The Scuba Spud's Views on Diving: Go Pro Hero HD

For my brother’s last birthday (October 2011) we bought him the Go Pro HD video camera and underwater casing. We made it our mission over the winter to get the system up and running for the New Year and make 2012 a year of capturing our dives in stunning HD.

Low Light

The first issue that we faced was recording in low light conditions, which is essential for recording at depth in the UK. Our first attempt was with no lighting at all and this just left us with black. We next used a standard Tec light (Green Force LED Umbilical) which worked well for small areas but gave a limited field of vision and the powerful and fine beam left hot spots and the centre of filming. We decided to bite the bullet and get hold of a Green Force Squid 1500 lumen light which gave a fantastic result. We did find that in enclosed zero light areas that one light did give a limited picture on one side of the video and so for future dive we will be using 2 Green Force Squid lights (1 x 1500 lumen and 1 x 1850 lumen). The first attempt at the double light set up was unsuccessful as we are running them from one battery pack (Green Force Flexi 2) which due to its age the cells were unable to run both lights at the same time. We replaced the cells in the pack with cells from Strikealite and the system now runs both lights through a double umbilical with no problems at all. The system offers 1hr to 1.5hrs of constant burn time.

Focus

Our next issue was focus. At first we were getting a circular blur in the centre of the image and we first thought that this was low light related. Now we have fixed the lighting issue we have discovered that it is a tolerance issue between the case and camera. If the tolerances get too close with the goforfocus flat lens (which you need to use as the curved lenses can't focus correctly underwater) and the camera then it causes the lens to make contact with the case and then case the blue in the image due to not being able to focus correctly. We fixed this issue to using an after-market lens kit which provides large gap in front of the lens and a conversion ring to hold standard colour filters. (Oculus Lens from Thailand). To improve the depth of colour we use a magenta green water filter, from Bristol Cameras, for use in fresh water. If you want use the goforfocus lens option then you simply need to use a spacer on the front of the camera to insure the lens to case distance is maintained (with this option just make sure that the spacer is not oversized as it can case the case to leak).

Mounting

We tried several mounting arrangements from head mounting through single hand mounts to our final bespoke mounting system We have settled on our home made mounting array which holds both the video lights securely and the Go Pro Camera. The system is neutrally buoyant and provides 2 hand hols locations to help with stability. The mount also allows the double umbilical to be routed neatly and out of the way. We have also fitted the Go Pro video display to the back of the camera.

The Configuration