New compact / mirrorless setup for video in 2022

Hi everyone, 

First of all, I like to thank everyone on the forum for the extremely useful and independent information on UW photo and video. I must have spent > 40 hours reading comments and watching wetpixel live with Adam/Alex/Phil! That is on top of watching and reading reviews on backscatter and bluewater. Yet, I still can’t make my mind up what video setup to buy! So here it goes:

I have been to Lembeh several times over the years, did I photo course at Lembeh resort, mainly shooting stills with my G16/Recsea/YS-D3 setup. I have since sold this equipment and I am looking to do video only from now on. My wife and I will be 1 week at Lembeh and 2 weeks in Raja later in the year, so I am looking for at a video setup for macro and wide. 

During lockdown I must have been bored and ordered a pair of backscatter macro wide video lights and snoot . They lights will be ok for macro but (as I understand now) not much use for wide. I am not planning to buy other video lights, so for wide I will be relying on manual white balance. For which I will get a grey card from Keldan or similar: https://keldanlights.com/products/accessories/color-management/1558-color-checker-and-gray-card.html. I will also get a tripod setup for macro but first I need to decide on camera / lenses and housing. 

As I am only using the equipment on holidays, the setup has to be relatively compact to carry on flights. My budget is somewhat flexible, let’s say 3k Euro. On the other hand, I rather spent a little bit more and have a system that lasts a few years and works for me rather than a system that annoys me at every dive.

Although my wife calls me a geek, I don’t feel I need to “dive” into the video specs/codecs etc too much. All cameras I consider do 4k but I think in reality I will be mostly filming in full HD 60fps to be able to slow the video down. In my mind “good uw video” will be steady footage with best possible colour. Others might disagree of course.

In a nutshell I am looking for:

• good custom white balance
• simple custom white balance execution (without going through 10 sub menus)
• macro and wide, not necessary on the same dive
• compact system

So I am looking at a top end compact with external macro/wet lens or a small mirrorless setup. Below are the options I have considered with my opinions gained from reading reviews:

• LX10 – seems to tick all the boxes but is now quite an old system. Don’t really want to spend money on an old system unless I find a good second-hand rig.
• Canon G7X Mark III – better white balance that Sony RX100, but lengthy manual white balance procedure. Does anyone has expericene with setting manual white balance in the Canon? 
• Sony RX100 VA – white balance not as good as the G7 (whatever that means?) and also a lengthy manual procedure. I red 8 steps somewhere. Is that correct?
• I also looked at the Olympus PEN E-PL10 as an alternative. It seems an interesting compact system for photo but I cannot find any reviews at all on video? Does anyone uses Olympus for video?

Sorry that I ask so many questions, but there seems to be no obvious compact systems for video out there at the moment? 

Would very much appreciate other people’s input and suggestions?

Thanks

Jochen

Hi Jochen

Sounds like a great trip you have planned. 

I'm not a videographer at all - but I wonder about relying on white balancing for a trip like that and not having lights that can handle wider-angles than the Backscatters?

Macro video lights for Lembeh, no problem. But not for Raja? I've never been there but I'd be gutted to find white-balancing just doesn't draw out the colours. 

But, as I say, I'm not videoista...... just a thought though.

Hi Tim,

Yes, good point. Another thing to think about 

For video, the lights have to be very strong to make a real difference when shooting wide. Still hoping to work mainly with natural light and white balance and do most of the video in the shallow part of the dive. Will try to highlight forground with lights in Raja but then I will also have to solve the mixed light issue etc. Let's see. 

For now I need to get my head around what camera system to buy. 

Thanks

Jochen

3k is a tough budget to work with for a camera that can do both macro and wide angle video well. I'm almost tempted to suggest two systems -- an Olympus TG-6 for macro video with your lights and a GoPro Hero 10 + red filter for wide angle. 

If you really want something that can do it all, m4/3s is where I'd look. 3k is too little though for a used GH5 rig though, which would be my top recommendation (and what I've been shooting with since 2017). 

