Which Equipment?

Hi All,

 

Can anyone recommend a camcorder and housing for an absolute beginner? I know NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP about taking movie clips. I'd like something compact, along the lines of a compact still camera, don't want broadcast quality, just something to give 'watchable' results as a record of our dive trips to show family & friends.

 

Camera shops can't advise which camcorder would be better than another or which camcorders have housings available so I'm a bit stuck really.

 

I'm in the UK and have a budget of approx. £1,200 for both camcorder & housing.

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Little Jem

Hi Little Jem

 

There is a huge amount of info here on this forum so I would suggest you do a search and see what you come up with first.

 

From that we can point you in the right direction.

 

Generally SONY cameras have the greatest range of housings followed by Cannon cameras.

HDV is what you should be going for and not DV if you can.

Hi wagsy,

 

Since you advice to go for HDV compare to DV, but what about HDV (HDR-HC9E) compare to AVCHD (HDR-SR12E) both the model is what I am eyeing now.... hope to get some advice too, because am know nothing bout video both on land and underwater.... :)

It's a good idea to go to a shop such as Cameras Underwater and talk to them and pick up the actual cameras and housings to give you a better idea of portability etc.

 

Andy

Little Jem,

 

Stick with Sony or Canon cameras.

 

Check out Ikelite and see if there's a housing and cam that suits your budget. Ikelite are pretty simple, reliable and affordable housings with mechanical controls.

 

A couple of other manufacturers you could look at are Top Dawg and USVH. They are electronically controlled housings. They probably won't support Canon because they require a LANC socket which Canon doesn't have (last time I checked anyway).

 

In any case make sure you get a blue water colour correction filter with the system. It's reddish-orrange in colour and restores colour to your video underwater.

Hello All,

 

Many thanks for your advice. It does seem that both Cannon Sony seem to get the best reviews so shall probably stick with one of their camcorders.

 

Cameras Underwater is quite a long drive down to 'the big smoke' for us being up in the wilds of Yorkshire so isn't really an option. All I can readily access is Jessops who don't really know much about video underwater.

 

I've looked on the internet at both Top Dawg & Ikelite housings and read something about a mirror being used to see the lcd screen with the Ikelite. Do images seem 'in reverse' when using this method and if so is it something you get used to easily?

 

Also Nick mentioned a 'blue-water' filter. Is this used as well as manual white balancing or instead of?

 

As you can probably guess from the questions above, I really know nothing about this and who do you ask? Jessops can't advise and neither can our local dive shop so thank goodness I found this forum!!

 

Thanks again for your help.

 

Little Jem

I've looked on the internet at both Top Dawg & Ikelite housings and read something about a mirror being used to see the lcd screen with the Ikelite. Do images seem 'in reverse' when using this method and if so is it something you get used to easily?

I've never used one. I know with some cameras it was possible to reverse the image on the LCD so it rights itself again in the image on the mirror. But you would need to check that out. I guess it wouldn't take too long to get used to framing in reverse but I've personally never done it.

 

Also Nick mentioned a 'blue-water' filter. Is this used as well as manual white balancing or instead of?

This is used in conjunction with manual white balance. It assists the white balance and also richens the colours up both with and without manual white balance. Without the filter you can't manually white balance as deep (it goes out of range and just refuses). If you have a rig that does not allow manual white balance then the colour correction filter helps the colour balance anyway. But if it's flippable then you would want to remove it at depth (say 30m+) where all it's really doing is cutting out light and increasing visual noise caused by the gain that the camera uses to compensate.

 

If you can afford it, get a housing that allows manual white balance. It's probably the biggest single feature that can improve the quality of your footage. If you can't afford a rig that you can manually white balance I have read (I think it was Drew on this forum) that Canon does better auto white balance underwater than Sony. I must admit my Sony's have not been very good at auto-white balance underwater. I haven't personally dived with a Canon.

 

As well as here you might want to check out the Digital Diver and possibly Scubaboard video forums where I believe there may be more owners of the lower end housings, especially Ikelite and USVH.

I've looked on the internet at both Top Dawg & Ikelite housings and read something about a mirror being used to see the lcd screen with the Ikelite. Do images seem 'in reverse' when using this method and if so is it something you get used to easily?

The Canon's will pan backwards. Ikelite only has reversing circuitry for newer Sony models. There's a further tradeoff in that the reversing circuitry when active does something to the touchscreen controls on the HDR series cameras that makes them less functional - not sure of the details as I read about it somewhere. e-mail Ikelite, they have great customer service.

I'll just add that with your budget, you should look at used equipment if quality is not the top priority. You can check the classifieds here or ebay.

I suggest getting a DV camera which should be going for dirt cheap now with many moving to HD. With the savings you may even be able to get a used light system.