Hero Under Water Basic Equipment

So what equipment does it need in addition to a GoPro HD Hero 3/3+ to shoot good videos below the water line? Apart from that it takes a different camera, that is? Of course, it depends: on your demands and standards. However, if you want more than just shooting some short and shaky fun clips à la smart phone quality: please read on for my highly subjective suggestions. From my own experience, these suggestions proved to be practical so far to improve my standards.

But of course, equipment is just one part of the overall equation. Without any skill, competence, and pain even the best equipment never cuts the mustard. But one step after the other...

Impression: Dive Vader and his Light Sabres

Poking the Pike Lightly (BY/D)

Axel again showed his clear eye and shot this funny photo in Friedberger See (a former dredging lake). It was a cloudy, overcast, dull, and cold day. In return, we were the only divers below the wakeboard complex ... and we saw fish, a lot of fish.

Much whiting, and that of course draws a bunch of pikes. There were almost fed up, hanging around motionless, barely taking any notice of us divers. The land of plenty for them, it seems.

Here, I've discovered a tiny pike, just from this year. It tries to not move at all, lurking at the rim of some sea plants, waiting for prey. And it probably hopes that Dive Vader won't grill him with his laser swords...

Hero Protection

In some situations it is impossible use its protective case when shooting footage with your GoPro HD Hero 3. For instance, when I'm filming aerial videos using my DJI Phantom Quadcopter I need to directly mount the cam into the Zenmuse H3-2D gimbal for weight reasons. Unfortunately, dirt and dust stirred up by the propellers' air blast may some day cause scratches on the lens.

Fortunately, GoPro finally took notice of this problem and now offers remedy...

Hero Lights: Light and Motion Sola Video 2000F LED Lamps

Neufelder See (LA/Ö).

When filming under water a well-proven rule of thumb applies in many situations: you need a lot of light to get good footage. Without light you quickly hit unpleasant limits and all you get are grainy shots in dull colors.

However, the wide field of view a GoPro HD Hero 3 cam has to offer isn't exactly easy to illuminate: your lights should feature evenly distributed light cones and yet still cover a significant area, and all this without bright spots. Otherwise you will get the desired bright colors only in a small spot and everything else drowns in darkness and flat colors.

After my previous LED dive and video light had bugged me long enough, I finally made up my mind and invested in decent video LED light: I allowed myself two Sola Video 2000F's by Light and Motion which give real good light. Luckily, they arrived in time to give them a first try in Neufelder See, just at the gates of Vienna...

Big Frame Hunter

Ready to Shoot: The Big Frame Hunter.

Don't get bogged down by these tiny little critters: think big ... think big game hunter. You got the cam, we've got the specialty.

Correct Sidemount!

Make sure your bottles contain only the best stuff...

It was surely about time: the one and only true sidemount specialist training. Deep down you simply want the best ... stuff in your bottles, that is.

PS: Many thanks to Axel for this shot he made in Neufelder See near Vienna.

Evening Gold & Hero Red: Protune Grading

Burg Thann, Nuremberg county. (BY/D)

This time in my series «one video lies more than a thousand words» I'm showing how to carefully emphasize an evening mood in Protune footage. This gives, for instance, castle Burg Thann more atmosphere.

Without further manual grading, Protune footage may appear rather very neutral and even appear to be slightly cold. But adding some nice touch to your footage is really easy. Just take Kdenlive, no need for any professionals' tools or similar marketing balderdash...

Kdenlive Video: Color Grading Protune Footage

Following my motto «a picture lies more than a thousand words» I produced a short video tutorial: color grading Protune footage. I'm demonstrating my technique on a short but vivid autumn scene. My goal is to achieve almost the same result as if filmed without Protune and thus with the camera-integrated automatic image processing.

While working on the specific video effect set to reproduce the genuine GoPro video look I noticed something interesting going on color-wise inside these cams...

