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  • 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 :)

The Gentleman's Underwater Bubble Blower Thread

Need to shoot surface water shots of stand up paddle boarders at water level (lens half submerged). Who's got Epic water housings for rentals? Production already has d800 water housings with camera...is it better to just use those for this specific shot sequence? Less hassle?

Island of Kauai, HI on the 4-6th

Thanks for any info you can give.

-Dane
 
Jeff Whitehurst is on the Big Island with a Scarlet and a housing, has all of the experience you are looking for, great guy to work with, look him up on the forum membership.
 
Need to shoot surface water shots of stand up paddle boarders at water level (lens half submerged). Who's got Epic water housings for rentals? Production already has d800 water housings with camera...is it better to just use those for this specific shot sequence? Less hassle?

Island of Kauai, HI on the 4-6th

Thanks for any info you can give.

-Dane

You may find that a smaller sensor camera can do better with a shot like you mentioned. And then much depends on your post ability and what you are mixing with....do you want the extra effort of coloring/converting r3d to your final output codec? for tv, theatrical or web or other?
 
OMG we are up to 4 pages no insults, bloody great, I'm looking forward to a constructive, supportive thread. Loved you Great white stills Johnny BTW absolutely stunning
Love those sharks as well....hard subjects those whites in blue water though....if only you saw my post workflow and settings--all over the place.
 
Love those sharks as well....hard subjects those whites in blue water though....if only you saw my post workflow and settings--all over the place.

Actually Johnny I would love to pick your brains on that one. I have some Humpback whale stuff that needs properly graded and been having a headache getting the whites white and the blues blue if you get what I mean. Did you use RCX, Speed Grade, Resolve or Color? I was discussing this with HH and he reckons that Color produced a sharper better result than RCX..... He mentioned that you guys had been chatting about it too
 
RCX is really not a great grading tool at the end of it all. It is far better than it has any right to be, but difficult to grade shots cannot really be brought to life with it. I am in the middle of creating a series of tutorials on grading underwater footage for UnderwaterCinema.com as we speak. John, I would like to take a look at your footage and see what I can find and how I fare. Would you like to send me a 10-15 second clip of your most difficult stuff and let me have a go at it? I would be happy to sign any NDAs if needed, but stuff just like what you mentioned, large, dark animals in blue water, are a subject of interest to me as I plan to undertake several similar expeditions next year. You can e-mail me at: Rudi@IdeasinBlue.com


Actually Johnny I would love to pick your brains on that one. I have some Humpback whale stuff that needs properly graded and been having a headache getting the whites white and the blues blue if you get what I mean. Did you use RCX, Speed Grade, Resolve or Color? I was discussing this with HH and he reckons that Color produced a sharper better result than RCX..... He mentioned that you guys had been chatting about it too
 
Actually Johnny I would love to pick your brains on that one. I have some Humpback whale stuff that needs properly graded and been having a headache getting the whites white and the blues blue if you get what I mean. Did you use RCX, Speed Grade, Resolve or Color? I was discussing this with HH and he reckons that Color produced a sharper better result than RCX..... He mentioned that you guys had been chatting about it too

Oh, my....you want to open this can of worms? I say that in jest.....this has been an ongoing discussion and trial and error thing for me since 2007. Only now do i feel like i'm closing in on a proper workflow....This is a big discussion and one that deserves far more technical expertise than i can bring to it...Rudi on this forum is another good u/w color corrector AND i'd say this entire subject has fee and is worthy of an ongoing Article on the art of Coloring underwater footage or Red footage in specific...but RED has it's very complicated boundaries for sure.

I'll finish up my lunch and bring a better post to this. But this is a discussion of different workflows for as many people and there is much to consider....such as what output: web, tv, theatrical etc....Then from those first few basic questions you can setup your workflow. Howard and i have had many ongoing (even as of this morning) about this very subject. We both have to very different approaches on this as well....But we all know the results that Howard brings to the screen at end of day. More on this.....
 
