Scuba Diving in Roatan, Honduras - August 2018 (4K)

After being unable to dive at Christmas and March Break due to crazy sinus infections, we finally got back into the water in August for a handful of dives. The conditions were quite challenging for filming on account of the weather. Poor lighting combined with a strong surge meant that most of my wide angle footage was unusable. That said, I was able to get a number of macro shots that I am pretty happy with.

I feel that I am continuing to progress as an amateur underwater videographer, despite having logged very few dives over the past year. I would be grateful for any feedback and constructive criticism to help me improve my shooting and editing skills. Thanks for watching!

some of the footage seems very washed out of color and overexposed. Were you shooting on manual or auto, and how were you lighting? The macro stuff is much better exposed.

Thanks for the comments, aviator8.

Most of the wide shots and people portraits from this trip really poor. All were shot in ambient light and it was overcast and rainy most of the time. I also seemed to be getting bad results from custom white balance. I tried to compensate in post production by reducing contrast and increasing exposure and that resulted in a more washed out look.

The macro shots are more consistent as they were fully lit and white balanced to the colour temperature of the lights. In all cases I use a fixed shutter at 1/60 and manual ISO. I use manual aperture for macro but generally leave it in auto for wide shots. I had better results on my January 2019 trip as well as some improvements to macro.

I find that cameras get exposure wrong underwater especially when there is bad visibility or glare so I underexpose 1/3 to 2/3 and then increase later

Does the lx100 have cinelike profile?

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Thanks for the comments, aviator8.

 

Most of the wide shots and people portraits from this trip really poor. All were shot in ambient light and it was overcast and rainy most of the time. I also seemed to be getting bad results from custom white balance. I tried to compensate in post production by reducing contrast and increasing exposure and that resulted in a more washed out look.

 

The macro shots are more consistent as they were fully lit and white balanced to the colour temperature of the lights. In all cases I use a fixed shutter at 1/60 and manual ISO. I use manual aperture for macro but generally leave it in auto for wide shots. I had better results on my January 2019 trip as well as some improvements to macro.

Do you mean for your land shots in this statement. On land I find overcast days give some of the best lighting conditions to shoot in. The background can be dull and dreary but that just take different composition to account for.

Thanks for the tips, @Interceptor121. There are no Cine like profiles on the LX100, only picture profiles that allow you to tune the contrast, sharpness, noise reduction and saturation. I keep all of these at -5 except for saturation which I leave at 0. I have found that these are the best settings for flattening the picture and leaving post processing to my NLE. I will try dropping EV comp in these conditions.

@aviator8, I was referring to the underwater shots , which were taken on the LX100. All the above water shots were taken on a Gopro 7, set to 400 max ISO, flat, native WB, EV -1.0. Usually, I am just shooting at will in between dives, trying to capture candid moments with my friends and family. I agree with your suggestion that my "B-roll" could be dramatically improved with better composition.