Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

Status
Not open for further replies.
Housing in Sweden/Norway

Housing in Sweden/Norway

We are Cine Digital Canarias, based in Canary Islands. Just got a call from a client in Stockholm who wants to shoot an underwater scene in a pool on the 20th or 28th this month. They haver their own underwater dop (Erik ...). They only need the gear and tought one of you scandinavian bubble blowers could help them save a bit in the shipping costs. I heard more than once from someone in Norway with an Aquavideo. Just phoned mike, he says the name is Amund Lie (forgive me if am spelling wrong). In any case, if you do have a housing and are not too far from stockholm, send me an email: daniel at cinedigitalcanarias.com Thanks!
 
Been in touch with them already, but didn't work out with schedule this time. No, you spelled my name right, and I also have a Deep Red :)
 
Hi
I'm new to this forum. I'm based in the UK and I mainly work on underwater TV drama and commercials.
For anyone who might be interested, I have just finished designing and building (with specialist engineers) a dedicated underwater housing for the RED One camera. The housing eccepts the Cooke S4 wide lenses from 14mm to 35mm and also the Zeiss 10mm T2
An alternative port has been designed around the RED 18-50mm zoom lens. This makes the housing great for features/commercials, and with the zoom, also documentaries.
The housing comes with an external 2.5 inch monitor and an internal 7" RED monitor, viewable through the back of the housing. Video-out to the surface is via HD-SDI and there is full fingertip control of iris focus and zoom. I built the housing to use myself but also to rent out to other productions and underwater cameramen.

Please click
http://www.underwater-camera.com/site/RED_ONE_housing.pdf
to check it out.

all the best
Hugh Fairs
http://underwater-camera.com
 
Hello Bubble Blowers,

we are new to this forum so we just want to introduce ourselfs and say hi to everyone. We're form Warsaw, Poland and specialised in TV commercials and feature films since 2003. So far we've been working mostly with 35 and 16mm cammera formats, but starting 2010 we are happy owners of DeepRed u/w housing from Gates.
At the moment we have just finished first underwater tests with Zeiss Ultra Primes, Cooke S4 and Panavision Primo. For more information about our equipment or housing rental please visit our FaceBook profile:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/AQUAFILM-Underwater-Camera-Techniques/228152875968?v=photos&ref=search#!/pages/AQUAFILM-Underwater-Camera-Techniques/228152875968?ref=ts

Thanks,
Artur Zwierzchowski, Aleksander Palasinski
 
It is with great pleasure that I launched my brand new Cave Megalodon CCR today on the Great Barrier Reef out of Port Douglas. The Meg performed brilliantly and I was so comfortable using it I also took along my Deep Red to film Lance Robb (my Australian Meg instructor) for some films we have in pre-production. The Meg had wonderful breathing characteristics and coupled with the shearwater predator was a pure delight to use.
 
Looking for a Gates for EX1

Looking for a Gates for EX1

Guys,

I'm in need of a Gates housing for a Sony Ex1, any offers or suggestions?
 
Looking for a Gates for EX1

Looking for a Gates for EX1

Rudi,
I'm not sure where you are in the world but you can rent the Gates EX1 housing from some of the Gates dealers, or directly from Gates:

www.gateshousings.com

John
 
Thanks and sorry,

I should have been more clear, I'm looking for a used Gates EX1 housing. I know where and how to get a new one, but I'm just on the lookout for a used housing in good condition to purchase, not rent. I don't need ports, I have those.
 
Arri 8r make room for another 8 - Sigma 8-16 zoom

Arri 8r make room for another 8 - Sigma 8-16 zoom

PMA 2010: the widest-angle rectilinear lens yet made for APS-C DSLRs, [same as RED S35) in the shape of the 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 DC HSM.

Press release:
February 21, 2010: The Sigma Corporation is pleased to announce the new Sigma 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 DC HSM. This is the first ultra wide zoom lens with a minimum focal length of 8mm, designed specifically for APS-C size image sensors. This lens has an equivalent angle of view of a 12-24mm lens when used on digital cameras with an APS-C size image sensor.

The wide-angle of view from 121.2 degrees* produces striking images with exaggerated perspective, enabling photographers to emphasize the subject. Four FLD (“F” Low Dispersion) glass elements, which have the performance equal to fluorite glass, compensate for color aberration. One hybrid aspherical lens and two glass mold elements give excellent correction for distortion and astigmatism.

Incorporating an inner focusing system, the lens produces high definition images throughout the entire zoom range. The Super Multi-Layer Coating reduces flare and ghosting while superior peripheral brightness ensures high contrast images throughout the entire zoom range.

This lens incorporates HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor), ensuring quiet and high speed AF as well as full-time manual focus capability. It has a minimum focusing distance of 24cm throughout the entire zoom range which allows photographers to emphasize the subject by creating exaggerated perspectives. This lens has a compact construction with an overall length of 105.7mm and a maximum diameter of 75mm.

it will be available to fit Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Sigma and Sony SLRs.

A bit slow at f4.5 (a bit more than a stop slower than the 2.8 8R) but in a week of shooting multiple locations here in the Bahamas I don't think we ever opened more than 5.6. (shooting with Birger and iris and focus control, plus lens data at the surface - so it was easy to tell the fstop all of the time.)

Since it is available in Nikon mount should be able to use with Optitek or Underdahl mounts with iris control.
 

