C8X

To answer some questions, my videos were taken with auto whitebalance, which is never great but I haven't prepared properly to be able to do MWB easily, as I don't have a standard buddy who I can train to help me out or something like that.  Also, I have no colour filters on the housing at all, I bought a greenwater filter but it was for the original port and odesn't fit on the larger one that I got.


Here's the finished video related to the capture above: http://www.vimeo.com/2788037

If you get the internal dry lens, you must get a bigger port for the front, the current one is just like a flat lens that you unscrew and replace it with a larger one.  About the flat port with the dry WA lens: it has a tiny bit of vingette, and it doesn't give as much overall WA effect as the dome would, but it allows some amount of macro focusing and is good for split shots at the water surface (half in half out).  The dome port would allow full effect of true WA from what I understand, but you cannot focus properly for macro, and that's why I didn't go for it.  The water clarity there was not so good, it was rather greenish with lots of small particulate (referring to Shark City video).  The water for the link above was amazing, 35m vis and nice and blue.  Beautiful days, those were.

I am half leaning towards maybe selling my entire UW housing assembly minus (or maybe including) the HF100 and everything with it.  I am moving to Prague, Czech Republic, and am not likely to pursue diving too much besides once or twice a year maybe to the Red Sea or Croatia, and I don't want to be bothered with so much stuff to take on the plane, even though the 6090 is one of the smaller video housings you can find and the handle rack does come off for easier transport.  In case that gets anyone's attention please email earl (at) baconbomb (dot) com.

Actually, I am leaving tomorrow so I have to go finish packing and cleaning up!

Correct, the LCD screen is held half open at the angle you see in the photos.  Far from ideal, but also far cheaper than a housing with a high res external monitor.  I'm getting much more used to the FOV of the camera + WA adapter, I don't look through the housing to the LCD all that often, it's more like point and shoot (it's not that comfortable to me to hold the camera out and upfront where I would be able to watch the LCD all the time anyway).

I am using that setup, but I have the additional flat port which allows for a Raynox 5050HD wide angle adapter to be fitted on the camera first.

Here are some of my first few videos, but they're a bit rough still as I'm learning everything at once.  Shark City would be the best to date..
http://www.vimeo.com/user636668/videos

So far I really like it, and at 40ft in tropical waters I think you would be really happy.  The joystick manipulation is tricky to manage underwater, until now I haven't bothered with manual white balance for that reason.  The cost of additional lighting is simply too much for me to consider, I'm happy enough with this setup, even down to 30m when the vis is good.  I just got back from 4 days of diving and have lots and lots of footage to work though.

WA adapter and flat port is waiting at the post office for me, local dive sunday to test the housing (sans camcorder of course).  Just with it in the house I find the view through the backplate to the lcd quite okay, better than I expected.  Build quality seems very nice.  I doubt that I would mess around underwater with the joystick though, that's a bit of a pain.  I also thought the rec trigger should be spring loaded as it feels too easy to knock it and pause the recording by accident (already did it once, and that's without gloves on).

Note the extra milling in the backplate that gives room for the BP819 high cap battery, which is on the camera in these pics.

Instead of starting a new thread I'll ask you guys who have the HF-10 my question.  How do you find the absence of a viewfinder on the camera in comparison to ones that have them, easier, unnecessarily shortens battery life, screen dazzles, hard to align to subject?  This camcorder is number one on my list but its clearly in its infancy in a housing.  Reading the other thread it almost seems like I can safely wait to get a housing (Ikelite) due to port issues. Anybody use Nero to manage the AVCHD format? I am going to buy online, so locally I have looked at the unit at Best Buy, where the staff is clueless.  Does the camera use the SDHC card as a direct source for recording or do you have to transfer after its recorded, or both?

Thanks, looking to be a HF-10 owner by Oct. 26

Chris

Consider the HF100, I bought it on www.newegg.com for $645 which is a ridiculous price when you compare it to what they want in Australian stores here.  I'm okay with NTSC and prefer the 30p mode anyway.  The HF10 only has the additional 16GB of overpriced onboard RAM, and it is black.  I was able to get two 16gb SHDC cards for great prices from Newegg along with the camera, and 32gb cards are just coming on the market.  It doesn't make sense to pay for RAM that is stuck in the camera.  Recording at FXP quality, 16gb gives you two hours of recording time, enough for any of my double boat dives.  Your standard battery will only last 50 minutes, so I recommend the HF100 plus a BP819 battery, that gives you 2hrs of record time.  I'm waiting on my housing and adapters, but I will soon have HF100 + BP819 + 16GB SDHC + Ikelite 6090 + 9403.1 flat port + Raynox 5050 Pro.

As far as the HF10, I am pretty sure you can swap recording media (onboard or card) between takes.  But since you have to open the housing after 2hrs max for a new battery, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to packing 32gb yet.