The Gentleman's Underwater Bubble Blower Thread

[Michael Hastings]

...so, all you need to stop complaining about the size of DEEP EPIC or DEEP RED is to put them side by side with their Aquavideo counterparts?

What does that mean? The actual body of the AquaVideo™ Epic housing at less than 9" diameter and 17" long is I believe smaller volume (and therefore less weight required to be neutral) than the Gates and the frontal cross section (which determines how much force you have to use to push it through the water) is much smaller. The removable handle wings may make it appear bigger, but they add virtually no additional volume or cross section to it and if it were desired could easily be made smaller or eliminated altogether to use closely mounted handles like a gates. But many user have found that the wings and wide space actually add quite a bit of stability.

On the latest versions I have eliminated the side mounting blocks and just attach the wings directly to the body as is the case on most AquaVideo housings. I kind of liked the flexibility of those mount points for people doing crane work or shooting vertical format - but not too many people used it and with the current fetish for minimal size it seemed like the thing to do. I have used over 100 different different housing/cameras in my day (including a fair number of competitors) and I honestly think the 35 to 39 pound displacement of the epic housing is about ideal. (that is the weight of housing, camera system, and any necessary ballast weight.) Small enough for easy travel and handling around the boat, with enough mass to be stable in the water. (By comparison a full 80 cu ft tank weighs about 40 pounds as well.)

BTW I believe our PVC housing is the lightest of any of the epic housings currently sold or announced.

And the AquaVideo™ RedOne housing is the same body diameter (and port system) just longer. Current versions aren't much longer if you use the SSD module and eliminate the hard drive space.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

BTW I believe our PVC housing is the lightest of any of the epic housings currently sold or announced.

How much does it weigh?

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Mike,

Take it easy, there was a smiley at the end of my sentence, and you know that although I may disagree with some of your design choices, I firmly believe there is a place for your product in our market.

Now, for what is worth, I don't think any existing housing out there does the diminutive size of the Epic justice. They are all bigger than I'd wished them to be, and frankly, bigger than the camera loaded with accessories on land suggests. Somehow, that compactness does not translate into a similarly sized housing. /i haven't seen Pawel's housing, it looks definitely small, but still, we have not achieved the form hugging efficiency of DSLR housings on video, sorry, digital cinema cameras. Is it possible to make them smaller? I don't know, I mean, my DEEP RED looks, and is, huge, but when you put the R1 inside, there is no space left for anything else. And I know that both Gates and Aquavideo leave enough space at the front end to accommodate cine lenses for those who wish to use them, and with that comes the space required for the bigger, sturdier lens gears. So all in all, it would appear that we are as small as can be, but I dare say that probably we could have something considerably smaller if certain compromises were made. I, for one, would be willing to live with a housing with just 2-3 controls, I'm happy not accessing all of my menu options underwater, and with a very reduced front area, enough to accommodate still lenses and the tiny gears they need, and then, something made for just 3-4 lenses. And even thinner aluminum would work too, after all, I've taken my SRL housings deeper than my video ones, and they never bent or imploded, and they've gotten equally banged up with boat ladders, tanks and the like. Such a housing would suit people like me that freedive a lot, chase after large animals and/or dive really deep where gear allowances are at a premium. For that extra reduction in size, such a customer would be happy to sacrifice a lot of the functionality of the more featured, bigger housings out there. Then again, I do breathe easier knowing how sturdy my Gates housing is....

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Rudi, Let us know what else you need from an ideal Epic housing

At 4.5kg complete with side handles and mounting rails, 176mm high, 350mm long (and accomodating full size V-lock battery and range of internal monitors) I don't believe it is possible to design much smaller or lighter housing than DeepX.

We could (given sufficient budget for re-tooling and re-design) probably shorten it by 100mm by limiting the power to Dual Battery Module only, but I personally don't think that the extra length adds much to the bulk considering other battery and module options that can be accomodated in the extra rear space.

Also, being machined from a single block of marine grade aluminium (not cast like some other housings) and having all titanium hardware, I can not imagine stronger or strudier or more reliable design.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Pawel,

300 mm length would be nice, and I really need the monitor to be top mounted at a 45 degree or similar angle so I can operate with the housing below chin level, but MOSTLY (and this is not a dig) I need a 100 degree FOV rectilinear. You deliver that, I'm buying.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Top monitor mounting has always been available by using Nauticam housing for smallHD DP4 monitor. The bulkhead connector is compatible with DeepX and 3Deep and suitable mounting options are available. The external monitor can be mounted on top at any angle.