Attachments

  • 8-16mm-F4.5-5.6-EX-DG-HSM-001.jpg
    8-16mm-F4.5-5.6-EX-DG-HSM-001.jpg
    16.3 KB · Views: 0
Greetings folks, glad to see this thread alive again. This is kind of random but no way off topic, anyone know of a studio that has an underwater tank or pool for shooting in the new york city area?

best.
 
Tested Tokina 11-16mm in Aquavideo housing results

Tested Tokina 11-16mm in Aquavideo housing results

Well it has been interesting with the Tokina 11-16mm nikon mounted on a optitek promount for the RED ONE camera.The Optitek took a little while and 2 quick cell phone calls to Jacek at Optitek but we got it working fine now.

The 2 front controls work fine and fairly fast when you play with them and focus control is so short..especially with the 800 asa new MystX sensor it looks like 5.6-11 is the norm now under most water conditions.
I have been presetting the aperature for f8 and with the great Tokina 11-16mm depth of field..it seems to cover everything I need right now..
So all in all the OPTITEK nikon Prolock and Tokina 11-16mm/ Aquavideo combination works very well.. and we are starting our big project in 3 weeks
Kozzzzzzzzzzzzz
 
prolock under water

prolock under water

Thanks for the feedback Jim,
I'm glad It worked out for you.
Keep us posted on the job progress when you can:emote_popcorn:
 
Jacek:

Would this work with the nikon version of the 8-16 Sigma below?

Also, if you can spare one I'd like to try one to figure more direct actuation of the iris control.
 
Hi Rudi
did you consider making a bean splitter configuration to nail the close and medium affects or did you mainly shoot for wide shots?
cheers
Ross
 
Ross,

As I said, these were just torture tests so I wasn't getting into the details. However, with the Canon cameras, you have an interocular of less than 3 inches, so unless you want to shoot extreme close ups, you should be fine for most situations with a side-by-side rig like this. The rule of thumb is that you need about 30 times the distance of the interocular in front of the lens, which is about 5-6 ft with this set up, but in reality, your can get by with much less, about 3.5 ft or so, which is anyway at the limit of the camera's close focusing ability. A beam splitter would not add much benefits to this particular set up, but it would of course be valuable with cameras that cannot fit so close to each other or that can focus much closer, like a RED for example. The thing is, a beam splitter rig for RED or even something smaller like an EX-1 or several of the Varicams would be very cumbersome, so the beauty of this particular setup is its simplicity and maneuverability, although of course, you are somewhat limited in what you can do.
 
Ross Isaacs said:
Hi Rudi
did you consider making a bean splitter configuration to nail the close and medium affects or did you mainly shoot for wide shots?
cheers
Ross
Click to expand...

Ross:

DJ Roller made a beamsplitter R1 rig for 3D but it is massive - as it has to be for RED1 or any large camera. We will be looking at doing a beamsplitter rig for Scarlet/Epic as some of the possible configurations could be much smaller. (The main problem with R1 is the length which can't be reduced so the vertical camera really makes things huge). May put something together for Canon vDSLRs in the meantime.

Overall, these Canon camcorders (also looking at some Panasonic 3 chip minis) provide massive bang for the buck (Remember we are essentially shooting the same resolution as AVATAR.). At least in the near future, I am not looking to make it totally pro - I'm looking to make a midrange prosumer product in the $1800 to $3K range for the housing and some of the new cameras from Canon are in the $700 range - so a sub $5K 3d system for housing, cameras, lenses and 3D software (Tim Dashwoods 3D plug-in ($389) is pretty powerful and works with Final Cut Express ($199)).

I'm not abandoning the RED1 (or Epic), but making housings primarily for the highend is too much of a financial roller coaster ride and I need something in the midrange to smooth things out. I do think for ANYONE looking at doing underwater 3D, this simpler system makes a LOT of sense for the first step regardless of the long term goal. And I wouldn't sell it short - very useable and saleable material can be produced.

The reason we have been playing primarily with Canon is twofold 1) The HV20/HV30 was one of the first 24P HD minicams that was embraced by the film community so we had been working with them, and the following filebased cameras like the HG20 and HFS10/100s have provided excellent results as well and 2) The canons have a power switch on the top. Most of the other minicams from Sony and others are putting the power switch inside the LCD door. Since you normally have at least one of the cameras with the door closed in a side by side housing, it makes it difficult to power on.

Rudi:

Thanks for your input here and posting the Underwater 3D thread. I haven't forgotten you - I had a bad ear infection before I went to the Bahamas for the shark shoot. And then managed to perforate the eardrum on one of the dives so now it's worse, and really bothering me yesterday and today - off to the ENT again tomorrow. Good news is I got quite a bit of new clearwater shark and reef 3D footage for us to play with. Call you later. Got some good R1 footage too.
 
Ok Mike,

I just sent you a text message before reading this. I'm in urgent need of getting the 3d housing situation sorted out for the upcoming shoot, and have the TV network I told you about breathing down my neck, so let's get this done. Looking forward to playing with some of the new footage.
 
Hi all,
Does anyone have suggestions for the set up parameters when shooting underwater? I know this gets to be a bit of a personal thing, as we all like to do it our way. I'm hoping however, that there are some general rules of thumb that have evolved from use over time.

thanks in advance
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top