While the epoxy is drying, I thought I would mention my latest project. I've taken an old underwater housing that was designed for a 2 piece VHS-C deck and camera, and modified it for use with the HD1 / HD10. Modifying is really an understatement, a complete redesign and rebuild is more accurate.

It is basically a big aluminum cylinder with a dome port on the front and a thick plexi disc in the back. The advantage of the big window on the back is that I was able to put a big 7" 16x9 LCD monitor back there just like on the Pace housings that we use with the Sony f900. It's bright and you can actually focus with it.

The bottom holds two Lead Acid 12volt batteries wired in parallel which powers 2 100watt MR16 underwater lights, the LCD panel, and the camera through a 12v to 7.5v converter.

Since JVC was so kind as to not include a Lanc connector or any way to remotely control the camera, I came up with a novel solution. The housing has many knobs and levers which actuate contact closure type switches on the inside. I took a learning remote, and programmed zoom in and out as well as vtr start/stop from the JVC supplied remote. I then soldered wires to the itty bitty traces on the remote to the housing switches. The learning remote is velcro'd inside the housing,and voila, controls.

Toggling between Auto focus and locked focus is done through a mechanical arm that I modified to push the button on the side of the camera. And what about the camera's stupid time out and power shut down feature that can't be revived by pushing start/stop or any other button? I made one of the mechanical buttons a push on/push off power interrupt. Cycling the power revives the camera.

I think the epoxy is dry now.

Jay

That sounds very interesting.

Did you know JVC makes a custom housing for the camera. It costs about $1,000, but it lets you use the viewfinder and I think gives you basic controls like on and off and zoom.

Please Please Please make sure you take it for a dive empty before trusting your camera.

Good Luck

Jay

I'd love to post some photos of that, if you have any!

Darren,

It was just a matter of time before a dedicated housing came out, but that was quick, and from JVC of all people. The viewfinder is useless for focusing, and the swingout is not that great underwater either. This 7" LCD is BIG. It's not easy framing shots underwater with your mask pinned to the housing, but with the 7" LCD, you can actually hold it at arms length. $1000 sounds real cheap, the Amphibico for the VX1000 was like $4000 without lighting. I wonder if they use infrared for the zoom and start/stop. Do you have a link?

We will definitly depth test before the electronics go back in. In fact, the first thing I did was splash this housing in my pool when I got it, and it did have a leak from sitting. Tomorrow back in the pool with the new seals, then out to the lake down to 100' empty and then down to 60' with the camera.

Chris,

I'll take some digital stills. Can you drop me an email on how I can get them to you?

Thanks,

Jay

Jay, if you can handle the bandwidth, you can just email 'em to me (link below in email button). Prefer full-size high-res; I'll do the compression for the web page. That's a heck of a project you've done and I'm pretty sure some folks are going to want to see it!

Thanks Chris,

I'll take some pics and email them.

I found the link to JVC's own housing:
http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/accessory/video/product/wr_hd1.html

It actually looks pretty decent. I wonder how they handle the power cycling. They probably tell you to start recording when you put it in the housing and leave it running knowing that you'll run out of air about the same time the tape runs out.

Jay

Update:

Housing empty test in pool - good

Housing with camera in pool - good (nice footage of my kids swimming, zooming and start/stopping)

Housing empty test at lake - small leak at 70 feet

I replaced every seal except the one on the dome port since it had been redone recently, of course it is the one that failed. Replacing tonight and diving again tomorrow.

Jay

It costs about $1,000

Darren,

Where'd you get the pricing information from? That is really cheap for a marine housing unit. The marine pack for my Sony still costs well over $2,000! :)

Go figure, but if I'm moving up to the JY-HD1OU I'd be very interested in the marine pack.

Thanks.

Troy

<<<-- Originally posted by Troy LaMont :
Go figure, but if I'm moving up to the JY-HD1OU I'd be very interested in the marine pack. -->>>

Troy, here is the link on JVC's Web site:

http://www.jvcservice.com/store/ProductDetail.asp?part=WR-HD1-J

I have used other housings from JVC inthe past and they have worked well for me. They are basic, but they do the job.

