QUESTION · ARCHIVE

What's a low budget and high budget underwater video and audio setup?

ASKED BY · Paul Walhus · AUSTIN, TEXAS · 19 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:15:24

THE PANEL'S ANSWER
Courtney

Low budget: GoPro with underwater housing or micro four thirds with ~$300 housings (Neewer); cheap hydrophones under $100 (ETS pre-amplified phantom-powered). High budget: professional housings, higher-end hydrophones like Ambient (~$400). Live streaming requires waterproofed wires; test everything for leaks first.

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15:23pool uh paul i'm not sure what you want here but go ahead corny and take a crack at this you know nobody else raised their hands i did a little bit of research you know for underwater It depends on whether you're talking about just recording something and, you know, pulling it out of the underwater environment and then playing it back later. Or if you're trying to do live streaming, that could be much more difficult because then you've got to get wires out of the camera and audio.

15:52You know, of course, there's been the GoPro, the perennial underwater housing on the GoPro, and they just saved themselves from bankruptcy by selling 90% of their stock to some holding company. So they're still around. So that's the lower end. If you have a micro four thirds camera, there's solutions like several underwater housings that are available for various MFTs. Here's some for the Panasonic Lumix.

16:20And you generally have to get one of these underwater housings designed for your specific camera because it has to interface to the controls in a method that lets you operate the controls without violating the integrity of the waterproof housing. Here's one from Neymar. These are around $300 a piece, which is pretty cheap. Underwater housings used to be close to $1,000. Here's one that's really cheap.

16:46It's more of a glorified Ziploc bag with a piece of hard glass in the front. I would not want to use that anything deeper than about three feet. And it depends on the depth rating that you're looking at. As far as sound goes, sound off the GoPros, underwater sound really sucks. So you need your hydrophone of some sort. Here's some lower priced hydrophones I've found.

17:11This is designed for pool people to detect underwater pool leaks. But there are others here with the supposedly professional hydrophone. I haven't tried any one of these for, you know, under $200. And here's one for $97. This ETS makes one, here it is down here, that's a pre-amplifier that's built in. It's a phantom-powered hydrophone output. So you've got things like that that are under $100.

17:39Then you've got the more expensive ones. Here's the ambience for $417. So depending upon what your budget is, how deep you're going to go, and whether you need to just record or if you need to get a live image out. Getting a live image out is more difficult because then the wires that go in and out of the housing have to be waterproofed and sealed up really good and you know it depends on that's an obvious

18:01form of leakage so you want to test everything make sure it's leak proof before you stick your camera in there that is very very good advice i'm sure some people that were just getting into this the first time have probably been bitten by that and bought uh bought cheap uh enclosures that did not work properly uh just mentioned a couple of things in the chat here jason robertshaw

18:23is recommending you check out seaview.com. It looks like they have a bunch of products. They have something called the Explorer Adventure Kit. And also, there was someone else, Mickey McChore in the chat saying, low budget, a camera in an acrylic fish tank, Cinema Alexa 35 and Gates Underwater Housing, broadcast barless or deep vision camera systems and sound ambient ASF1 hydrophones. And there's a bunch of links in there.

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