New compact / mirrorless setup for video in 2022

I would be happy with any video footage, thanks a lot in advance Dann. 

On 5/9/2022 at 4:49 PM, JR1 said:

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

Have you thought about GH4? Absolutely best bang for buck nowadays i would argue. One can find housing+camera around 1k (2nd hand), leaving you with 2k for ports, lenses, lights or whatever. Even seen Nauticam housings as low as 550 USD on Wetpixel. Or absolutely crazy deal like here (sadly sold) camera, macro lens, housing, 2 ports, even viewfinder for 1500 CAD.

View archived post in: Nauticam GH4 Housing, Camera lens, viewfinder, port...

And, if you decided to upgrade in the future, you do not "loose" ports/lenses as with other choices, but can continue using these. Meanwhile with the compacts, lenses are not a thing, and rest usually fits only a given model (unless using so called water contact optics like Nauticam WWL, but these are rather pricey.)
Space wise, i carry all, including 2 dome ports, 1 macro port, lights, 2 strobes, 2 lights and all kinds of assorted garbage in a medium backpack (Manfrotto Bumblebee PL-220 if i remember correctly as they changed model names; smaller than the usual hand baggage size). Camera and 2 lenses rest in a small camera bag on my shoulder (though could squeeze in the backpack (like inside the housing for example). Weight is about 10kg w/o laptop. Only thing that rides in main luggage is arms/clamps/floats.

Only minus, no 4K 60, only 30.

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. 

Okay So I have 2 clips that I can share. shaky footage warning. There you have been warned these clips are not very good.  The water conditions were really poor.  I was trying to hand hold the EPL10 with the Olympus 60mm macro while using a single Backscatter MW4300 for lighting. Clearly I need more practice.  I will continue to try to add more video clips as I can collect them, I am not totally sure what the camera settings were as I just hit the record button. I have attached the link below if you want to download and play with the files. I hope you don't judge this camera by my poor attempt at video, I have another thread I posted where I share some photos captured with the same  subjects and camera set up.

Link

Hi Dann, thank you so much for making the effort and uploading the videos. Looks like macro definitely requires  a tripod. 

I'll keep coming back to the EPL10. It ticks a lot of boxes. At the same time I'am also watching out for second hand setups. 

again thank you for the video. 

JR

Decided to stay with a compact and bought the RX100 vii in a Nauticam housing, Short Port and WWWL-C. Will get a macro lens as well. Most likely a +5 to start with. Main reason for me to go with a compact was the gear size for travel. Will find out later in the year if I made the right decision..