Perhaps the Olympus E-PL10 system with 14-42mm lens and the Backscatter wet mate lens package would be a big bang for the buck. Backscatter is pushing the system hard, but I can't say much about Olympus' wide angle MWB, having never shot with one.  $3,042.99 for the package including camera, housing, lens, ports and wet lenses. 

https://www.backscatter.com/Backscatter-Olympus-PEN-E-PL9-E-PL10-Underwater-Housing-UH-EPL10

Scroll down to the bottom of that page for their review of the system. Video specs are at 13:50. Backscatter reports that MWB is easy to execute and produces great results down to 40-45 feet, which is really where you'll be shooting the best wide angle video in Raja Ampat anyway. Might be the best bang for the buck in your price range.

BTW, for wide angle, I'd suggest shooting with natural light down to 10 meters, where you can still get great results if you keep the sun behind you and manually white balance. Below 10 meters, you need video lights for best results. Best bang for the buck in my view is the DivePro G18 plus lights. They're Chinese, but can be purchased for ~$600 each if bought in bulk directly from the manufacturer. So you might add two of those to your budget.

Unless you want to get into filter setups, even with the most powerful lights you are going to have mixed lighting,  in video you do a manual white balance with the lights on and the lights add back some red light - not enough to completely return daylight colour temperature but enough to allow WB to work comfortably and the lights fill in shadows a bit.  You can do cyan/red filters - but I expect that's outside your budget.  A lot of great video is shot with mixed lighting.

As for Olympus - video is not it's strong suit.  I expect it manual WB's OK, but available codecs and other limitations might be an issue.  On manual WB, look into how many button presses are needed, some systems require a significant number others are truly one-touch.

The Olympus looks like an interesting option because of its compact size. Thank you dreifish for pointing out the video specs in the backscatter video. I also had a quick look at the manual and the camera does have a one touch WB functionality. Whether it can be executed in video mode is unclear to me. Might try to get hold of the camera and have a play with it. 

Backscatter is apparently working on a dedicated "wide angle & macro video" review but according to their website it is not out yet: https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Olympus-PEN-E-PL10-Best-Underwater-Camera-Settings-Gear

Still, as Chris also pointed out, Olympus is not known for video and there seems to be no reviews (other than from backscatter) anywhere. There must be a reason for this? 

7 hours ago, JR1 said:

The Olympus looks like an interesting option because of its compact size. Thank you dreifish for pointing out the video specs in the backscatter video. I also had a quick look at the manual and the camera does have a one touch WB functionality. Whether it can be executed in video mode is unclear to me. Might try to get hold of the camera and have a play with it. 

Backscatter is apparently working on a dedicated "wide angle & macro video" review but according to their website it is not out yet: https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Olympus-PEN-E-PL10-Best-Underwater-Camera-Settings-Gear

Still, as Chris also pointed out, Olympus is not known for video and there seems to be no reviews (other than from backscatter) anywhere. There must be a reason for this? 

I know this isn't going to help you now but I am planning to try my hand at video this summer.  After I finish up my Sidemount and DM training Ill have time to play with my camera more. If you have any questions about the EPL10 I  can try to answer them.

17 hours ago, JR1 said:

The Olympus looks like an interesting option because of its compact size. Thank you dreifish for pointing out the video specs in the backscatter video. I also had a quick look at the manual and the camera does have a one touch WB functionality. Whether it can be executed in video mode is unclear to me. Might try to get hold of the camera and have a play with it. 

Backscatter is apparently working on a dedicated "wide angle & macro video" review but according to their website it is not out yet: https://www.backscatter.com/reviews/post/Olympus-PEN-E-PL10-Best-Underwater-Camera-Settings-Gear

Still, as Chris also pointed out, Olympus is not known for video and there seems to be no reviews (other than from backscatter) anywhere. There must be a reason for this? 

Yes Olympus are not known for video, even land based reviews only seem to just mention video for this camera.  From what I can see it has fairly basic video  - 4K 30p and 1080p 30p only so no possibility of slow motion or anything like that.

you could also look into some of the Panasonic bodies which tend to have better video features, like the GX9 and G9, though housing availability is limited, possibly only ikelite being an option.  Or search the classifieds for a used housing/camera.

