Scuba Diving Videos

Scuba diving videos is the branch of underwater photography concerned with capturing underwater moving images either as a recreational diving or commercial documentary or movie making activity.

The primary difficulty in underwater camera usage is, of course, sealing the camera from water at high pressure, while maintaining the ability to operate it. The diving mask also inhibits the ability to view the camera image and to see the monitoring screen clearly through the camera housing.

Previously the size of the video camera was also a limiting factor, necessitating large housings to enclose the separate camera and record deck. This results in a larger volume which creates extra buoyancy requiring a corresponding use of heavy weight to keep the housing underwater (about 64 lbs. per cubic foot of displacement or 1 kilogram per litre in the ocean). Early video cameras also needed large batteries because of the high power consumption of the system.

A final problem is the lower level of light underwater. Early cameras had problems with low light levels, were grainy, and did not see much color underwater without auxiliary lighting. Large unwieldy lighting systems were problematic to early underwater videography.

And last, underwater objects viewed from airspace, such as the eye inside a mask or the camera inside housing; appear to be about 25% larger than they are. The photographer needs to move farther back to get the subject into the field of view. Unfortunately that puts more water between the lens and the subject resulting in less clarity and reduced color and light.

Today, the small size of fully automatic camcorders with large view screens and long-life rechargeable batteries has reduced the housing size and made underwater videography an easy, fun activity for the diver. Low-cost wide-angle lens add-ons are available for many cameras and some can even be fitted outside the camera housing for versatile use. This lets the photographer get closer and make the subject clearer and also with fewer focusing and depth of field problems.

Today scuba diving videos camera are more sensitive to low light conditions and make automatic color balancing adjustments. Nevertheless, deeper water videography still needs auxiliary light sources to bring out colors filtered out of sunlight by the distance it has traveled through water. The longest wavelengths of light are lost first (reds and yellows) leaving only a greenish or blue cast in deep water.

Even a hand light will help show off some of the magnificent colors of a coral reef or other marine life if used during recording.

Video is a wide range of multimedia including digital underwater videos for those unable to see the dive sites for themselves or to prepare you for your dive adventure.

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