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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

More importantly you have my eyes. We really want our cameras to perform well for all users. It's pretty easy for me to test and verify any issue an "on land" customer brings to me. I've helped many people this way, from user-operators to feature productions. I don't have either the experience or the ability to shoot at depth, so there's a certain reliance on the underwater community to help us out.

Graeme
 
Jarred Land said:
I was emailed mumblings of a problem last month... but never any details surrounding the issue or even what the issue was, just a request that If you give me free Dragon upgrades to my cameras and tell me a whole bunch of confidential info I will tell you what the problem is and we have a fix for it and maybe for Dragon too. I don't really understand the whole " fuck you pay me " philosophy.....
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To be clear, the exact and complete request was: "I would be very grateful for an early upgrade of my two Epic-X to Dragon".

Jarred Land said:
If someone wants to tell us what the problem is without holding us hostage...
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Apparently Rudi Herbert and Michael Meas tried to do so and were not successfull. And, so was I.

You are welcome to respond to my emails as they were all well-intended. I can discuss the issue privately because I'm not prepared to disclose my confidential information just as you are not prepared to disclose yours. I requested QE in confidence only to help me help you. I measured it now. So, I can only help you. It's entirely up to you, Jarred and my offer was with no strings attached, in case anybody interpreted it differently.

I think you need a good sleep, mate.

I look forward to your email.
 
Thanks for chiming in on this Jarred and Graeme. I'm sure all of us underwater users would be more than pleased to assist with anything you may need to work out the issues we are having when shooting underwater. This is in fact a very big issue for us and one that now seems to be in your cross-hairs....and one we'll want to find a fix for when going to dragon.
you have anything you need from me here.....
 
Jared,

Sorry you were approached in such form, but to be fair, that party was not chosen to represent our group and the the rest of us have been respectful and constructive in all of our discussions and criticisms regarding this subject. As I was basically the one that started bringing up this issue to the forum and have kept regularly harping on about it, let me step up to the plate and tell you what's going on with the Epic underwater.

The issue is one of color rendition and accuracy. It is a very serious issue that manifests on most cameras, though not all, across a vast range of conditions, from situations that would test any camera's ability to yield any color to situations easily handled by even cheap camcorders. Many a time Epic underperforms atrociously even in the easy scenarios. The issue was basically non existent with the R1 M, became a rare occurrence with the R1 MX, and increased exponentially with the Epic. This is very telling and probably points to the fact of the sensor not being at fault but how its data is interpreted? Even when it performs acceptably, the Epic lags behind other cameras in the same conditions. Multi camera shots have proven this. In fact, many professionals have stopped using Epic underwater, including VERY influential and respected pros, widely praised as the best in our field. I have gone back to shooting R1 MX, and I know of a few cases of people reverting to R1 M, which would be all fine and dandy were it not for the native 250 ISO rating which is counterproductive underwater where light is at a premium.

Now, given the mechanics of light behavior underwater, which I assure you most of us know well enough not to need it explained to us, any sensor regardless of how good it is, including good old film, will stop registering warm colors the deeper it goes, to the point where nothing but blue remains. The better sensors will register warm tones a little deeper and better than then not so good ones and so on and so forth. Thus, a 3 chip array is always best, a CCD is almost as good and a CMOS is worst, but some CMOS behave quite well underwater, well within the requirements of even the most demanding shooter. Most Nikon and Canon DSLRs fall within that category, as do many Sony cameras like F65, F5, F55 and F3, and so does the Alexa. Not so Epic. Specifically, Epic: 1) does not yield saturated enough colors in any channel, 2) the cross talk among channels is awful, with red noise contaminating the whole image, and 3) colors are rendered in a completely unnatural way, i.e.: blue water looks magenta, black areas look green. We have never seen any camera render blue water other than blue, unless WB was set wrong, but we're talking RAW here. It is baffling to say the least.

