Going GoPro in Cancun Next week. Any tips

[pledosophy]

First time diving with a camera. Any tips for me of using a GoPro underwater?

I'm pretty knowledgable about portrait photography, but don't know jack about under water shooting.

Thanks in advance for the tips!

 

[xkon]

What kind of gopro?

 

[ARCreefFL]

Hi pledosophy, I use a gopro black almost daily diving.

Here's a few things off the top of my head that may help.

Get familiar with using the buttons with the case ON, in your house before you go diving. Once underwater it's a lot harder to shuffle through the right modes.

Your video will be much more jerky than you think, so go slower than you feel is natural and pan slowly.

I use the headstrap while diving and for me that is the best. but I have almost lost it a few times from swimming to fast and forgetting its on.

I run all my videos through adobe premier, there's is a tool called warpdrive that will smooth out any video. It's pretty amazing, I could be in a 10.0 earthquake and as soon as I apply this filter in post production bam, it's smooth as butter.

The gopro batteries are really crappy. They last me 40-50 mins only. I'd buy 2 spares before you go.

If you are prone to dropping things gopro makes a floating case that you can attach so if you drop it it wont sink down to Davey Jones locker.

Use at minimum a 32gb microSD Card, I like sandisks extreme

last tip is remember that if your topside you wont get much audio with the case on. wide mode is best, super wide gives too much fisheye

Have fun on your trip!

Tom

 

[G_Sanab922]

I agree with tom on everything.
Also if you want to get good shots don't move fast like he said, go to a rock and chill there wait for all the critters to come out and play. That's the best way to enjoy. People tend to dive and swim all over the place and after trying to chase something and they will miss EVERYTHING that was right in front of them. So take it slow and let the gopro capture all the little things that come out.
How deep do you plan to dive? You'll most likely need a Red filter. At 30ft+ the video gets very blue. The red filter will balance this out and display natural colors.

http://www.backscatter.com/sku/ff-f...sop=AND&sf=Price&so=Descending&ftn=youbetcha&

here's a link to a good quality red filter. Pm me if you want to see a video without red filter at approx. 30-40ft. I filtered the video so that it comes out better but still not as good with red filter. It's worth the investment especially if you plan on diving a lot and at various depths.