Seeing the UW World in a new way . . . GoPro Review
By Cherie Dodd
How do you see the Underwater World?
When I started to use an underwater camera it caused me to see things differently, I started to frame up this and that looking for pretty composition of colours with cooperative fish. I would then practice my “sneaking up” techniques on the skittish ones to see how close I could get all the while taking a shot each breath just knowing it was only a matter of time until I would be left with a poof of sand in my view finder. Then, even on dives without a camera (which was more often the case) I would still see “the perfect shot”… if I only had a camera with me.
I am an arty farty photographer, interested in capturing the moment and not so interested in how or why the camera does what it does, much to the dismay of my UW Photographer husband Jim Dodd who has tried on several occasions to get me excited about using manual settings. With the low light and dirty water I was diving in I was not getting the shots I wanted using “auto” Jim attempted to teach me to use the manual settings one last time but underwater I got myself in a fluster and I admit, I gave up! I thought bugger this I will turn the camera to video and off I went. It was on this dive at Little Beach, Nelson Bay that I caught a cute little bit of footage of a seahorse.
Well that was it. I figured out what I wanted to do… video! Don’t get me wrong, it is not THAT hard to learn the manual settings and all of that, if you were interested. But because I am not it just made it a chore and then I did not enjoy any of it. I know that getting the end result that I want from video is not going to be easier than photography. I will have to take good underwater footage, playing with lighting and angles, I have to learn how to colour correct it and how to edit all the footage together so I can share it. But so far, the actual act of taking the footage has been more enjoyable for me and I love the way it has opened my awareness more to the behavior and interactions of marine life. I did see this before but now I am taking more time to really watch individual fish and spending more time in one area to see what they are going to do next.
I have had some fun interactions with the marine life using the GoPro. Being so small I found that many of the species that would swim and hide from me with my camera and housing were happy to let me get really close with the little GoPro. And they act different in front of it which has given me some very funny footage. Here is some footage from my surprise dive with seals last week