There are many lens choices for DeepX including Aqualens dome port, which allows mounting Nikon manual focus lenses behind a dome port with Nikonos bayonet mount. Having said that, I don't understand why anyone would like to shoot on Red Epic, rectilinear wide angle lens and a dome port. It doesn't make sense. Cheaper, better (producing sharper images) and lighter solutions exist.

Of course, you are aware of Sea&Sea 12mm and Nikonos RS 13mm fisheye lenses giving approximately 130 degree angle and SHARP images.

As I said, shortening the body by 50~100mm is possible, in particular when only external monitoring is used. But, given the manufacturing process (it is not a simple extrusion profile and has numerous internal cavities), any customisation would come at some additional cost.

If you would like a quotation for a custom 300mm long DeepX housing, please contact me by email: pawel.achtel (at) 24x7.com.au

 

[John J Ellerbrock]

Underwater Housing Convention, collection of EPIC's. Gates is nicely represented and a couple of Aquavideo EPIC housings were in attendance.

Frazier,

Call me Green with Envy for missing the expedition. Hammerheads are wonderfully adapted creatures. Please share some video when/if you can.

Say, those boxes look like Jordy Klein's work. And 3D no less. Pray tell.

J-

 

[Michael Hastings]

Mike,

Take it easy, there was a smiley at the end of my sentence, and you know that although I may disagree with some of your design choices, I firmly believe there is a place for your product in our market.

Now, for what is worth, I don't think any existing housing out there does the diminutive size of the Epic justice. They are all bigger than I'd wished them to be, and frankly, bigger than the camera loaded with accessories on land suggests. Somehow, that compactness does not translate into a similarly sized housing. /i haven't seen Pawel's housing, it looks definitely small, but still, we have not achieved the form hugging efficiency of DSLR housings on video, sorry, digital cinema cameras. Is it possible to make them smaller? I don't know, I mean, my DEEP RED looks, and is, huge, but when you put the R1 inside, there is no space left for anything else. And I know that both Gates and Aquavideo leave enough space at the front end to accommodate cine lenses for those who wish to use them, and with that comes the space required for the bigger, sturdier lens gears. So all in all, it would appear that we are as small as can be, but I dare say that probably we could have something considerably smaller if certain compromises were made. I, for one, would be willing to live with a housing with just 2-3 controls, I'm happy not accessing all of my menu options underwater, and with a very reduced front area, enough to accommodate still lenses and the tiny gears they need, and then, something made for just 3-4 lenses. And even thinner aluminum would work too, after all, I've taken my SRL housings deeper than my video ones, and they never bent or imploded, and they've gotten equally banged up with boat ladders, tanks and the like. Such a housing would suit people like me that freedive a lot, chase after large animals and/or dive really deep where gear allowances are at a premium. For that extra reduction in size, such a customer would be happy to sacrifice a lot of the functionality of the more featured, bigger housings out there. Then again, I do breathe easier knowing how sturdy my Gates housing is....

So let's do it - if we limit it to the forward position that Frazier and I have been using for the Sigma 14mm rectilinear (and also something like the Tokina 10-17 or Canon 8-15 fisheye or 14mm Canon) and use a custom battery pack we can probably cut the length in half - and still be in the $3500 - $7000 range depending on PVC or aluminum. And actually, it would still be possible to use longer or larger lenses by using extensions and or different frontplates like on the gates.

As you know, we usually make these in small batches of 4 or 5 units at a time and it isn't much harder to do one offs at about the same price as long you don't ask us to do something that requires a lot more design or construction time.

The "standard" version of Epic housing was sized the way it is for several reasons:

1) to be able to use all of the usual SLR and cine lenses (i.e. Arri 8R, 14mm, etc.) that a professional would be commonly asked to use

2) to be able to use both the brick type batteries that everybody was stuck with in the early Epic days, as well as the quad module that came with all of the Epic-X trade-in packages and

3) to maintain compatibility with the port system we used on the RedONe housings since virtually all of the RedONe original owners were trading in for Epic. and

4) I felt (and still do for the most part) that the ~ 35-40 pound displacement provides the best compromise for stability and flexibility of configuration options for the serious professional that rents and shoots for a variety of production styles.

