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The Gentleman's Underwater Bubble Blower Thread

Lee Kelly said:
I know there are options out there these days for using nikonos lenses. Do any of you have any thoughts?
I use them on my DeepX housing and feel like they are amazing. That being said, everything looks amazing on my 15in mac so I am wondering if any of you using a similar housing with nikonos glass feel that they are all theyre cracked up to be?

I actually did a little shoot in an Olympic pool recently where I used nikonos 28mm (the waterproof one) which focuses in air and as light levels were low-ish I didnt need ND and shot with that lens naked on the surface and it was pretty nice. Hit it with a bit of HMI and flared it out which looked cool. I did some transition shots, like from underwater to revealing someone on the surface and water didnt want to shed off very well but it kind of added to the flare and effect nicely for this shoot.
Click to expand...

Sounds cool. Any stills of the flares you can post?
 
Might have to sift through the drive to find some moments.
I love a flare so maybe my opinion on what constitutes a nice flare is complete rubbish. I like them all. Especially underwater! The 15mm does some sexy things. I did a shoot in a freshwater cave a while ago with the clearest water you can imagine and we did some shots where a shard of sunlight snuck past our talent and hit the lens and it looks like it was added in after effects or something. Looked like something from the film Gravity. I am in love.
 
I cant show the film, as I dont have a link as the producer is putting it out to festivals and doesnt want it in the wrong hands but here is a little highlight reel thingy with some shots I shot. You will see the diver with some shards of light passing by which gives you some idea. This was real world, not a blacked out, lit pool.

https://vimeo.com/118313641


 
Lee Kelly said:
I cant show the film, as I dont have a link as the producer is putting it out to festivals and doesnt want it in the wrong hands but here is a little highlight reel thingy with some shots I shot. You will see the diver with some shards of light passing by which gives you some idea. This was real world, not a blacked out, lit pool.

https://vimeo.com/118313641
Click to expand...

nice reel!
 
Hello UW friends!

Just a quick questions RE OLPFs. I know there is history with the standard filters causing magenta issues UW (would love to read about this! Is it hiding in this enormous thread?)

Is the issue still present in the DSCM2 cameras? If so, I presume the only way to rid would be a Scarlet-W at a minimum (as the Raven cannot be changed) and replace the OLPF?

Anyone using the Nauticam Epic LT housing? It looks lovely and small. How does it compare to Gates?

Look forward to learning a lot from you all. Thanks in advance.
Matt
 
Hi Lee,

if if you do a search of this thread, there have been extensive discussions regarding the legacy Nikonos lenses, Pawel Achtel was one of the first to mount these on Red cameras, and rightly so, they were developed for a very specific purpose. Very pretty glass, highly recommended. I would personally like to see Pawel invited back to this forum, highly controversial guy, but very knowledgeable on all things optical, in the underwater realm.

Also, if my information is correct, Tom Lowe used them with the Gates housing options currently available, he may be able to shed some light, so to speak, on the subject.

Welcome to the neighborhood Matt, yes you are correct, search H2OLPF on this thread, should provide you with a wealth of knowledge regarding the magenta issue, the H2OLPF, the Red team's astonishing product response, and pretty much anything else you need to know when getting your Red moist.

WRT housing choice, if UW run 'n gun is what you do, rapid response airline carry-on, then Nauticam LT is golden, if build quality and unmatched field service is required on a remote shoot where your housing is getting the stuffng kicked and shark-bitten out of it, Gates is the way to go. John Ellerbrock has always surprised me, not many company presidents out there who take a personal and determined interest in every and all shooters who use their gear. I personally shoot with the Rouge, it has taken some tweaking over the years to get it just right, but complete camera control is there, via the housing, it stands apart from the rest in many ways.

My opinions only, all of this has been made possible by JJ, no need to elaborate further.
 
With 275 pages and counting on this thread, which must be the biggest right? There is a lot of material to sift through. Bit daunting.
When I did do a search about the Nikonos glass, there were a few heated discussions going on the things went off track a little.
Yes Pawel might not mince his words and may offend a few of the other estabilished crew but i can feel his frustrations. It read like he was trying to put his money where his mouth is and just copped a lot of criticism with nobody wanting to accept the challenge to post controlled test results.
I have been using his DeepX setup for a couple of years now and although not perfect a far as camera control options, the images coming through those lenses have been really nice. I am not a scientific kind of person and my questions above were asking any of you who had explored conventional housing/port designs as well as older Nikonos options and the newer RS designs. Wondering if once you went Nikonos you couldnt bring yourself to go back to a port style?
The challenge is that we look at everything on a 15in screen for the most part. I recently had an opportunity to see some shots I did in a fresh water cave, on the big screen (2k projector) and it was awesome. To see a 4k projection would have been amazing.

I do wish Pawel was invited back on here as you are right, he does know a thing or two and having a scientific mind he seems to like to prove concepts or disprove them and that kind of attention to detail is super valuable and I guess part of the reason he has been banned. Kind of silly.
 
Nikonos v. Dome Ports

Nikonos v. Dome Ports

Hello Lee,

As an engineer I always look at trade-offs. The Nikonos / Dome Ports have several.

The biggest benefit of the Nikonos RS (for which Gates has adaptations to Epic / Dragon / Weapon and Flex4K) is image quality. Nikon designed the lenses for underwater, and that makes all the difference. They are sharp corner to corner. Distortions and aberrations (the two categories of image killers) are minimized.

Dome ports, by contrast, adapt land lenses for use underwater. This means compromises. The classic being soft corners and chromatic aberration. But the trade off is the *land lens* part. Many topside lenses can also be used underwater. Versatility, flexibility. In the hands of the right shooter the corner issues can be mitigated, and deemed acceptable.

