Ever wonder why your video has a
green/ blue colour? Or why your video is not stabilized? Here are
some easy tips to help you make better videos with your action cam.
Tip 1: Learn to control your buoyancy
If you are not neutrally or nearly
neutrally buyont, your video recordings are going to be really bad.
Do not record the first minutes of your dive, use the time to control
yourself and try to get used to the special underwater feeling. After
that, you can begin filming for the initial attempts at recording. Be sure to initially focus on remaining calm and achieving buoyancy so you don't get overwhelmed with that and attempting to film. If you make sure your buoncy is
correct, you can concentrate much better on recording!
Tip 2: Mounting your action cam
Be sure to choose the right
position for mounting your action cam. I would not mount it on the
head, because the mask might not allow the strap to fit tightly enough; my favourite position is the wrist. You can buy a special
wrist mount, which looks like a fingerless glove that can be tightly fastened. The advantage of the wrist mount is that you can use
your arm like a tripod panhead since the water resistance allows you to move your arm slowly, so you can ensure a smooth camera
movement, which looks great with the right effects in postproduction.
If you own a second action cam, you can mount it on the leg or on the
shoulder to have a different view.
Tip 3: The colour problem
To get better colour on your recordings
you should use some filters. The deeper you dive, the less colour you can see/ record so you need to add a red and a violet filter. For
blue water, you might use the red filter, for green water you can
mount the violet one. But take care, not every action cam supports a
filter mount. Here you might have to be creative and build one
yourself!
Tip 4: The wide angle
Most action cams have a wide angle
which is great for wreck diving since it make it easy to catch the whole
wreck in one picture. Did you know that wide angle lenses can be good
for close up shots, too? They allow you to record impressive images of fish and corals with your action cam. The angels vary by
the company, so just go for a dive and try to find the best
distance for close up recordings.
Tip 5: Night diving
Now we go to an advanced topic: video
recording during night diving. Of course, you can use heavy pro
equipment with 3 lamps and a really good lens. Is it necessary? In my
opinion, no. To record videos during night diving, I mount my action
cam on the bottom of a good lamp and set the picture to
,"upside down" so that the camera is turned but the picture is
displayed correctly. The footage looks really great, because on the
one hand you have the black of the night and on the other hand you
see a certain angle of the underwater world which is enlighted by the
beam of your lamp.
I hope those tips help you make
better recordings during your next scuba diving adventures. To see an example of how a night diving video can look, check out this link of my dive to the
Twin Towers at Attersee using the plastic dive cards provided by
Ocean Maps:
https://www.facebook.com/mbmediaproduction/videos/628419040653078/
About Markus Bachofner:
Markus Bachofner is a semi-professional
multimedia producer and passionated scuba diver. He has three years
of experience in photography and now dives deeper into video
production and sound recording. Due to his work at Ocean Maps he is
now becoming an expert in the field of underwater video- and
photography. For his recordings Markus uses high end Nikon and GoPro
equipment. His work can be seen at his Facebook-Page ,"Markus
Bachofner Multimedia":
https://www.facebook.com/mbmediaproduction
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