boot 2012: GoPro

GoPro's represented at boot this year. With one underwater housing. Behind reflective glass. To be released soon. Expected retail price 60€. No HERO2 Diver Edition. That's it. Be cool. Don't ask questions.


Two diver mannequins were set-up with standard housings. Rather misleading if you ask me, considering these are blurry underwater.

Somehow I don't think GoPro takes divers seriously. Luckily, several 3rd party solutions have been available for a while as already posted.

What mostly disappointed me though, is that they had no 3D footage on display. Which I'd very much hoped for, so as to be able to check & discuss the possibilities and judge the image quality of such a setup. Supposedly the exposition hall's lighting's too bright for viewing 3D?

It didn't seem to bother any other 3D promotors. But hey, the new HERO2's are not 3D ready yet, so who cares. The required software update's supposedly due sometime soon. As most things GoPro. What's the hurry anyway, the competition's nowhere to be seen. Yet.

boot 2012: TillyTec

Tilly's booth was well visited as always, but I managed to get some personal time with the man himself for a friendly chat before getting down to business and buying a TillyTec MPL 500/9010 (99€ incl. pouch & trigger-snap), that is, a small hand-held 1-LED torch, equivalent to a 30W halogen light, as mandatory second backup besides my W30.


UPDATE: Traded in both my Green Force Tristar Diamond head and TillyTec W30 backup for a TillyTec MPL 1500/30010 3-LED torch.

boot 2012: Camaro

At Camaro's boot stand they were only showing off the new collection, but they kindly referred me to Atlantis Berlin where I got one of the last remaining hooded vests (89€) of last year's seamless production.

Gerda's Dive Shop

Day trip to Gerda's Dive Shop in Munich in order to have my Scubapro regulators checked, serviced & tested and get myself a new pair of Aqualung booties (40€) compatible with my Mares Plana Avanti fins.


By train it takes about 2h15 one way from Sonthofen to München HBF (21€ return with a Bayern Ticket, allowing day long use of any public transportation method). Quite a journey actually, but I like to see the people in person to whom I trust my life sustaining scuba gear.

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UPDATE: Got an email from Gerda yesterday with a very detailed maintenance bill (238€) for servicing my regulators (two recreational sets, each consisting of one 1st stage, two 2nd stages, inflator hose & SPG; plus a third 1st stage with SPG). I paid immediately via online banking and today DHL promptly delivered everything at my door.

UPDATE: I'm in Mexico and my S550 second stage is not functioning!

UPDATE: Had my S550 checked by Marco from Scuba Price Tulum, who quickly found out that one of the two small O-rings on the white inner piston was damaged. Replacing it apparently solved the problem.

TillyTest

Having decided to journey to Düsseldorf for the annual boot fair, I thought I'd pre-check my lighting setup before visiting TillyTec again.

	Flexi II	TT 3
LED 1000	>180'
2x LED 2000	-NA-	>120'

My TillyTec LED 1000 still got 3h15 out of my Flexi II battery and my two LED 2000's burned for 2h15 on my TT 3 pack. Which should be enough for an extended stage dive or two dives a day w/o recharging.

I actually interrupted both burn tests before the batteries ran out of juice so as not to drain them completely. I've got no means to measure the lights intensity, but though not 100% at the end, I'd say they delivered enough throughout for practical purposes. Vamos a ver.

Recharging the Flexi II (4.5Ah, 12V, NiMh, 1000g) took about 4 hours, the TT 3 (9.0Ah, 12V, NiMh, 1625g) remained plugged in overnight.

Action cams

For my upcoming trip to Mexico, I'm currently investigating various action cams, as these offer a relatively affordable solution for wide-angle underwater videography, compared to a housed system camera, where just a dome port would cost me more. Not to mention that I could use it as B-cam later on for action takes too risky for a compact system camera, which I'm still hoping to get in the near future...

At the moment, GoPro's new HD HERO2 (350€) is my #1 candidate. Some of the underwater clips I've seen so far on YouTube look quite decent and IMO better than ones taken with an old HERO or some other competing products. That is, if a third party solution is used for underwater footage, thus requiring an additional investment, besides the optional LCD BacPac (100€) needed for compositional framing.

Price-wise ActionPro's SD20F (269€) is without a doubt a much better deal, it coming with a clip-on LCD module, laser pointer, remote control and waterproof case (cam w/o LCD, -20m), with an optional SCUBA housing (cam + LCD, -40m, 30€) available as cheap accessory. Spec-wise it seems to be equivalent to GoPro's previous HERO.

Another interesting alternative is ACME's new CamOne infinity (249€), with built-in LCD and supposedly exchangeable & manually re-focusable optics. Unfortunately, though coming with a waterproof DiveBox, there's no practical SCUBA ready underwater solution yet.

GoPro's main advantage in my case is the availability of several practice-proven underwater solutions like BlurFix's flat lens port (with interchangeable 55mm filters, 80€), Subspace Pictures' adapted housing with dome port (for a true undistorted 127° FOV, 252 CHF), UK-Germany's flat lens aluminum housing (rated to -100m, 499€) and Eye Of Mine's flat lens double-housing (for stereoscopic 3D, 190€).


With a bit of luck I might actually get a closer look at some of these options at the boot 2012 fair in Düsseldorf end of this month, which I intend to visit in order to gear up for my next venture into darkness.