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Joel, Here's my 2 cents on UW DV for non professional use. I don't have heaps of experience with other cameras or housings, I only use a Sony PC 100 and a Gates housing. The Gates housing is pretty bombproof and I've had not problems with it down to 88m, jumping 6ft off the deck and even strapping it to a Gavin. I'm very happy with it and their customer service is excellent. If you just take the housing itself, it handles very well under water, is very small and can be clipped off on the left shoulder d ring and held out of the way under your left arm. You don't know its there. Changing the red filter is easy as you just flick a small handle underwater. This is very useful if you go into and out of wrecks a lot. My only gripe is that you need a screwdriver to take the video out of the housing, not a huge issue if you are not shooting hours of video each day. The images from both the DV and stills facility are great. Whilst not broadcast quality, they are pretty close. You can take stills directly from the video tape and they can be printed on a printer or put on the web. You cannot do A4 size prints from frame grabs, only smaller 1/4 A4 page sizes. The dedicated stills mode is very good and gives 1028 by 728 pixels I think. This is enough to fill a PC screen. The stills facility is a nice to have feature, it does not replace a proper stills camera in terms of flexibility or quality. One thing I realized, is that the real key to all of this is the lighting you use. Don't buy halogens, if your going to spend a small fortune on a housing and camera, then go the whole way and buy hid lights as well. I use an EE pro 3 with an 18W hid, a video reflector and arm. You can get this from Tamara at EE. The pro 3 gives 1 hour burn time (DV tapes are one hour) and when mounted under the housing, you have a nice complete package of video plus lighting that is slightly negatively buoyant. I then use a pro 6 as a primary light and when I need the extra lighting, I just flare the reflector and direct this light by hand. Have a look at www.the-yellow-box.com or www.deepweek.com for some stills etc. Just bear in mind that how the images appear will also depend on your monitor settings. Jerry > -----Original Message----- > From: Joel Markwell [mailto:joeldm@mi*.co*] > Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 5:55 PM > To: Christian Gerzner; Matej Simonic / Testing LTD > Cc: Techdiver > Subject: Re: sub 1000$ digital video camera? > > > On 8/22/01 11:05 AM, "Christian Gerzner" > <christiang@cc*.co*.au*> > wrote: > > > If you reply, I suggest that you do so to me rather than this list > > which does NOT have "photography" as part of its name. > > Christian, > > Actually I'd like to hear a discussion of what divers are > using for video > UW. I've been looking at DV cameras lately and I've looked at > couple of > sub-$1000 cameras and another pair right at the $1k price-point. > > The Sony DCR-TRV900 is a 3 CCD megapixel camera that is very > highly rated > and it can be had for about $1100.00 online. The Sony > DCR-TRV30 is another > $1000.00 megapixel camcorder, but with a single CCD. > > The Panasonic PC-DV600 and the Sony DCR-TRV720 are both about > $700 and are > comparable in quality and resolution. Not 3 CCDs like the TRV-900 or > megapixel like the TRV30, but when output to VHS one very subjective > reviewer said they rivaled the Canon XL-1 in quality. > > The Sony DCR-TRV900 has a housing available for about $1200, > but my guess is > that for a good housing, lights and camera you're looking at about > $3000-5000 for an entry-level system. You can probably find > cheaper, but > would you want it? > > JoeL > > -- > Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to > `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. > Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to > `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'. > > -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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