And for a long time there weren't any competitors with significantly smaller housings - remember virtually all of the initial REDONE and Epic customers were either coming from much larger broadcast housings for F900s or Varicams or prosumer camera housings that were only slightly smaller (e.g. Gates or light and motion Z1 housings).

Now many new customers are coming from the dSLR world so it makes a lot more sense to go ahead and offer a couple of "standard" much smaller versions that have limited options like the compact Nauticam or DeepX housings but are more suitable for those users that might be intimidated by larger housings or have special needs like surfing or free diving. I am heavily involved right now in my Aero3D (topside) beamsplitter rig and getting prepped for release at NAB so it will probably be a month or two - but the only thing that will make it a "standard" housing is there will be a model number and spec sheet. Doing these more compact versions isn't a very big deal - all of the hard parts are already done so anyone that wants one of these compact versions simply needs to contact me and give us the normal 3-4 week turnaround time we ask for custom fitted housings. It is possible to do it much faster but it disrupts the flow or regular business so unless there is a major urgency we try to stick with that kind of schedule.

Pawel,

300 mm length would be nice, and I really need the monitor to be top mounted at a 45 degree or similar angle so I can operate with the housing below chin level, but MOSTLY (and this is not a dig) I need a 100 degree FOV rectilinear. You deliver that, I'm buying.

Rudi: The 14mm rectilinears would give close to 100 degrees on 5K or we can accommodate Sigma 8-16, 10-22 canon or 11-16 tokina in about that size and could use same Nauticam external monitor or others - but those APS-C superwides don't quite cover full 5K - is that OK? Otherwise which lenses give 100 degrees on full 5K epic?

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Mike,

That is my biggest problem with the Epic, the incompatibility with the wide rectilinears. For me, 5K is not as important as the size, low compression and HFR of Epic, I am quite content shooting 4K or 4.5K, which is why I'm still using the RED ONE. Whenever I've shot those lenses on an Epic, I've used the two approaches, meaning, I have zoomed the lens in until I cover the full sensor or I've shot the lens at its widest and crop in post until I no longer have vignetting. It's a toss up but usually, the latter approach still yields wider FOV but I do this only for my own stuff, as it is unnerving for customers to receive footage with black borders So, I am debating whether I should actually wait for the Dragon and its 6K real estate to see whether full frame lenses will look wide enough on it and avoid all the cropping of the APS lenses, but as it sits right now, I'm undecided on the Epic specially given how inexpensive it has become to shoot the RED ONE.

Let's talk again when Dragon comes out. And of course, I am still moving forward with my own corrected optic design, which should cure all of these maladies. We had based all of the initial design and optical corrections on the Tokina 11-16, but after some more extensive testing and finally running all the lenses through MTF tests, the Sigma 8-16 emerged as the sharpest of the bunch, and ironically, the one whose problems are easier to correct. So we're back to the drawing board but it looks like now we have a lens that will be far easier to work with. We were about to start commissioning the first test elements based on the Tokina when we realized that the lens is incapable of focusing at near infinity, or infinity, after some corrections have been applied to it. And the problem is that near infinity with that lens is still ~ 1.5 meters from the image plane, so on certain shots, even with 10" domes, the further parts of the image are soft while the front remains sharp, an effect that was difficult to detect because at first it felt like natural focus fall off. So we canceled our orders and scrapped our plans, but the Tokina is out of the equation. I have since read about similar problems with that lens on land, which is a shame because I love it, but the truth is, the sigma is that much better, sharper and less distortion prone, cheap plastics and all. Anyway, as I said, let's talk again once Dragon comes out.

Of course, all these problems would be eliminated if we already had a full frame sensor out there, regardless of how many "Ks" you could cram into it. FWIW, Sony is poised to release a professional version of their full frame sensor this summer, let's see how good it really is...

 

[David Cole]

... And 3D no less. Pray tell.

Yeah, Frazier, spill it!

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Gavin McKinney shooting his next IMAX 3D feature, did not reveal the housing manufacturer, playing cards close to chest seems the norm in this business, but would not be surprised if he did it himself. Did not have that Gates machining magic characteristic of Ellerbrock's product, but seemed to work well nonetheless. He was diving with a Frenchman who is apparently a 3D guy of note.

