HELP! Need to know which camera +housing to buy

Hello,

I am an avid diver and want to move to Underwater Videography in a semi-professional manner.

I am looking to invest about $10,000 on a Camera, housing and some accessories/underwater lamps.

Am looking at a few cameras from Sony and Panasonic, namely:

Panasonic AG-HVX200AB

Sony HVR series

but have not ruled out JVC just yet.

Does anyone have any advice or knowledge of how well these camera handle underwater filming. Any suggestions for similar products?

Ben welcome to Wetpixel and please use the video forum for related topics.

$10k won't buy you a Pana HVX200 with full setup, especially if you want to get great lens attachments etc.

Do a search in the forum regarding the HVX200. Several users here.

The Sony HVR-V1 has been reviewed twice now by me and you can find the reviews in this subforum. Your $10k price tag is still going to be tough to get a full setup but a basic setup is possible.

Then there is the Canon XHA1 which is a nice alternative to the HVR-V1.

Best for you to decide what you want to shoot first and how professional you aim to get.

Drew,

Thanks for your reply, and funnily it was only today that I realised a Video specific thread.

I decided upon the Canon XHG1 and have bought an Equinox housing and lights. I spent a little over the budgeted 10K but think that I have a great system which allows me to capture fully uncompressed 4.2.2 HD on the surface (and maybe underwater, if I can rig a capture box and battery inside the housing).

It arrived today, but I am having a dispute with Customs in Bonaire over Import Tax. Hopefully by Monday I will be playing with my new toy minus the 15% "bribe" for Bonaire Customs.

Ben

Quite impossible to get HD SDI capture underwater now unless you can rig a RAID Array with capture card in a housing.

Yeh but if can fit this bad boy inside my housing...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Convergent-...der-64099.shtml

Even if you could fit it, you still are capturing ONLY MPEG2 compressed I frame 4:2:2. The XDR doesn't capture uncompressed but converts to their 160mbps 4:2:2 codec. Given you will have to get a flashcard that can handle 160mbps with headroom, you'll need 266x cards like the Extreme IV from Sandisk. Even if you go for the 133x 160mbps cards, the max is 16GB right now. Assuming capacity doubles in a year, you're looking at 32GB at 133x and 16GB at 266x.

At 160mbps, it's about 1.2GB per minute = not a lot of time to record with right now, pretty much like HVX200 when it first came out. This is definitely viable in 1.5-2 years time, but by then you'll have multi-TB drives to carry the clips you record. No such thing as a free lunch.

Quite impossible to get HD SDI capture underwater now unless you can rig a RAID Array with capture card in a housing.

LOL, you probably just sent half the DIYers here off to the drawing board