The magenta and green casts are by far the most pervasive effect and the one that cannot really be fixed in post. Some images can be brought back to look ok, but that is on a small screen, the second you blow up that image to anything larger than a 30" screen, the amount of artifacting, chroma noise and cross contamination becomes unbearable. The better images suffer less and look ok even at large sizes, until you compared them to the image from other cameras that shot the same exact thing at the same time in the same location, which look much better. But mostly, once you have that magenta tint in your clip, you can just forget about it. Complete shooting days have been scraped and the shoot repeated with different cameras, that's how serious the issue is. Again, it is important to remember that this behavior should NOT be attributed to the limitations of the underwater medium, given that other cameras in the same situation do much, much, much better. The first and most important step is to understand that it is an Epic specific issue.


Reduser Michael Maes came to me with some troubling footage months ago, which I looked at and concluded his camera was "broken". It was the worst looking imagery I've ever seen, consistently so on every frame and every clip. RED had his camera for several weeks and Michael and I exchanged plenty of e-mails with Brent and others. I even contacted Graeme and suggested he looked into the issue. Obviously I don't know how the issue was handled internally but Michael's camera was returned with the assesment that there was nothing wrong with it. The issue troubled me enough that I publicly discussed it in this forum and then got a lot of users reporting the same issue. Many of us have since undertaken to test our cameras under a variety of conditions, in oceans all across the globe and consistently get the issue to pop up, at varying degrees of severity.

Being certain this is not an issue caused by the underwater medium, I would then be forced to believe that the underlying condition must manifest itself during land shoots, and were it to be solved, all RED users across the board would benefit greatly.

I'm sure we can all send you frame grabs for you to analyze if you so wish. Just let us know. As I said, and if I may be so bold as to speak for others, many of us have put all of our eggs in the RED basket and we are committed and we are militant but we need a camera that will allow us to bring back the same colors other cameras do, if not better.

Respectfully,
 
Jarred Land said:
Hey guys.. sorry for showing up late to the party.

I was emailed mumblings of a problem last month... but never any details surrounding the issue or even what the issue was, just a request that If you give me free Dragon upgrades to my cameras and tell me a whole bunch of confidential info I will tell you what the problem is and we have a fix for it and maybe for Dragon too.

And then again tonight I received the same request but a little more forceful which made me come search for this thread.

We want to fix this.. and we would love you guys to help tell us what the problem is so we can fix it. I don't really understand the whole " fuck you pay me " philosophy..... thats not the way this small community should work.
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I will have you know this is not representative of most underwater shooters to behave in this manner. In fact I preordered the dragon knowing these issues existed... I am just patiently waiting. Given how you have treated me thus far I had no doubt that at some point you would show up and at least try to fix this. And if there was a fix I would be able to get mine fixed.

Jarred Land said:
This really sucks... because if someone came to us and said " hey here is a serious problem we are having, and look, here is the solution.. we probably would of given them much more than a Dragon upgrade to be helping us out. Much more.

You have my ear now, and you have Graemes. Let us know what the problem is, we will do our best to fix it. If you can help us fix it.. then help us fix it. Or don't and just let us muck about and try to figure it out ourselves.

Or if whatever this problem is has a solution that is some sort of coating or glass or part that you have some invention on.. then make it into a product. I am sure you will do well.
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I really appreciate you stopping by but yes that does suck.. I am glad you are willing to work with this issue and make it better for all of us.

I will gladly provide you with any data you need if I can. I am not exactly sure what you need I have not the skills to know what the problem is. I know I shoot in some of the clearest water that exists and causes the magenta to show up pretty strong.

Jarred Land said:
At any rate.. all we want you guys to be able to take better pictures.. A huge part of our new reel is dedicated to underwater cinematography and we love what you guys do.

If someone wants to tell us what the problem is without holding us hostage.. please, we are at your service.
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Thanks so much for being responsive to us :)

Look forward to hearing from you sometime soon about the matter and hopefully getting this fixed.