Great trip, Stuart was present the whole time, Andy Casagrande, Frazier Nivens, two UK dive magazine writer/photographers, Mark Rackley and gorgeous underwater model, and of course, lots of 14-foot thousand-pound Great Hammerheads making appearances on a regular basis.

I guess everyone is busy parsing footy at the moment, expect some really spectacular grabs over the next little while. Ron Lagerlof had an Epic Monochrome, the cloudy day stuff he got is nothing short of astonishing.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...playing cards close to chest seems the norm in this business....

if you have a Royal Flush on hand you don't need to keep your cards close to your chest

edit:

BTW I believe our PVC housing is the lightest of any of the epic housings currently sold or announced.

Mike, I'm calling your belief a pure bluff

 

[James Killion]

Hammerhead

Hammerhead

Just got back from a great trip to the Bahamas and captured some great footage with my Red Epic and Gates Housing

 

[Ross Isaacs]

Just got back from a great trip to the Bahamas and captured some great footage with my Red Epic and Gates Housing
View attachment 35016

Thats an extraordinary image James!!!!!!

 

[Michael Hastings]

Mike,

.snip.:

So, I am debating whether I should actually wait for the Dragon and its 6K real estate to see whether full frame lenses will look wide enough on it and avoid all the cropping of the APS lenses, but as it sits right now, I'm undecided on the Epic specially given how inexpensive it has become to shoot the RED ONE.

Rudi: remember that the Dragon is only slightly larger than epic-x sensor. The whole idea of the 6K is that the pixels are smaller and closer together so you get at least 5K (and therefore true 4K after debayer) with standard S35 or APS-C lenses like the tokina and sigma 8-16 - so you will get 5k or better with the same angle of view as you get with your RED ON

Mike, I'm calling your belief a pure bluff

I will get you some weights later this weekend. But you may be right - I forgot you made yours out of titanium - but what is the weight of the DeepX plus the monitor housing?

For Rudi and others that might be interested I can make an Epic housing with comfortable space for SLR lenses, the LCD monitor and a 92 watt hour lithium battery, controls for the 4 monitor buttons plus the SSD module buttons and record - in a 9" long 8.7" diameter tube (11" with endplates) so a displacement of 23 or 24 pounds; and about half that for actual housing weight.actual housing weight . That's what it would have to weight to sink, so it's total weight including the camera, battery, and probably a 3 or 4 pound ballast weight. If necessary we could squeeze another inch or two shorter but you only save 2 pounds per inch of displacement and maybe a pound per inch actual housing weight.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

I will get you some weights later this weekend. But you may be right - I forgot you made yours out of titanium - but what is the weight of the DeepX plus the monitor housing?.....so a displacement of 23 or 24 pounds; and about half that for actual housing weight.actual housing weight .....

The weight of DeepX is 4.5kg. It is made of precision machined aluminium and the diameter is approximately 180mm. I'm not sure of the weight of the Nauticam NA-DP4 monitor housing, but I think it is less than 1kg.

... I am heavily involved right now in my Aero3D (topside) beamsplitter rig and getting prepped for release at NAB...

More and more 3D productions seem to stear away from beam splitters and use software solutions that become more powerful and cheaper every day. For example emotion 3D, allows converting 3D footage shot with wider stereo base (side-by-side) to generate intermidiate and smaller IA to adjust the depth in post. This is useful for generating different depth profiles (parallax) for different distribution: mobile devices, TV, cinema and IMAX - all of which requiring different stereo base.

 

[Mauricio Handler]

Nice color grading James- that is more like it.

 

[James R.D. Scott]

Was great meeting some fellow UW epic shooters in Bahamas. And of course those Great Hammerheads were 'great' too.

 

[James Killion]

Was great meeting some fellow UW epic shooters in Bahamas. And of course those Great Hammerheads were 'great' too.

Great meeting you James, hope you got some killer Hammerhead shots!

 

[James Killion]

Thats an extraordinary image James!!!!!!

Nice color grading James- that is more like it.

Thank you for the kind words Ross and Mauricio!
The water was dirty for a few days as we just had some weather but the sharks didn't mind!