HDSLR Tips/Tricks

Just starting to play around with the HD Video on the 7D underwater. Anyone with more experience on this than I have any tips/tricks/observations?

I have a decent amount of experience shooting video with this camera on land, so most of what I have learned applies underwater. The one thing I find most challenging is getting a good exposure. The LCD tends to be not the best judge, and while on land I can have a nice optical magnifier like a Zacuto-Z finder to help judge exposure and focus, underwater this is much more difficult - especially in the changing light of a kelp forest, or going from shooting a school of fish horizontally in the water to aiming up towards the sun, for example. Anyone play around with the camera in manual but with AUTO ISO? What about peoples experience with focus... So far I have only shot with a 10-17 so pretty much set to f/6.3-11ish depending on light and focus on something close foreground and let the wide lenses depth of field do the rest - this has been for the most part somewhat successful, more so in bright tropical environments than dark California waters where I either need to bump up the iso to a level I am not comfortable with or open my aperture to where focus becomes more critical. I have played around with the various frame rates and while I much prefer 24p/50th sec on land, 30p/60th sec underwater suites the environment better I feel.

For HDSLR's being a pretty great added bonus to the underwater photographers toolbox, I am somewhat surprised to not see more on this topic posted on Wetpixel.

Hi, I'm on the same journey. There is a thread were we started to capture some of the things we've learned about video settings. It's here. I have been impressed with the auto iso capability of the camera and I intend to give it a good trial run over the next month in Bali. I understand your issues with exposure and focus. I'm thinking I'll try to shoot a still and look at the histogram before an important video sequence as one way to check that all systems are go. I'd love to hear more from folks who have been shooting video too.

Cheers,

Steve

Thanks Steve, that thread was a good read. Have you had a chance to try out any macro video yet? So far I have only shot (underwater at least) with the 10-17.

I have been using a slate for manual wb, have not purchased a magic filter yet, as I have not been able to convince myself to dive only planning on shooting video!

I have a custom color profile set with the contrast/sharpness all the way down and the saturation dropped two clicks. Read on a few sites that this is a good baseline to get the most range out of our footage, but it does need to be color graded in Final Cut Pro or some similar program as it looks pretty flat.

Hi, I'm on the same journey. There is a thread were we started to capture some of the things we've learned about video settings. It's here. I have been impressed with the auto iso capability of the camera and I intend to give it a good trial run over the next month in Bali. I understand your issues with exposure and focus. I'm thinking I'll try to shoot a still and look at the histogram before an important video sequence as one way to check that all systems are go. I'd love to hear more from folks who have been shooting video too.

 

Cheers,

Steve

Have you had a chance to try out any macro video yet?

 

I have been using a slate for manual wb, have not purchased a magic filter yet, as I have not been able to convince myself to dive only planning on shooting video!

I've had a chance to shoot with my 100mm in the pool just to practise. Definitely need a tripod. I have the ULCS tripod adapter that I can use with my spare arms but you need to hang a weight on it or it will move in the slightess current. It needs a wider ring at the connection to the housing to make it work well. I found that using 2 8's and a 5 in front will let me get close to subjects. It's not easy with the ULCS clamp, everything has to be just right for it to work. Backscatter is working with the 404 folks to adapt his 5D mkII mount and Aquatica has their new tripod but I haven't tried it out. I have a Gorilla pod I'm going to try next month, but no experience with that yet.

As for the magic filter, check out the video that Alex and Peter Rowlands made, it's less than $25 US and well worth it. http://www.magic-filters.com/dvd.html Peter shot the video with a Magic filter on the video camera so you can get an idea of what's possible. I understand the concern about dedicating a dive to video but I'm thinking the other choice to get really nice color is a few thousand worth of video lights. I'm going to try the next trip with a filter for shallow reef sequences and a Sola 600 for a video macro light.

Steve

Hi,

There have been a few other discussions on HDSLR settings (also relating to the 5D II, but most advice still holds).

I've been using both the 5D II and 7D underwater for video, mostly with wide lenses and magic filter, but have dabbled with macro. I'd second what Steve says- definitely a tripod, reasonably static subject and bright lights so you can shut the aperture down a bit, or you'll be very limited in DOF.

Good luck and post some results when you get the chance!