The summer has begun at the Florida National High Adventure Seabase where I have found myself this summer. This summer I will be teaching PADI Open Water Scuba Certification classes. I have had one class so far that I co-taught with my fellow instructor Mike Roesel. The group of kids and dads was awesome. It was a good week. No real challenges to speak of, no difficulties with bookwork, poolwork or open water skills. On the last two dives of the week I got a chance to use my ghetto rigged setup of two Sealife strobes and a Canon G11 on a wood frame, with my GoPro Hero mounted next to the G11 housing on the frame. I purchased the Eye of Mine flat lens housing for use underwater with the GoPro and have had very pleasing results thus far.

I had done some research regarding the use of a GoPro underwater and found that the stock housing, though rated to 180′ produces a slight blurring effect on everything underwater. I viewed some videos on youtube to determine whether a flat lens would be worth it and determined that it definitely would be. Mounting the GoPro beside my G11 gave the setup a continuous video function viewing all my subjects and capturing the scene with video while I can photograph with the G11 and strobes separately. I was able to get some good shots of a loggerhead turtle, a lionfish, and some macro shots of christmas tree worms and a neon goby. I am still experimenting with the best light/strobe output and shutter speed combinations. Most of my shots still needed a little touching up in photoshop. But I have all summer to improve.

Brian Sevald
Scuba Instructor
Photographer
Islamorada, Fl