On 5/9/2022 at 9:17 PM, dreifish said:

3k is a tough budget to work with for a camera that can do both macro and wide angle video well. I'm almost tempted to suggest two systems -- an Olympus TG-6 for macro video with your lights and a GoPro Hero 10 + red filter for wide angle. 

If you really want something that can do it all, m4/3s is where I'd look. 3k is too little though for a used GH5 rig though, which would be my top recommendation (and what I've been shooting with since 2017). 

Perhaps the Olympus E-PL10 system with 14-42mm lens and the Backscatter wet mate lens package would be a big bang for the buck. Backscatter is pushing the system hard, but I can't say much about Olympus' wide angle MWB, having never shot with one.  $3,042.99 for the package including camera, housing, lens, ports and wet lenses. 

https://www.backscatter.com/Backscatter-Olympus-PEN-E-PL9-E-PL10-Underwater-Housing-UH-EPL10

Scroll down to the bottom of that page for their review of the system. Video specs are at 13:50. Backscatter reports that MWB is easy to execute and produces great results down to 40-45 feet, which is really where you'll be shooting the best wide angle video in Raja Ampat anyway. Might be the best bang for the buck in your price range.

BTW, for wide angle, I'd suggest shooting with natural light down to 10 meters, where you can still get great results if you keep the sun behind you and manually white balance. Below 10 meters, you need video lights for best results. Best bang for the buck in my view is the DivePro G18 plus lights. They're Chinese, but can be purchased for ~$600 each if bought in bulk directly from the manufacturer. So you might add two of those to your budget.

Best suggestion so far

On 5/9/2022 at 6:10 PM, ChrisRoss said:

As for Olympus - video is not it's strong suit.  I expect it manual WB's OK, but available codecs and other limitations might be an issue.  On manual WB, look into how many button presses are needed, some systems require a significant number others are truly one-touch.

On 5/10/2022 at 2:26 AM, JR1 said:

Still, as Chris also pointed out, Olympus is not known for video and there seems to be no reviews (other than from backscatter) anywhere. There must be a reason for this? 

Look again from 14:18 minutes in the Backscatter video review. They show a few wide angle clips using ambient light and manual white balance. The results frankly look great, as good as anything I've seen from the GH5. And MWB is easy to execute, same process as on the Panasonic cameras.

4k30 is decent for wide angle. Sure, 4k60 would be better, but you can do some slow motion work in 1080p at 60fps. 

The Panasonic G9 requires a $1600 Ikelite housing vs. the $695 for the Backscatter/AOI E-PL10 housing. Pretty big difference. Used GH5 setups are also significantly more expensive than $3k, I would think. 

There's nothing wrong with shooting mixed light for video. In fact, many prefer that style and the color contrast between warm foreground and blue water background. Adding blue filters to your lights is also not prohibitively expensive, we're talking about something in the range of $200-$300 for a red filter for the wet lens and two blue filters for the video lights. 

18 minutes ago, dreifish said:

There's nothing wrong with shooting mixed light for video. In fact, many prefer that style and the color contrast between warm foreground and blue water background. Adding blue filters to your lights is also not prohibitively expensive, we're talking about something in the range of $200-$300 for a red filter for the wet lens and two blue filters for the video lights. 

I would agree, though the expense is not limited the filters as you need more powerful lights to make up for the light loss in the filters.

30 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

I would agree, though the expense is not limited the filters as you need more powerful lights to make up for the light loss in the filters.

 

Yes, you probably should budget for doubling your light output if you want to use ambient light/blue filters on your lights. Though I'm not sure exactly how many stops of light the Keldan blue filters remove. Maybe 1?

4 hours ago, dreifish said:

Yes, you probably should budget for doubling your light output if you want to use ambient light/blue filters on your lights. Though I'm not sure exactly how many stops of light the Keldan blue filters remove. Maybe 1?

You lose on both the blue and the red filter though, there was another thread here discussing stops lost recently I thought??

6 hours ago, dreifish said:

Look again from 14:18 minutes in the Backscatter video review. They show a few wide angle clips using ambient light and manual white balance. The results frankly look great, as good as anything I've seen from the GH5. And MWB is easy to execute, same process as on the Panasonic cameras.

