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Note - I've not seen any of the video's posted here as youtube/vimeo are blocked at work...

I've got a Hero HD2 and have had a bit of a play around so far above the water. What strikes me so far is the relatively poor "low light" performance - which is somethign i was expecting - but i have to admit i thought it would be better.

Have taken some videos indoors with lots of artificial light and the noise in the video is terrible. The lighting indoors is far better than i'd be able to achieve underwater (even with lights) so i remain to be convinced that this thing will be of any use underwater yet...

I'll try and have a look at the video's from home later and comment then - i guess there's always the chance my camera is actually faulty...
 
Discussion starter · #44 · (Edited)
@Justin Owen - that's very surprising to hear. My videos ( http://youtube.com/stirlingscuba ) are just on the old Hero1 but they are O..K...

There's a few from Egypt (where the light is better) and a few in Scotland - I'd been lead to believe that the Hero2 had much better light handling capabilities (low light levels and going from dark to light to dark...)

But I am using 4 standard dive torches, I'd be very interested to see your tests as we've still to establish exactly how much better GoPro's "improvements" on the Hero2 are...
 
Will have a look tonight from hotel (just remembered i'm working away this week! D'oh!) and will post up some indoor video on Friday. I think the light handling improvements were part of the marketing - but reading the reviews online it seems its not too much different from the first one. Reviews i've read say it's not worth upgrading for anyhow!?

@Justin Owen - that's very surprising to hear. My videos (youtube.com/stirlingscuba) are just on the old Hero1 but they are O..K...

There's a few from Egypt (where the light is better) and a few in Scotland - I'd been lead to believe that the Hero2 had much better light handling capabilities (low light levels and going from dark to light to dark...)

But I am using 4 standard dive torches, I'd be very interested to see your tests as we've still to establish exactly how much better GoPro's "improvements" on the Hero2 are...
 
Discussion starter · #46 ·
Hi everyone, I've come across a new housing courtesy of Underwater Photography Magazine. Here's a link: UwP = Your free Underwater Photography Magazine | Home page (this is a great free photography magazine to subscibe to) - for those of you looking to do high quality wide angle work I would seriously check out these guys:

Subspace - I think they are a Swedish company, here's a link: MiniDV - just run it through Google translate and you're onto a winner...

- they are an alternative to the Sartek and Eye of Mine housing and looks to be of extremely good quality.
 
Any idea of price? I think my new hero2 is to arrive tomorrow
 
Discussion starter · #48 ·
Hi there - I've sent them an email....response back is that they are 252.00 CHF which equates to 171.387 GBP so a bit more expensive than the Sartek ones but a higher quality lense that will do away with some of the chroma "features" you will get when using wide angle on a flat lense. They have sold out on their first batch and won't have new ones ready untill the end of Jan.

My friend has come across a housing rated to 100m (although there is a variant available from Sartek) here's the link, although I'll let you find out how much it is ;) http://www.uk-germany.eu/cms/upload/artikelbilder/Go-Pro/MG_8708_blau.jpg
 
I got my hero2 today. Seems like a decent piece of kit.

Gonna have to play around with it for a while to get things set up.

In the accessories box that came with it there are an array of mounting options including half a dozen sticking pads for fixing the camera to either flat or curved surfaces. Does anyone use these for mounting? Wondering if they would be strong enough to hold it to a helmet? Also is the pad salt water proof?
 
Discussion starter · #50 · (Edited)
Hi - I would get the helmet mount and melt some holes into the body of the helmet and then cable tie them into position - no need to worry about salt water that way.

If you go onto page 3 of this thread you should be able to see my pics (yellow helmet) and you can just about make out the cable ties...
 
I have the GoPro Hero2 now, and the Snake River Prototyping lens with the Green Water and a clear fitting, I don't have any lights but am off to Egypt in about 4 days so I will post some video when I get back and you can see if the GoPro2's light handling is a little better.
 
Discussion starter · #52 ·
Great - the Snake River housing looks quite interesting. Go on a night dive if you can, or if you are diving the Thistlegorm take a look inside one of the holds.
 
I managed to pick up a Petzl Ecrin Roc today FOC. They seem to be the job.

I have it half set up at the moment, lights added and camera mount holes drilled but try as I might I couldn't find any cable ties at home! I will finish it tomorrow and post a picture once I have the results
 
Discussion starter · #55 ·
Yep - I saw that this morning, Brett from Divelife had posted it on Facebook. You do need to have 5.5 but it works very nicely for a continual piece of footage.
 
Hi Irnbru - I am not sure if you do need 5.5 as someone actually posted to me yesterday they were trying to do it in CS4 after watching my video - I made the video using 5.5 as that is the version I have right now, but am not sure which release of Photoshop introduced the importing of video in to it.
 
Discussion starter · #57 ·
Hi Pen - fair comment, I only have 3.3 so can't check. It's a nice technique - do you know if you can set keyframes so adjust different points at various times like you can with After Effects - from the UI it looked like there was a timeline but I couldn't see if anything was keyframeable...
 
You can set keyframes in layers for certain things in Photoshop Extended - here is a link to Adobe for more on this - Adobe Photoshop CS5 * Use keyframes to animate layer properties (Photoshop Extended) You could also actually try doing some of the procedures in After Effects as the channel mixer and photo filter options are available in there too. One advantage for doing something in Photoshop is if you have a CUDA accelerated graphics card because at present AE does not support CUDA
 
Hello,

one more video showing how the Underwater Lighting Set for GoPro changes the light conditions underwater:



Here is the link to this video for those who can't see it here (iPad): Anna - LFM Owner on Vimeo


Anna
The transition at 1:37 shows the same noise/issues with the hero that i was talking about in my earlier post... Not sure if you have diffuser on the lights or if you could angle them sideways a bit more to reduce the backscatter....
 
Discussion starter · #60 ·
Again I would say if posting video we establish what version of the GoPro is being used Hero2, Hero1. Additional items that would help are housing, lights used and firmware (v number if known) on the GoPro.

I've had a large number of PMs from people who want to know/see how the Hero2 handles in low light conditions. so if anybody has some night dive footage using the Hero2 you know where to post it ;)
 
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