What lies beneath

I’ve always fancied doing some underwater shots, but begrudge sending over £1000 on a waterproof housing, so when I saw this Gopro housing on Amazon at a fraction of the cost I thought I’d give it a go. This post is in no way sponsored, I paid full price for the housing, I’m simply sharing it to give people an idea of what is achievable on a reasonable budget. I’ll post a link to the product at the end of the post.

The camera I use is a Gopro Hero5 which itself is waterproof, but when used alone can't create the split level style of this shot as space is needed between the front of the lens and the water. In fact you could create the same affect by simply using a bowl, but it’s a bit of faff and not exactly ideal to be carrying around on a hike.

I must admit I was dubious as any leak that would allow water into the housing would ruin the affect. I’ve now used this housing 4 times with no issues at all. It comes in 2 parts making it easy to stuff into a backpack and can be put together in 3 or 4 minutes. The handle is a neat touch as there’s a waterproof chamber within so you can store the pouch which stops the dome being scratched when not in use. You use the button on the back of the housing to switch between modes on the Gopro and then it’s as simple as pressing the trigger to start, and again to stop.

I only found 2 potential minor issues.

  • The dome is made of perspex so you have to be quite careful not to scratch it.

  • It’s easy to lose track of how many times you’ve pressed the trigger, but you just have to look at the camera to see if the record light is on or not.

Overall for the money it’s a pretty good piece of kit which produces usable results