GH5 Nauticam underwater settings.

Hi guys. First day underwater and all footage is blurry. I thought it looked fine before going in but had to pull it out of housing a couple of times and I must have pulled the manual focus ring on my Olympus M. ZUIKO Pro 7-14 f2.8.

Another note about this lens it needs a port adaptor and has a lens hood built into the lens that you are not able to remove. You have to load camera first then put lens through port adaptor from the other side and attach it to the Camera. All because the hood will not fit from the housing side. Kind of awkward.

Tomorrow morning going to try again. I think I have the manual white balance figured out. Really looks good up to 50-60 feet. Deeper things look a little brown.

Sometimes there is nothing close to point the camera at that is white. Can I still use the bottom if it's farther away?

I talked to Backscatter but couldn't get a hold of them today as it's a holiday but I remember them telling me to turn off halfbutton focus and continuous auto focus to shoot video? Then use the lever that is close to the video recording button and that will set focus. Was told to focus on my fin and that will set focus to infinity from that point on. Then pretty much forget about it the rest of the dive as everything will be I focus and will not have the camera hunting for focus on moving subjects and such?

I'm pressing that lever and it doesn't seem to be doing anything? I'll try and talk to Backscatter guys again tomorrow but their not open until after I'm done my dive. Hopefully I can get a comment or two to help set things up for tomorrow's dive. Thanks in advance.

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Don't have the GH-5 but on Oly bodies you can disable the manual focus clutch to get AF back, buried in the menus. They are talking about using back button focus to focus so the shutter button does not activate AF. This review discusses some things that will be useful to activate:

https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Panasonic-GH5-Underwater-Camera-and-Housing-Review

They just don't have how to set those things in the menus. You'll need to go into the AF custom menu a quck google found this guide:

You may also want to activate focus peaking so you can check what is in focus easier.

White balancing off the bottom may not be a great idea as you want to white balance on something in the same light as your subject. If you are a lot shallower than the bottom then the water is less blue/green than at the bottom.

Sometimes there is nothing close to point the camera at that is white. Can I still use the bottom if it's farther away?

 

If you’re not wearing gloves. The palm of your hand works fine for most cameras.

I talked to Backscatter but couldn't get a hold of them today as it's a holiday but I remember them telling me to turn off halfbutton focus and continuous auto focus to shoot video? Then use the lever that is close to the video recording button and that will set focus.

 

I would turn off C-AF both in the Movie menu and set the rear focus dial to M-AF and just use the AF/AE button.

You need to set the AF/AE button to ‘AF On’ for the back button to work within the menu, to get it to function as a AF button.

Was told to focus on my fin and that will set focus to infinity from that point on.

 

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I think I got the focus figured out. As long as I don't hit the Zoom gear nob. White balance is a little tricky. The sand here is really white and even though I'm doing it every 10 feet. (Sometimes 5) it comes out not the best. I'm surprised I can use lights even though I've done a manual white balance. I thought I'd have way too much red.

So far I have just used the manual focus assist to set focus. I haven't yet messed around with any of the other settings. I think I'm in P mode. Whatever that is lol. Still have not read the manual.

Should I be in movie mode for video?

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Hi Gearbow,

Okay the primary gotcha on the Lumix GH series is the top dial. If its in anything other than 'M - Movie' then recording video you are ALWAYS in full program mode, so the camera is choosing aperture, shutter speed (normally 1/30 - if 30p, or 1/25 if 25p - which is stupid) and auto ISO. Even if you change the dials, as soon as you hit the Rec button, it goes full auto.

Setting the camera on the top dial to 'M - Movie' you gain access to the full movie modes, and then within there is the ability to choose full manual, Aperture priority or shutter priority for movie and set the iso, iso limit etc etc.

If this is your first Lumix camera, I would really recommend this online course - https://photoapps.expert/GH5#.WsPJdWaQ3_Q

It really is a camera, you need to sit down with for a few hours, recording bits and pieces to see how it works.