RCX is really not a great grading tool at the end of it all. It is far better than it has any right to be, but difficult to grade shots cannot really be brought to life with it. I am in the middle of creating a series of tutorials on grading underwater footage for UnderwaterCinema.com as we speak. John, I would like to take a look at your footage and see what I can find and how I fare. Would you like to send me a 10-15 second clip of your most difficult stuff and let me have a go at it? I would be happy to sign any NDAs if needed, but stuff just like what you mentioned, large, dark animals in blue water, are a subject of interest to me as I plan to undertake several similar expeditions next year. You can e-mail me at: Rudi@IdeasinBlue.com

Put me on the list for interested in your grading tut. Heading to Palau soon - will have mucho to grade upon return
 
Sounds like a plan guys, yes I can send some footage to you Rudi (pm me your email and I will send you a download link) and and still to you Pawel. Glad to hear that you guys aren't finding it a walk in the park either, I get ok results but I really feel that we should be getting mind blowing results.
 
nice to see a rebirth of solid underwater knowledge.systems useage and experience to assist us lowly water cameraman
 
Hey Rudi,

Was in Frazier's neck o' the woods recently and would be very interested in your workflow for best results for the following shot. Be happy to send you the original R3D, this was a quick grade in RCX, output to Prores444, Epic 5KFF, 96fps, RC12:1, Duclos 11-16 @ 13mm, AV housing w/acrylic dome port;

https://vimeo.com/52040274
 
Tom,

Be happy to take a look at it, can you post the R3D somewhere for me to download?

John,

Will send you my e-mail by PM.

In general, and I don't know if I should be making these comments yet in this forum, but I am leaning towards being convinced that R3D files are not quite as flexible as they used to be. I have been playing with tons of clips, not just underwater where most of the image falls on the midtones, but also clips with highly defined and rich shadow, midtone and highlight areas and whatever corrections I make to any of those areas seems to affect the whole image. I have done corrections to the most problematic of those clips on several programs, Speedgrade, Color Finesse, Resolve, Colorista, and even sent a couple to a friend that owns a Quantel, and invariably, the images allow for very little manipulation. I'm stomped by this, for R3D used to be the most infinitely flexible format I could work on, but something seems to have changed, because it has become increasingly difficult to get proper color separation across the image. So I want to look at as much footage as I can. Hopefully I'm wrong, but two other colorists, very experienced ones, have called me to ask what did I do to the footage I sent them because they can't seem to get a good grade out of it. We'll see....
 
This is certainly a very important subject...but for everyone working in RCX---forget it. This is not suitable as you see your results and gamma shifts....Tom, your footage is highly moved to magenta and i'm assuming you saw better color when viewing in RCX and more saturation. While coloring is more than just doing it on your computer...there are numerous steps and expenses and quite frankly knowledge base that is learned and earned only through much experience. But forget using RCX as a color grading tool. There seems to be something very wrong with the transcode engine that RCX uses....just take a small clip and tune it up in RCX and output to Prores (any flavor)....bring that up and your original RCX clip and look at it with scopes (in monitor or software) and you'll see two very different images...but you don't even need scopes to see this....it's rather depressing and an issue i had been plagued with since 2007 and wrote numerous posts on a thread i began about this very issue....overwhelmingly most did not see this as a problem or one that was fixed--however i think maybe because underwater has such different color variances we see it more pronounced.
 
Johnny,

Quite right. I can't tell about Prores because being on a PC I don't use Prores, but I of course know about all the horror stories with gamma shifts that QT still exhibits because, when exporting DnxHD, another QT variant, out of RCX I also get an image that looks nothing like the original on the scopes. That's why I do all my exports directly through the Adobe MEdia Encoder, which does produce files that are similar enough to the R3D originals.
 
On this subject of R3d and transcoding to deliverables: mostly QT Prores and a few Tiff, DPX......I've been collecting notes and trying different workflows. None of which i am completely satisfied at the moment, but getting closer. I do believe however that going through the steps of setting up your monitor and work path is first and foremost before going further. This means using a program that allows you to access your source color settings, your workspace color settings and then finally your output color settings. You can get to the final outcome any number of ways, but as a brief non-technical overview: After you have done the above, then where is your footage going? TV or Web ? Also, when you view your final product remember that different players such as VLC, Windows media player QT etc....can process your footage very differently. Going back a step, you should choose another proper space: 0-255 (full gamut) and 16-235 (broadast safe)....the full is usually suited better for computer monitors and broadcast safe is just that usually intended for tv....You need to verify in your video editor what space you are in.....then when output...and you go to play it, ALSO make sure you are using a player that is capable of viewing that color space...if you choose a player with non-compatible settings, you'll see terrible results.

....this is only one of many complicated steps and procedures for us as we do color work on our images....what we see on our computer monitor or tv monitor is usually different than what our audience will see. And, when there are more than one deliverable and color spaces we need to be sure to choose a working space that allows for the widest color gamut possible to avoid things like clipping and a large bit depth for preserving the details....how one gets to that point is as previously mentioned is a tedious task. I now know why Black Magic calls their company that.

....keep in mind, im no colorist and not a tech guru. So my explanation is not meant to be a white paper on the subject. Merely my subjective opinion and results of much research on the subject through trial and error.
 
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