I keep going back to the EPL10. It ticks a lot of boxes. Light & small system, flexible in terms of lenses, easy WB procedure, good price tag. The short video on the backscatter review looks good, although I would like to see some more "independent" videos but there is nothing out there yet as far as I can see. 

On 5/10/2022 at 3:53 PM, Dann-Oh said:

I know this isn't going to help you now but I am planning to try my hand at video this summer.  After I finish up my Sidemount and DM training Ill have time to play with my camera more. If you have any questions about the EPL10 I  can try to answer them.

maybe Dann will share some videos after his DM training . I would certainly appreciate it. 

In comparison to a compact camera, I like the possibility to have a dedicated macro lense vs. a wet macro sense. This will give a much larger working distance which I believe might be very useful when having the camera on a tripod and the distance object to camera is therefore somewhat in-flexible.

I still have a little time to decide, as the trip to Lembeh/Raja is not until October. In the meanwhile, if I see a good second hand offer in Europe for an e.g. Lx10/Nauticam housing, I might still go for it. Otherwise the EPL10 could be an option.

11 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

You lose on both the blue and the red filter though, there was another thread here discussing stops lost recently I thought??

Yes, but you shouldn't think of the loss as cumulative. The loss of light from the red filter on the lens and the blue filter on the artificial lights leads to different consequences for overall color balance and image quality.

1.  The blue filters reduce the amount of light your video lights put out, let's say by one stop (i.e. they cut light output in half). They do this by selectively attenuating the warmer wavelengths from the light output by your torches. The same way that the water column selectively (and progressively) attenuates the warmer wavelengths from sunlight.

• The goal with your video lights is to produce enough illumination to match or at least approach the ambient light. If you don't, then the scene is mostly lit by ambient light, and your video lights have no impact on filling in shadows or reintroducing warm colors.
• The amount of artificial light varies with conditions. You can get away with weaker video lights on early morning or afternoon dives, when it's overcast, or the deeper down you go. Below 30-40 meters, even weak video lights in the 5000 lumen range are plenty powerful because there's very little ambient light to out-compete. 
• When filming in shallow tropical water at midday, even 60k lumens worth of lights has relatively limited impact at say, 5 meters depth. You might as well keep them off and just film using the ambient light if you can keep the sun behind you.

2.   The red filter on the camera lens reduces the amount of both ambient and artificial light by selectively attenuating the warmer wavelengths before they reach the camera sensor. Depending on the filter, by about 2 stops. 

• Because it reduces all light, the red filter actually doesn't have any impact on the mix between ambient and artificial illumination. That's entirely dictated by the stregth of the ambient light vis-a-vis the strength of the artificial illumination you introduce to the scene
• When you do a manual white balance through red filter, what you're telling your camera to do is to boost the red channel in the readout from the sensor to compensate for the attenuated warm wavelengths making it through the filter. You can think of it as equivalent to raising the ISO, but only for the red channel. So even if you have your camera set to ISO 100, the effect of manually white balancing behind a red filter would be equivalent, say, to the blue and green channels being red out at ISO 100 while the red channel is read out at ISO 400. Less red light = more noise in the red channel. MWB never comes for free.
• Because the red filter reduces light, you end up either having to shoot at a wider aperture (if there's sufficient ambient light) or boost ISO. Typically your aperture is constrained by the need to keep corner sharpness, so in practice a red filter leads to higher ISOs, and more noise in your image overall. That's the tradeoff.
• But it's important to note that this "more noise" tradeoff exists whenever you do an extreme manual white balance, whether or not you use a red filter. So say if you have a canon camera and MWB to 50000k +150 magenta (either in camera or in post, if shooting raw), you're boosting the sensitivity of the red channel (either digitially or in the analog A-D converter in camera. So any noise stemming from limited light in that channel will get emphasized.
• In practice, a 2 stop red filter is not really a problem with modern cameras, especially when shooting in, say, tropical waters down to 20-30 meters depth. Modern sensors, especially full frame sensors, are very sensitive and can produce great results at high ISOs up to ISO 6400 or so.

On 5/15/2022 at 2:53 AM, dreifish said:

2.   The red filter on the camera lens reduces the amount of both ambient and artificial light by selectively attenuating the warmer wavelengths before they reach the camera sensor. Depending on the filter, by about 2 stops. 