I have yet to try shooting with this (am hoping to get one for the JumpStart DVD) but I would recommend you also buy some underwater lighting. It will make a huge difference.

Good Luck.

Darren,

Thanks for the info.

Ikelite has a very nice housing for the JVCs.

It covers all the operating aspects it looks like;


Power
Start / Stop
Snapshot
Zoom
4- Position Recording Mode
Manual Focus Lock


http://www.ikelite.com/video/jvc_hd_frnt.jpg

Cost: $1,500 and is rated down to 200 ft.

Troy

...and here's the page link:

http://www.ikelite.com/web_pages/jvc_hd1.html

The Ikelite housing looks good, it's too bad they don't accomodate the swing out LCD. I would go with the JVC housing just for that reason alone. I wonder how Ikelite handles the power-off cycling.

Jay

With my current JVC housinjg for my mini DV, you can easily turn off and on the camera to reset it.

Frankly, as a diver, I tend to turn it on and leave it on when I dive.

DBK

Do you mean you leave it rolling the whole time? The problem with these cameras is, if you leave it in pause for more than five minutes, it powers down and none of the typical button pushing (start, zoom, etc.) brings it back to life. You have to turn the silly power ring to off then back on or close and open the lcd viewfinder, both things impossible to do underwater, The other way to revive the camera is to drop the power and restore it, something you can't do with the onboard battery, you need an external battery going into the dc connector.

So leaving it on the whole time is fine, but if you forget to roll every five minutes minimum, the camera shuts down and you're going topside to reset. Of course letting it roll the whole time will work since a tape typically outlasts a single 80 tank, unless you're a realy slooooooooow breather.

Jay

The typical UW case allows you to turn the camera off and on if you want.

My policy of leaving it on, just assures I don't miss anything. I usually have the camera pointed in Wide Angle looking in the direction I am looking, so it makes it a visual recording of my dive. Then, I stop and shoot in more detail the stuff I really want.

Hope this helps

Hi all,

Just came back from DEMA and we saw the new Gates housing for the camera, very nice. Now I STILL haven't seen output from the camera, but I'm going to remain neutral on the benefits of the camera till I see it for myself. the housing however is very nice, I find that a monitor is essential for UW work, and also an on off switch. We use DV start stop detection as a way of not having to slog through 15 tapes worth of dives (5 dives a day X 6 days). The turn time on the edits that we're doing is a mere ten days, so we are pre-editing on the boats (live aboards mostly). Anyways, I'm very interested in seeing any UW footage anyone has, and also any advice on getting HDV into FCP 4.0 on Mac OSX....enough alphabet soup !

There is a possibility that we'll have the JVC camera and the Gates housing for some cage diving with great white's in early november. If this happens, I'd love some advice on how this camera reacts UW etc. We'll be in 15 ft of water, in a cage, off of isla guadalope...chumming for big guys. I'm going t have enough daylight filtering through to not really need the red filter, and I prefer to color correct in post when shallow depths are involved. This leads to the inevitable question about exposure control, I have it on my pd-150 and it's absolutely crucial to getting good footage...what options do I have on the JVC camera? Can anyone post some still frames from the camera? Or give me a hint about the lattitude of this medium in a UW situation?

Oh, and BTW, my wife easily outlasts a 42 min DVCAM tape on any given dive, we know because occasionally her housing will get stuck in the ON position, and we have to shoot through it. She can beat the tape on an aluminum 60! It's not fair at all... I need to look into mortgaging my firstborn for a Megalodon rebreather or something.

cheers
bobby

Well,

You can use an entire mini dv tape, you will have 60 minutes, so that helps.

I am producing a How2 dvd on this camera and hope to have the use of an UW housing from Ikelite in a few days and some footage shot in the water off the Florida coast. You might have seen some in their booth at DEMA.

If I get something, it will be on the DVD as sample footage.

