GoPro Hero 4 underwater. Copyright ©Angelina Cecchetto
If you are thinking of buying a GoPro Hero 4 to play and shoot underwater, there are a few tips you may find useful! I have just bought a GP Hero 4 myself together with an Ikelite Tray with the Orca Torch Underwater Lighting and Flex Arms Light Kit to shoot and make some underwater videos.
I must say the GoPro performance itself was pretty good overall and in natural lighting it was fairly decent for the depth delimited within recreational diving. The sound on the videos is also quite good and clear. I liked the fact that you could lower the volume underwater.
The photo definition for the 12MP/Wide angle photos was really good even without lighting and even at 30m+/100ft depth.
As I was curious to try some polarizing and red filters, I also ended up buying a set of 6 XCSOURCE underwater filters (red, blue, yellow, purple, polarizing and neutral density). They come in a nice little wallet and they include a very easy to mount filter mount. When I actually tried out the red filter for the first time, I had the great surprise to find out that all my photos and videos looked like I was diving on Mars!
GoPro Hero 4 underwater with XSource red filter
GoPro Hero 4 with XScource filter mount
If you don’t want to give your photos a Martian red tint like on the picture on the left here, you’re better off getting an underwater color correction filter.
When using the polarizing filter, I also found out that the mount created a definite vignetting stamp on pictures when shooting above water as shown on the right here.
I found that the Orca Torches were excellent diving torches with a good battery life. For videos I found the beam to be quite strong in full strength, which created unnatural shadows on the subject. To compromise I ended up setting a dimmer light set which is possible with the Orca Torch D500V.
GoPro Hero 4 underwater with Orca Torches D500V. Copyright ©Angelina Cecchetto
To conclude I would say that the GoPro Hero 4 is quite a good camera to start playing with underwater especially if you intend to do wide angle photos but if you want to do macro you’d better invest in another camera with more versatile zooming options. In other words, if you are planning to make your GoPro your main underwater camera, consider its limits carefully but if you intend to take it with you on your next snowboard or rock climbing trip, like I do, then it’s definitely a great option!
By Angelina Cecchetto on 10th December 2014