Castle Burg Thann

Nuremburg county is rich of relicts from our ancestors. This is giving the landscape its flair. After my friend Wolfgang had infested me to film in somehow ruined locations I had to throw up my little cam copter into late Autumn air...

Kdenlive Effect: Protune

In my article Grading of Hero 3 (Above Waterline) Footage I've shown how to create a new effect template in Kdenlive for uncompressing the tonal curve of Protune raw footage. This effect is really useful for working with Hero 3 video footage.

You can also directly create the effect outside of Kdenlive without fiddling around with the curve handles...

Post Processing Protune Video Footage

Graded Protune footage in Kdenlive.

Before color grading (just luma correction).

Are you asking yourself too: how do I set up my GoPro Black Edition or Silver Edition for filming under water? How do I avoid tinted images? How do I process my Protune footage shot with a Hero 3?

Over time, I will post here several blog articles covering these topics and I will show you the aces up my sleeve when it comes to post processing Protune footage. I'm in no way a professional, so please be forgiving. Hopefully, you can benefit from my posts. Of course, useful feedback is always appreciated.

In case you are working with Kdenlive to cut and grade your footage, then you should take a look at my post Effectively Working with 2.7K Video Footage in Kdenlive. In it, I'm showing you how to create proxy clips to speed up your editing work without having to wait all the time for the project preview or clip view to update.

But the main starting point is Helpful Hero 3 Practice Above + Below the Waterline: so what is this Protune and how do I avoid color faults and tints in my footage? While Protune allows us to switch off white balancing this all comes at the price of post processing your footage.

Next comes my post Grading of Hero 3 (Above Waterline) Footage. In it, you'll learn how to uncompress the tonal curve that Protune uses, so you get back good-looking video. I'll also show how to properly increase color saturation and sharpen the footage to get the decent GoPro look. If you want to create the Protune custom effect in Kdenlive for easy work with Protune footage, then head over to Kdenlive Effect: Protune.

When you have mastered this step, you are ready to do Grading of Hero 3 (Diving) Footage. In this post, I tackle the specifics of grading underwater footage. In particular, I show how to deal with underwater footage shot in difficult light conditions that are typical for coldwater freshwater lakes.

Grading of Hero 3 (Below Waterline) Footage

In a previous article I've shown how to post process GoPro HD Hero 3 Protune footage in Kdenlive. On purpose, this previous article covered only footage shot above the waterline. In this second article I'm now focusing on the specifics of underwater footage.

Grading of Hero 3 (Above Waterline) Footage

In this article I'll show how to post-process video footage that was shot with a GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition (or Silver Edition) in Protune mode. In order to better understand the details of what really is going on in post processing, I'll show the necessary steps using the non-linear video editor Kdenlive.

On purpose, I'm not using proprietary software packages for demonstration, but instead open source software. However, with the knowledge gained here you should be able to easily transfer my description to any decent other video editor software ... as long as your software gives you the required basic tools.

Effectively Working with 2.7K (Protune) Footage in Kdenlive

Working with high-bit rate footage that was shot with a GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition easily eats up all your available computational resources in post production. Especially for footage shot in the 2700×1520 dimension and with Protune switched on your video editor needs to process around 45MBits per second for real-time playback, applying all the required effects such as color grading, sharpening, et cetera at the same time. However, unless you happen to possess a really highest-end system, these image bit rates are still too much for effectively working in your video editor software. You will quickly grow tired of heavy delays when editing. Luckily, Kdenlive has something to speed up your work again...

Helpful Hero 3 Practice Above + Below the Waterline

GoPro's HD Hero 3 action cams are very popular for sure. Especially GoPro's top of the line HD Hero 3 Black Edition delivers stunning pictures above and below the waterline. And this despite its small size.

But right out of the box, video footage shot with the HD Hero 3 below the water surface still sometimes really sucks heavily, so how do we properly configure a Hero 3 Black Edition and then post-process (color-grade) the resulting footage to avoid such mishaps?