I’ve long been a fan of my HD HERO GoPro camera for capturing digital video and photographs on a variety of my travel adventures, from riding the AquaDuck water slide on a Disney Dream cruise to tubing in Vail to stand-up paddling on Oahu. I’ve also used the camera — and its waterproof wrist housing — while snorkeling and scuba diving. However, the standard waterproof case has a “fish eye,” curved plastic covering, so that photos can sometimes appear distorted underwater.
The Dive Housing with a flat glass lens allows for much crisper underwater photography and video. These snorkeling photos were all taken in Mexico with my GoPro with Dive Housing (as were the underwater pictures in my Snorkeling with Whale Sharks post):
I also used the GoPro Dive Housing while scuba diving along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The camera and housing are good to 197 feet underwater, which is way deeper than I’ll ever go! Note that the following (barely color-corrected) photos are much more “blue” than the snorkeling photos above. That’s because as you go deeper underwater, the color red seems to “disappear” due to light absorption — or some other physics or chemistry explanation (hey, I’m a writer, not a scientist).
I will admit that my waterproof Olympus Tough TG-820 point-and-shoot does a much better job of color correcting underwater. That said, the undewater photos in this review post, as well as the one below, were taken at a much lower depth than the “blue GoPro with Dive Housing” photos above. Note, however, that the Olympus Tough camera can only go safely 33 feet underwater; this photo below was taken on a relatively shallow dive with the Olympus Tough:
One downside of using the GoPro Dive Housing is that it isn’t compatible with my favorite GoPro Wrist Housing. You can attach the camera with GoPro Dive Housing on a chest mount or head strap, for underwater use. But I like having the camera in my hand — or near my hand on my wrist — for snorkeling or diving.
So, to remedy this, I used a cinch strap from another camera and just attached it to the flat-lens diving case. Not really a big deal.
The GoPro Dive Housing retails for $49.99 on the GoPro website.
