Read-only discussion
What do people recommend for the simplest setup for a vacation diver (5-10 days of diving/year) who wants to take some video/photos? Video performance is favored over photos. Ideally, something that you can hand someone and say, "Here, take some videos while you're under!"
Pretty hard to go wrong with a GoPro for video, and you don't risk a flooded phone.
GoPro with either a light or red filter. Some of the GoPro clones are also good, as in recent years many people have had issues with GoPros freezing up or generally being slightly unfinished products.
If you want to go one step beyond this get a compact (no need for wetlenses at this stage) and a redfilter and take manual white balances as you change depth. My wife has had pretty good results with an old lumix lx7 (which is quite an old camera) and a keldan spectrum filter. A camera like todays LX10/15 will likely do even better. This will increase quality massively, but will require slightly more effort than just handing someone the camera and say: "Press record".
It really depends on how much effort you want to put into it. Most systems will take half decent video but will vary on how well the colour balance UW. If you want something simple for photos and video and the photos were mainly macro oriented a TG-6 could work - it depends on how demanding you are on video quality. This is a link to clip taken by my daughter on a TG-4 and I did some basic grading in DaVinci resolve:
https://www.facebook.com/100024070899049/videos/357187765093584/
I'm no expert in grading but I think the colours came out OK. It used the default settings and UW white balance built into the camera. Grading doesn't have the capability to move colours all that much so it was fairly close to start with. Keep in mind of course there's more to good video than just clicking a button. If you wanted to be critical the pan is a bit fast and the reef top clips jump around a bit.
Facebook of course has munched the video and displays a 720x 580 clip at near full screen, so better to shrink the window a little to get rid of the pixelation or maybe look on your phone. A full res 1920 x 1080 clip viewed on the computer looks much nicer.
I am in line with the GoPro or a similiar device under a different brand name. Then if you like what your doing i would suggest getting an actual DSLR, strobes (light capable as well) and housing I would buy used to begin with as you can get some very nice rigs with little money (realatively).
Can't beat a GoPro (even those legacy ones like 5 black or even 4). Just spend a few hundred bucks and point and shoot. The camera will do all the necessary stabilization/ color correction/ sharpen for you. Also the linear mode can work as an ultra wide (weitwinkel) lens, so basically you get two lens in one cheap package. The only problem is GoPro freezes a LOT.
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