Housing for Sony Camcorder PC 110

[Jeanne]

I would be grateful to receive truthful reports of users of this camcorder or similar, with a relevant housing, and possibly, lights, and give me their views on whether the investment has been worthwhile, what software they are using for image processing (through a PC for example), and give some idea as to 'what not to buy' and 'what to buy'.

Thanks for your help,

Jeanne

[Geoff Oldfield]

There are a few manufacturers of housings for this camera. Ikelite or Sea & Sea are noteworthy and both provide lighting solutions. Image editing on PC is not something I have experience on with digital cameras. Tried it with my analogue system and went back to using two tape recorders and doing it manually as the PC process just wore out the heads on my camera, shuffling backwards and forwards. Digital is the way to go obviously as is PC editing with digital. Be prepared to spend a lot of money and time. Well worth it, but my best advice is to concentrate on what you are shooting, how you are shooting it, keeping the camers steady and doing your transitions on the fly. The less editing you have to do the better really. Remember you can over shoot too. Take a careful look at the clip length on TV underwater scenes, mainly 2 - 3 seconds unless something really interesting is happening, that way pace and interest is maintained. Finally, take time to select your music passages to suit the scenes. Personal preference I know, but some "moods" and "Chillout Ibiza" "Chicane" seem to fit quite well. Welcome to a new facet of diving, new windows will open up on the underwater world for you. Best of luck.

Geoff

[Nick McV]

I have the 75m rated Sony housing with the monitor in the back. (I can't remember the model number). This means that you have a 2" screen to watch while you are videoing, rather than the miniscule viewfinder on the camera.

It is bulky to travel with, but is only slightly negatively bouyant(without any additional lead), so not too bad to use.

The advantage of this housing is that it takes (almost) any of the Sony DV range cameras, so if you knacker the camera, you are not reduced to searching for one of exactly the same model on the 2nd hand market.

In warm waters, I have had good results with the supplied red filter, in lieu of using lights to restore the red end of the spectrum. For UK waters, there is a different colour filter that is supposed to correct for our conditions (colour only, not Viz!!!). Lights are good when using a fairly narrow field of view, but not so good if using a wide angle lens.
Mounting a light on an arm makes the whole assembly a little unweildy, but you need to get it out to one side if you want to avoid 'backscatter'.

PC Editing of digital footage is easy, but very time consuming.
You need lots of hard disk space, and to get the data throughput rate, they should be SCSI rather than IDE drives. (Same disk hardware, but a different interface board and cost twice as much)

I use the Pinnacle editing software for my stuff, but there are many others on the market. I understand that the MAC stuff is pretty good - well it was always a superior design to the PC, that began life as a replacement for the 'Golfball' typewriter.

Drop me a line if you want more details.

[Jeanne]

Thank you both for taking the time to give such copious advice. I think I will take a chance to go on a course before I commit to the expense, though tempting to do that it is after reading your words of encouragement!