Underwater filming

[emjen]

Hiya I'm about to buy my new digitial camera soon, which makes me and me matties very excited indeed aye.

I want to film things in the sea, surfing. Is it possible to buy 'things' which converts your camera into an underwater camera?

I of course want to be able to press the rec button and zoom in and out, and... i dont want the bloody camera to get wet. With the real high waves and all that, its a pretty big risk getting in there with a new camera.

So, you know any???

[emjen]

thx

the thing is with that thing you described that is sound pretty fragile. I mean, real powerful waves can smack you right to the bottom, and the case will tumble as if its in a washing machine. (thats like the maximum condition it will endure though)

[Yammeryammeryammer]

I have a friend who got a Handycam (cheap) and an aquatic case for it. He takes it on the waterslides and things. Seemed durable enough to me.

[sn-films]

Underwater chasises... chasii... cases for cameras are available. I know Sony sells them for the VX-2000 and the PD-150. The things are pretty sweet.

In lieu of that, there's a poor man's ("guerilla") version. Its water resistant, not proof. This will work best if you have a remote control for the camera as well as an LCD panel.

Get a fish tank. Make sure its clean... water will bead up on dirt. Place the camera inside the tank and duct tape it to the bottom of the tank so it doesn't slide around. You will want the lens as close as possible to one of the glass walls of the tank. Take plastic cling wrap (Saran-Wrap) and cover the top of the tank (use several laters). Apply duct tape attach the plastic wrap and to cover all seams. Put the remote in a plastic sandwich (Ziplock) bag, and violla!

You can get some really slick stuff using this because the waves splashing against the sides will give you that "Jaws" type shot where half the shot is above the water, and the other half is below the waterline.

We used this method to tape an underwater sequence in one of our movies and it works fairly well (http://www.sn-films.com/mvPrisoner1.htm). Of course, we were trying to make an underground river in a swimming pool, but the concepts are the same. Because of the physics involved, you may want to put a weight on the underside of the tank to minimize bobbing. Another suggestion to improve upon what we did, you will want to line the bottom of the tank with black paper and add a "hood" to the LCD panel so the camera operator can see what he was doing. We were shooting on an overcast day so the sun wasn't a problem, but in the ocean under full sunlight the LCD will become hard to see.

Good luck!