Tom Lowe shot nearly his entire production underwater with the RS system. He aims for the best, and likely would not go back to another port system.

J-
 
Perfect answer John,
Thanks for that. I completely agree. Interesting that you were able to adapt those lenses for Flex4k! That would be crazy!
i built a housing for Flex4k expecting it to be very valuable to me but not many clients in my network wanted to shoot with that camera in the water. I sold it a couple of months later for what it cost me so no tears. This was a port based system and I knew it would be a shame to see such potential wasted with optics not perfect for underwater.
Gates and Nauticam (I believe) can use nikonos optics and this is exciting to me.
Alexa Mini is obviously a pretty busy camera these days and I am often asked about options for this underwater but then my clients usually quickly accept the Dragon as post workflows are now not so scary and pictures match fairly well in a TVC quick edit.

I sure wish I was in a position to play around with the Gates setup. i have also been asked about having a focus puller control iris and focus from the surface via hard wire (in pool sets) but thats a whole different consideration that I have not looked into yet.
 
Tom Hamilton said:
Welcome to the neighborhood Matt, yes you are correct, search H2OLPF on this thread, should provide you with a wealth of knowledge regarding the magenta issue, the H2OLPF, the Red team's astonishing product response, and pretty much anything else you need to know when getting your Red moist.

WRT housing choice, if UW run 'n gun is what you do, rapid response airline carry-on, then Nauticam LT is golden, if build quality and unmatched field service is required on a remote shoot where your housing is getting the stuffng kicked and shark-bitten out of it, Gates is the way to go. John Ellerbrock has always surprised me, not many company presidents out there who take a personal and determined interest in every and all shooters who use their gear. I personally shoot with the Rouge, it has taken some tweaking over the years to get it just right, but complete camera control is there, via the housing, it stands apart from the rest in many ways.

My opinions only, all of this has been made possible by JJ, no need to elaborate further.
Click to expand...

Hi Tom,

Thanks very much for your advice. I did have a search through the thread for the OLPF but found scattered results. I'll have another rummage.

Look forward to keeping up with this thread.
 
The magenta issue is something that affects almost every digital sensor regardless of make. It's only that Red have gone out of their way to address it and build a solution, something they should be commended for. I think it's possible that people think it's specifically a Red issue because it's talked about here, which isn't the case. I've seen it in other cameras both stills and video.
As I understand it, and from my own testing, its caused by UV pollution. In clear water UV is able to penetrate to great depths and as the other colours are absorbed, blue and UV become the dominant wavelengths making up your exposure. You need a very heavy UV block to stop it, something much stronger than an off the shelf UV filter. That's my (likely simplistic) take on it.
 
Regarding the H2O OLPFs and related discussions here are a couple videos I made during my testing and R&D for the H2O OLPF. It may not appear to be the most scientific portion of our testing ;) But it was a beginning for the proof of concept we needed after many tests and experiments to collect the data needed while developing the H2O OLPF and for Graeme to brew up DRAGONcolor 2...

Some of my first proof of concept dives with the finished H2O OLPF on EPIC 6K:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHEFH2aqwuE

Some of my first proof of concept dives with the finished DSMC2 H2O OLPF on WEAPON 6K:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3RUSFpJmIE&list=PLyUytW0ghPSfLk6GXE9oz-hUJDFtGdVFa
 
Hugh is correct that other cameras have the issue, I have shot on an Alexa underwater and it had a similar result in certain conditions and exposures.
 
Hugh thanks for that explanation. I'm blown away by REDs service. Fixing an issue, that presumably really only affected a very small number of users, and investing such time and money in doing so. Awesome. I can't wait to put an order in.
 
Has anyone used Fool Control in their housing via hard wire?
I did a shoot yesterday where we rigged my housing on a crane, lowing it into the water. Save you the details but when we wanted to change settings such as ISO or whatever, it meant swinging the camera back to the surface and over to our assistant to sync Redmote and make changes that way. You all know how good redmote works, now imagine it through a few mm of aluminium!
Of course many of you use housing designs that offer full use to menu either via built in redmote or side handle control but I was speaking to Mika about Fool Control and he mentioned that he had a system where it can be hardwired to the camera via SDI waterproof bulkhead or similar for some of the big name housing manufacturers and I was wondering how you guys felt it worked.

With my setup it is very simple with image quality paramount over menu control and therefore quite limited in regards to buttons etc and for my situation yesterday having a hard wire run along my HDSDI feed and into the housing would have been nice. Does it mean you have to have Red link Bridge or whatever its called installed on the rear of your camera for DMSC1 bodies when hardwired? I dont have the space for that in my box...

I was really hoping this was just something that connected to my camera without any accessories and would be my new best friend but it seems its a bit more than that. Still a killer app!!
 
Hi all,

Apologize if I'm returning to the same subject again.

Regarding the use of the H2O OLPF underwater, is it still needed for the Weapon? Until now I've used the Standard OLPF (in temperate waters) so don't have any real comparation to decide if I really need to buy it or not.
My question is, with the new 6K Weapon and new Color Scince in it, is there a setting that can avoid the use of the H2O OLPF altogether or is it always the best option, regardless water clarity and using (or not) underwater lighting? Reading some older posts, I got the impression that the H2O was made for the Epic cameras, but I can be wrong.

According to Graeme post (in 06/09/2015) the color with the standard OLPF and dragon sensor looks really good...!

Thanks for any feedback.

Best Regards,
 
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