We recently did a poll in Girls that Scuba on the type/brand of underwater camera members uses. You can see what came out on top. But the reason for this isn’t because it’s the best – it’s because it’s the most available and the best value for money. It’s also because a small action camera like a GoPro comes with less risk; it’s small, durable and worst comes to worst we are not forking out thousands if it’s lost or damage. This got us thinking – what if we could find a BETTER action camera that came with all those qualities but minus those greeny/blue terrible photos that come any deeper than 10m? And then we were introduced to the Paralenz action camera.
What is Paralenz
Their tagline is ‘Made by divers, for divers’, so straight up you’d have some confidence in this product because of the team behind it, they’ve also thrown in there “World’s greatest diving action camera”. During the testing process, more than 250 divers around the world helped to develop the camera, sending feedback to the designers to assist with correcting faults and software bugs. The Paralenz Dive Camera claims to be tough, smart, and reliable so you can focus on what matters the most – your dive. The Paralenz is an action camera but with no extra housing needed and no extra colour filters needed…
Made of anodized aluminium and polycarbonate, with an easy-to-use two-button design, and with the ability to record at a depth of 200 m/656 ft. To further enhance your dive experience the Paralenz Dive Camera has a pressure sensor for logging your dive in terms of depth and temperature, and for automatically adjusting the white balance according to your depth.
But perhaps the most impressive feature of the Paralenz Dive Camera is the auto colour correction otherwise know as the DCC – Depth-control colour correction.
Un-edited, straight from the Paralenz.
Ok, enough of what they said, here’s what we say
We loved the Paralenz from the get-go. The story behind the team, their Kickstarter (we love supporting new dive business) and even getting to meet some of the team at Boot Dive Show in Dusseldorf. Then when we got it underwater we loved how we didn’t need to do anything at all from taking it out of the box into the ocean (apart from turn on DCC- colour correction to blue water). We’ve listed the positive and the negatives, but in all honesty, the auto colour correction in itself is what makes this camera pretty incredible for an action cam. No editing is needed in photos or videos. And in this fast-paced world, we live in it allows us to share our content within minutes of taking them. All shots in this piece are ours from our recent trip to Marsa Alam in Egypt.
Positives
– Small and light
– Easy to use
– AMAZING auto colour correction – no filter or app needed! The Paralenz knows exactly how deep you are and adjusts your videos accordingly. The first action camera in the world that automatically adjusts the white balance to match the depth you are at
– Easy to use and understand controls which are super fast to switch between
– Underwater vibration really helps to know when filming has started and stopped
– Equipped with a temperature and pressure sensor so you can log your dive and display your data in your videos.
– Very good battery life
– Goes down to 200m making it great for technical diving
– Operational with gloves
– We will say it again; AMAZING colour correction. This is revolutionary within action cams
– Bonus points for minimal plastic within the delivery of the camera. Notice how the GoPro comes in a huge plastic display case only for it to get opened and discarded within 10 seconds of receiving the products.
Negatives
-No viewfinder
– Sometimes we couldn’t tell where the “top” of the camera was when we were just holding it in our hands. The top is obviously where the button is, but when a sneaky shark comes around the corner and you are filming something else you can lose your direction and end up filming wonky. Solution? Have it on a selfie stick. We worked that out too late
– When holding the Paralenz in our hands we found our footage wasn’t very steady. Maybe we have a shaky hand, or maybe it could do with better built-in stabilization
– On the app, you can’t download 4k videos onto your phone. We love sharing our videos on Instagram stories straight away but couldn’t when filmed in 4k without downloading onto our laptop first
– The app itself doesn’t run smoothly – we found the best way to retrieve the footage was to download to a laptop.
– Only compatible with Sandisk SD cards – we learnt this the hard way after a morning of freediving with a turtle to find none of the footage wrote onto the SD card
– We used their selfie stick and originally put the Paralenz on incorrectly on the stick (facing us not facing away) and we jumped in with it and it fell straight off. Luckily it was only at 10m and we retrieved in freediving and put it back on the right way which was very sturdy. Basically, make sure you are aware of how T mount clips clip onto accessories
Is it worth the money?
We’ve not said anything about the price yet because we wanted you guys to consider the functions of the camera rather than comparing the price to other action cameras. But here it is £579. Get yours here.
Do we think it is worth the price? Yes. Do we think we would say 100% yes if it was less £500? Yes. But, we think what is important is not to compare it to any other action camera. It is not a GoPro and its underwater functions are WAY more advanced and provide a much, much better instant capture (also you have to take into consideration the extra costs of a GoPro – the filters can set you back a few pounds to get the right one, as well as the underwater housing). You can really tell this camera has been designed by divers from the small details like the vibration on recording (how many times have you thought you were recording but hadn’t even pressed the button properly) to the auto colour correction (yes, I know we’ve gone on about this a lot) that provided instant gratification on looking at images after a dive. This isn’t a camera for a professional photographer or someone looking to become one. This is the camera for a diver who enjoys capturing good images that don’t need editing, for someone that doesn’t want to lug around heavy equipment, and for someone that wants to spend more time enjoying the dive than fiddling with camera settings.
