Video

Hi Miru, thanks so much for your comments, means a lot! I' sure if I did anything good that it's through luck rather than skill haha. Love your videos too, best underwater shots I've seen in a LONG time!

Thanks mate. Let's keep it up. Anyway, how did you bring underwater camera and inspire at the same time - respect :)

And how did you do to your color? any tips?

You'll know what it's like man, 3 bags: 1 for the inspire, 1 for the underwater housing/strobes/arms etc. and another for camera/laptop. Oh and a pair of swimming shorts and a few T-Shirts in the missus's bag ha!

I don't do anything clever with colour really. I just white balance the clip in iMovie/Final Cut, do a few adjustments for brightness/saturation etc. using the sliders and that's about it! No profiles in camera/no fancy editing software, I just don't have the skills....

Hi Wasim, yes, I used the A7RII underwater using a modified NA-A7II housing with 8in glass dome post and associated zoom gear :-)

Ha! Thanks for your comment and yes, I use the 8in glass dome port which seems to work really well with the Zeiss 16-35mm. Battery life has a bad rep on the A7 series cameras but seems to comfortable last 60 mins of intensive filming in my experience (just bring lots of spares). I can't speak for the A6300/6500 myself although I've heard that the autofocus is second to none so potentially an interesting option for UW video.

Thanks Paul! Glad you enjoyed it :-)

Hi Trent, really glad you liked the video!! Can't believe you didn't make it to Komodo when you were 'just down the road' for so long!! Still, it's never too late, Komodo or Raja are both worth all the pain you have to endure getting there :-) Oli

Can I ask what housing your using also ? Nauticam or Ikelite ? Do you have access to manual focus, how do you find the lens at AFing on the A7 ? I'll be using the lens for work filming clients daily dive trips....

Hi Trent, yeah, I use the Nautical NA-A7ii housing with the modification to allow the A7Rii to work with it. The housing needs an additional manual focus control which works really well, especially for macro, but otherwise, autofocus is great with this camera, although it can get a little confused when there are large schools of fish, best to set it to infinity in that case. Hope this helps!

Ah nice, I wish I had the money for the nauticam but had to purchase the ikelite for now... don't think I'll have any manual focus ability's with this lens so hoping the AF is quite good and doesn't track around too much which isn't what you want in your footage... Thanks all the best mate, keep diving !

Thanks Mike, glad you enjoyed it!!!!

+chiawei Lee Hi Chiawei, yes, I predominantly used the lens at it's widest (16MM) but occasionally zoomed in pre-shot for some of the smaller creatures, hope this helps!!

thanks for your help! My set is sony A7r + FE35 2.8 ZA, I think this lens might be too long to shoot...but it's still a good idea to shoot some smaller creatures...and I have a gopro too which can be much more wider.. :D

Hi Arpin, thanks for your message! I used the Neutral Density filter that came with the inspire 1 camera which was sufficient to take the exposure down a notch or two. I didn't take any other filters with me as I knew I would have to make some changes in post production anyway... Hope this helps and have fun!!

+Oli Anderson Dear OLi Anderson, Thank you so much for your kind advise, have a great weekend...........

***** yes i did!

Hi, am using the same model, is it possible to share on which settings you used please. Is it a safe destination and the food and lodgement fine. Come to Mauritius, i provide you cylinders and weights, the rest of the gear you bring for some more good videos.

Jumlin Thanks Jumlin! Picking the right song took almost as long as editing the video itself actually! I managed to find a, wait for it, 2 HOUR LONG version of Spirit Bird on youtube which I then cut into a few different pieces and stitched them together in I-Movie. Hope this helps :-)

Oli Anderson Thats awesome! Thanks :) Are you on Flickr? Would love to follow more your shots of the A7 II.

Jumlin I'm actually in the process of setting one up funnily enough! Will post the URL once it's populated :-)

Jumlin Hi Jumlin- just set up a Flickr account (Oli Anderson), very much a work in progress though!!

* sorry I have problem with my browser text input // so continue here Some light condition WB works well but sometime WB not work consistency i saw the same problem through out your video as mine.

Most yellow not look yellow but mix with greenish. Over red boost sometime which very difficult to control.

Noppon Pitaklopanit Thanks Noppon! I didn't use a red filter at any point but instead either used the video lights or just natural sunlight with either Auto Underwater White balance preset or a Custom setting. You're absolutely right though, some of the reds are 'too red' as a result of post production and some of the scenes are too blue without any hope of bringing the red back in. I guess it makes you appreciate how good the pro's are!! Something to aspire to :-)

lizardw Thanks! Yeah the underwater white balance setting is still hit and miss on the A7 (it wasn't that good on the RX100 either from my experience). I shot with a mixture of MWB when it was behaving, Underwater Auto preset up to around 6m and just pre-recorded a custom white balance for 6m+ all the way down to 30m (which I then edited in post production wherever possible). Hope this helps!

zodiacfml All I can say is that the compressed youtube version is like looking through an old CRT TV compared to the full 60fps version which is more like ultra-sharp full HD on my TV. Such a shame youtube compressed it down so much :-( I'm going to try and post the full fat version on Vimeo soon so watch this space!

Oli Anderson That's great! Thanks!

Tino Dietsche Hi Tino, I used the 180mm glass dome port from nauticam with n100 - n200 adaptor and locking extension ring 50. Hope this helps!

Oli Anderson Thanks for your answer!

GoVicarious It had a brief encounter with a cliff face and was only heading one way from there!! There were a couple of instances prior to this, however, where the quad lost GPS signal and started drifting out of control but thankfully it found the satellites in a couple of seconds and I was able to regain control.

Drasko Stojadinovic | Photography Hi Drasko, glad you liked the vid- I didn't use any picture profiles for the video, the settings we're pretty much straight out of the box aside from manual white balance. I'm sure you could get much better colour rendering using S-LOG but I have no idea how to grade it!

Drasko Stojadinovic | Photography Wow, they look great! How come you manage to get them to look so cinematic (specifically the video with the train crossing the bridge?)

Gregg Moore Pleasure Gregg!

SunriseInTheMidwest If I'm being completely honest I didn't feel as though the IBIS was much more stable than the steady shot system on the RX100 while filming underwater. I'm still very new to diving / underwater video so don't take my opinion in isolation but I will say that if you're looking for a camera that's is incredible above water as well as very competent under it, the A7II is brilliant!

Hi Thomas, thanks for your message! Really pleased you like the video, was lots of fun filming it (I usually only take photos so this was a bit of a venture into the unknown...). I can't sing the RX100's praises enough, and anything that needed to be ironed out seems to have been fixed with the RX100iii so I'm absolutely sure you won't be disappointed (also check the info above for great housing, wide-angle and dome options). I'm off to Komodo in May and I've taken the plunge and purchased a Sony A7II mirrors system with 16-35mm wide angle lens so will post a video of that trip when I'm back :-) good luck and happy to brighten up your day! PS: Make sure you use the XAVCS codec when filming to iron out the rolling shutter, I made the mistake of using MPEG4 for this video so it could have been so much cleaner :-(

Thanks Pekka!! Pleased you liked the vid, and thanks for yours, looks great too!! Next for the new Sony A7II ;-) (this could get expensive....)