• Because it reduces all light, the red filter actually doesn't have any impact on the mix between ambient and artificial illumination. That's entirely dictated by the strength of the ambient light vis-a-vis the strength of the artificial illumination you introduce to the scene
• When you do a manual white balance through red filter, what you're telling your camera to do is to boost the red channel in the readout from the sensor to compensate for the attenuated warm wavelengths making it through the filter. You can think of it as equivalent to raising the ISO, but only for the red channel. So even if you have your camera set to ISO 100, the effect of manually white balancing behind a red filter would be equivalent, say, to the blue and green channels being red out at ISO 100 while the red channel is read out at ISO 400. Less red light = more noise in the red channel. MWB never comes for free.
• Because the red filter reduces light, you end up either having to shoot at a wider aperture (if there's sufficient ambient light) or boost ISO. Typically your aperture is constrained by the need to keep corner sharpness, so in practice a red filter leads to higher ISOs, and more noise in your image overall. That's the tradeoff.
• But it's important to note that this "more noise" tradeoff exists whenever you do an extreme manual white balance, whether or not you use a red filter. So say if you have a canon camera and MWB to 50000k +150 magenta (either in camera or in post, if shooting raw), you're boosting the sensitivity of the red channel (either digitially or in the analog A-D converter in camera. So any noise stemming from limited light in that channel will get emphasized.
• In practice, a 2 stop red filter is not really a problem with modern cameras, especially when shooting in, say, tropical waters down to 20-30 meters depth. Modern sensors, especially full frame sensors, are very sensitive and can produce great results at high ISOs up to ISO 6400 or so.

I don't think that is quite correct - a red filter passes red light which photographically speaking is warm light (blocking a little of it but not enough to have a great impact) and blocks blue-green light to bring you closer to daylight balance. 

Probably a moot point for the OP as I think filter setups are not the way to go for a budget setup.

On 5/14/2022 at 3:46 PM, JR1 said:

I keep going back to the EPL10. It ticks a lot of boxes. Light & small system, flexible in terms of lenses, easy WB procedure, good price tag. The short video on the backscatter review looks good, although I would like to see some more "independent" videos but there is nothing out there yet as far as I can see. 

maybe Dann will share some videos after his DM training . I would certainly appreciate it.

 

Not the EPL10, but I saw a clip taken this week with the EPL-9, shot by Jun Shimizu, one of the Olympus reps here in Japan (based in Okinawa).

https://www.facebook.com/100006043511711/videos/521119276214031/

1 hour ago, bghazzal said:

Not the EPL10, but I saw a clip taken this week with the EPL-9, shot by Jun Shimizu, one of the Olympus reps here in Japan (based in Okinawa).

https://www.facebook.com/100006043511711/videos/521119276214031/

Setup is an OLYMPUS E-PL9, in a AOI UH-EPL10 with RGBlue SYSTEM 02 lights.
 

Maybe he has some footage on the EPL10 as well.
 

The only main differences from the EPL9 and the EPL10 are the additional "art filters" for JPEG use B&H Compare.  Backscatter does mention this in their video.   If you can get the EPL9 for a better price then do it.

11 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

I don't think that is quite correct - a red filter passes red light which photographically speaking is warm light (blocking a little of it but not enough to have a great impact) and blocks blue-green light to bring you closer to daylight balance. 

Probably a moot point for the OP as I think filter setups are not the way to go for a budget setup.

Yes, the red filter primarily attenuates blue wavelengths, and to a lesser extent green. Not warm wavelengths of light. The effect of this though is that less photons overall reach the photo sensor, reducing scene illumination.

When I say the red filter blocks 'all light', I mean it reduces both the ambient illumination and the illumination coming from your torches. Not that it attenuates all wavelengths of light equally

On 5/13/2022 at 11:46 PM, JR1 said:

maybe Dann will share some videos after his DM training . I would certainly appreciate it. 

I am heading out for a macro photography dive on 5/26. I will see if I can get some video for ya, I do have a macro video light. Please be gentle on the review though as I don't really know video nor the right settings.