Cheers

Hey Darren,

We'd love to use DV tapes, but we have to use dv-cam for the component recording capability... coming out of a dsr-85 in sdi into any machine (mac, sgi, immix sphere) in uncompressed 10 bit gives you slightly better color rendition, especially if you're compressing for dvd. We've A/B'd dv vs dvcam and there is definitely a quality difference. Looking forward to seeing your dvd, when's it shipping?...before nov.4?

peace
bobby

p.s went by the ike booth twice on wednesday and thursday, the hd setup was not up and running, just an empty table with brochures... the other days i was chained to my booth..is there a place i can check out frames shot on the jvc hdv camera ?

This camera uses mini dv.

If you really seea difference in the two formats, mini dv and dvcam, you better tell sony because they can't see a difference. Statistically there is no difference.

You can still leave a DSR85 component with a mini dv tape. Yes, component out does make a difference if you have a capture card.

The DVD ships Novemeber 1 at the latest.

I may be blind in one eye but....we se a diff. There is another issue: reliability, we see a lot more dropouts in dv. Back in the days of the vx-1000 i used to cry sometimes when catastrophic errors caused job-loss, a strange and critical disease that one gets, and one cannot make the payments on the flame in ones studio....but, I think it's the old fuji gives you nicer reds and kodak doesn't screw up the greens arg that we had back when people still had the budget to shoot super 16 and 35 for a living... some still do. I'm happy with dv-cam.
getting back to the REAL topic, how do you edit with the HDV camera, Steve mullen's osx techniques, the pc->AE way...is it possible to upconvert the mpeg-2 so that it's uncompressed and can live on an HD-CAM tape? One "onion chopping with a chainsaw" solution to all the editing fuss is: upconvert th HD out of this camera to a panasonic or sony? (i don't think they make a 720p recorder...may be wrong) deck. Use a kona-HD or an HD flame to bring in the footage, and then do whatever you want... Output to HD on a panasonic, save it off to play on a big HDscreen...or bury it as a time capsule...call your friends and see if you can see the matrix buried in the bits... i dunno. It just seems like: If you want to use the camera in a real HD setting, like playing on to a real HD screen, you do your cutting/compositing/efx in as high a res as possible and then downconvert if necessary. I mean, can this camera be "second camera" to a varicam? Will it cut?If so, I have a job or three for it.

On th UW side, well...perhaps the limitations of shooting UW are not exacerbated by the JVC HD camera.
I'm really dying to get an a-minima housing that lets you take down zeiss primes, but that's stupid expensive. I have yet to shoot motion film underwater in an uncontrolled situation i.e. open ocean, any thoughts/experience on that? THat's what really interests me... all this tape stuff is for the meals...film is for the reel. Anyways, i digress. Looking forward to seeing your dvd darren. Hey Jay, how's the footage from your housing?

peace
bobby

ps we're using sdi, not component...blacks are nicer in sdi for some reason, always loved the digi-beta decks.. but very flaky...AJA makes nice stuff, we use their converters to take the old beta-sp deck and give it sdi ins and outs to and from component. and the dsr-85 has sdi out.

pps i'd love to talk with you offline about ordering a dvd. we are in tobago for a week at the end of october, then we go shark diving, hopefully with the gates housing.on nov.4

I just got back from Hawaii, did some dives off the west shore of Oahu. Visibility was not that great because of the surf picking up, but I got some footage of white tipped reef sharks and some other marine life. I'm shooting a pilot to see if this camera can hold up for a broadcast show. Our guest expert was an Oceangraphic Researcher from University of Hawaii.

I'm still finishing up the new computer so I can import the m2t files for all to see. I don't even have USB 2.0 on my current computer to import a still image from the memory card.

In a couple of weeks I'm going to dump some JVC footage through an analog HD to HD-SDI converter onto D5 or DVCPro-HD. Then we are going to cross convert some to 1080/60i to HDCam and see how that holds up. This camera has gotten so much bad press, that the broadcasters have pretty much written it off already. I feel I have been able to squeeze as much as is possible out of it, so we'll see how these tests look.

Also, the downconverted component 480i straight to a DigiBeta deck looks extremely good. Some people are saying it looks better than material that originated on a DigiBeta camera. It really all depends on who is shooting, what the conditions are, and the settings on the camera.

Jay