After selling some outdoor gear a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to purchase another piece of gear to use in the outdoors. I’ve been wanting to purchase an underwater fish camera for quite sometime now and I finally made a purchase this past week. After some research and debate I purchased the Marcum vs 380 underwater camera system.
I wanted a color system at first but I couldn’t justify spending another $250 – $300 for color viewing! So I opted for a name brand system that was within my budget and the Marcum fit the bill. There were a couple of other cameras that were in that price range but I knew the Marcum name and that is what sold me on this unit.
It is simple to put together and understand all the functions on this unit and it was also ready to go with the battery already being fully charged. I hit a local lake with it along with my oldest son with an ice shanty in tow.
The first problem we encountered was trying to decide how far away to put the hole for the camera from the holes we would be fishing from. We opted for about three feet away since all three holes would be inside the ice shanty. That was our first mistake. It was too close to view both of our ice lures in the water. We concentrated the camera on his lure at first and then hooked the video camera up to the video out on the monitor. Everything rolled along nicely and the monitor provided some fun watching how the fish reacted under the water to our lures and bait.
After spending a half hour or so in the first location we moved to a deeper spot on the lake. This time we put the camera hole about 6 feet away hoping it would provide a wide angle view of our fishing lures. We were only about 2 – 3 feet apart with our holes we were fishing from but the camera could still only pick up one of our lures. We didn’t have much luck at this spot so we ventured to one more location and this time I had an idea for the perfect set up! Instead of putting the camera directly in front of the two holes I put it to the side of the two holes on about a 15° angle. This way both of our lures could be seen in almost a straight line but slightly offset. It worked perfectly this time!
The only other problem we encountered while we were using the camera was that it was hard to get the camera pointed in the correct direction. This will take a little time at getting use to how to set the cable as it is going down to the correct depth and settling it in the proper direction. I’m sure I can come up with a rig to hold it in the proper direction if I put my mind to it. Other than that it worked flawlessly! I was quite pleased with it and it’s performance. I just wish my video camera would have recorded the video I had plugged into it! I think the record head on the camera was dirty and I wound up with garbled video on the tape. I know it came into the camera clean since I saw it on the video camera’s flip out viewing screen.
All in all I’m happy with the unit, the only thing I would change is the location of the plug ins for the video out cable and the underwater camera cable itself. They are both on the back of the unit and it seems to put a small bind on the cables by having to route them through the carrying bag to the front of the bag to access them. Other than that I can’t wait to get back out on the ice to use it again! I hope this helps anyone making a decision on purchasing this camera or any other camera for things to look for before purchasing a unit like this one. I hope to have some video posted soon that I will link to this story.
