song BOB and can see how the rum would of come into cutting it up

Nick there is a guy here witha 2.8 GIG PC Laptop. It's taking him like 2 hours to encode out a 20min day from Vegas. How long does it take you to encode stuff out?

Nick there is a guy here witha 2.8 GIG PC Laptop. It's taking him like 2 hours to encode out a 20min day from Vegas. How long does it take you to encode stuff out?

reckon at that rate, probably a case of Chang beer...

speaking of which, just finished building my new PC... E6600 cpu overclocked to 3ghz with 2GB memory for the time being. Will get to test it out on some video I shot over a weekend camping/ dive trip here in HK.

Hey pakman that's gona rock with HDV and have great encoding out times.

Make sure you post some times.

Overclocking...just another reason why I like PC"S

We are holding off till we move, then going to build a Core2Quad.

EDIUS at this point does not use all 4 of the quads power yet but they are working on it....look out when it does.

Bob just watched your clip again, the other day I was going through some of my old HI8 tapes. Comparing it to your clip is funny.......I use to be proud of my HI8 qualtiy ha ha

[Have any of your guys taken the single CMOS cameras down on a nightdive with lights?

Luved the song BOB and can see how the rum would of come into cutting it up

Argh! No, it seems harder and harder to get people to do night dives these days. I was hoping to get at least one, if not more on my recent trip to cayman brac. Unfortanetly the weather didn't cooperate for the first half of the week, and after that it was hard to wrestle up 10 peeps to make the boat trip out. Almost did a night shore dive, but I think the beginning of purple jelly season was scaring off the local DMs.

My guess is though that the single CMOS HDV's cameras will be stellar for night dives. Heck, even my single chip 720p camera produced some pretty good color for night dives with good HID lights.

We are holding off till we move, then going to build a Core2Quad.

how about 2X Core 2 Quad... hehehe...

http://pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=412

Nick there is a guy here witha 2.8 GIG PC Laptop. It's taking him like 2 hours to encode out a 20min day from Vegas. How long does it take you to encode stuff out?

I'm not a fan of the Main Concept MPEG2 encoder that ships in Vegas. It is a little slow and the result can be soft. Instead I framserve to CCE Basic using the free Debugmode Frameserver. I guess it typically renders in something like real time so an hour's liveaboard DVD would take something like an hour. And the quality is fantastic. CCE is one of my all-time favourite programs. The best quality and the best speed around and only $58. Procoder matches it for quality since version 2 but is nothing like the same speed.

If it's a big long complex project I occasionally write an intermediate AVI first and feed that to the encoder. Had a crash or hang in the past, but not for a long time.

So I finally got a chance to introduce my HC7/Gates setup to the cold surgy low viz waters of So Cal. I almost forgot why I don't usually shoot video on Laguna shore dives, but remembered quickly as I was trying to steady myself for my first nudi shot of the day. Surge sucks!

Initial thoughts on shooting with the HC7 in less the ideal conditions is pretty optimistic. Most shots were a little over exposed, focus was much harder, white balance was definately much harder and dealing with the surge was, as always, a big pain. I haven't found a way to reorder the items in the "Dial-Set" menu (don't think it is possible), which I think would be a big help to make exposure changes and then be able to manually focus. Anyway, I've attached a ~2 minute video of some of the dive highlights below. Only the last two nudi shots were done using my HID lights, the rest were all shot using ambient light.

Dive info:

Location: Shaw's Cove, Laguna Beach, California, USA

Date: 06/09/2007

Time in: 1pm

Dive Time: 66 minutes

Water temp: 64-66f

Viz: 5-10'

Surge: Of course

720p Video (70MB)

520p Video (42MB)

I'll be doing some night dives in Bali next week with the A1-U, will let you know how it comes out. That is if I can get over this sinus infection I just picked up.

Steve B)