Graeme Nattress said:
More importantly you have my eyes. We really want our cameras to perform well for all users. It's pretty easy for me to test and verify any issue an "on land" customer brings to me. I've helped many people this way, from user-operators to feature productions. I don't have either the experience or the ability to shoot at depth, so there's a certain reliance on the underwater community to help us out.

Graeme
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Just let me know what you need from me what you would be looking for. I will provide any data even mail harddrives if needed.
 
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Thanks guys this is great.. Graeme and I had a discussion this morning and he is ready to dig in, if you guys could email him as much info as you have it would be great so he can get his head around it. If this is just a OLPF issue we have no problem cooking you guys up your own underwater filter to make sure you get the wavelengths you need... but lets make sure we know what's going on before we go down that road. Graeme@red.com.
 
Jarred Land said:
Thanks guys this is great.. Graeme and I had a discussion this morning and he is ready to dig in, if you guys could email him as much info as you have it would be great so he can get his head around it. If this is just a OLPF issue we have no problem cooking you guys up your own underwater filter to make sure you get the wavelengths you need... but lets make sure we know what's going on before we go down that road. Graeme@red.com.
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I am not worthy of your awesomeness Fire Chief :)

Thanks again! And I am already emailing Graeme.
 
Excellent! Might I suggest an email list so that we can all watch this thing unfold, provide input when and as we are able, and facilitate any underwater testing Graeme might need? Since we collectively represent all corners of the globe, any specific depth and/or water condition in varying light would be readily at hand. Thoughts?

redseapictures@gmail.com
 
To all those shooters who are a LOT more experienced than me I would like thank you for bringing this issue to Red's attention. I know with them on board we at least have a chance of getting this sorted out. To Red thank you for taking notice and trying to understand these issues. That is just one of the many reasons that so many of us have put our eggs in your basket so to speak. I will be watching this thread anxiously as I await the delivery of my upgrade from Scarlet to Epic MX.
If there is anything that is needed from South African waters please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
Why don't we all send Graeme some of our "best" examples of the problem in the shape of R3D snaps so he can start getting a better feel for it? It would probably be wise to give him some time at first rather than asking him to comment on each and every image. I know we have tons of magenta tinted footage as well as other examples of poor color rendition, low contrast, etc.
 
Ladies,

1. Regarding problem with the MX sensor. The problem is more complex than whatever has been discussed here so far. We've invested a lot of time, money and effort into fully understanding it. It's dissapointing RED is not interested in discussing it privately. We can only bring the horse to the water.

2. Regrding the Dragon sensor - the "fuck you philosophy" stands. I can confirm that we have the capacity to reproduce the problem at will. And we need the sensor in order to test it. It is just as simple as that. I'm a scientist not a magician.
 
Tom Hamilton said:
Excellent! Might I suggest an email list so that we can all watch this thing unfold, provide input when and as we are able, and facilitate any underwater testing Graeme might need? Since we collectively represent all corners of the globe, any specific depth and/or water condition in varying light would be readily at hand. Thoughts?

redseapictures@gmail.com
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Indeed :)

I wonder if we could get permission to get everybody who is sending data to be CC'ed and what not on the list? So we can all see what is what? I think that would be wonderful so we are not redundantly redundant.

i-mr5sPKH.png
 
Me too willing to help in any way I can. I have a variety of poor footage for sure. All are from ambient light taken in UW Epic shoots in various parts of the world. When I bring lots of lighting not too much issue. Funny thing is I never have problems in studio (outdoor) pool (5m depth) shoots.

Good to know the "management" finally stepped in to help solve this issue. Might shed light on other cameras that I have seen with even worst magenta cast and poor resolution.

cheers
David
 
Pawel Achtel said:
Ladies,

1. Regarding problem with the MX sensor. The problem is more complex than whatever has been discussed here so far. We've invested a lot of time, money and effort into fully understanding it. It's dissapointing RED is not interested in discussing it privately. We can only bring the horse to the water.

2. Regrding the Dragon sensor - the "fuck you philosophy" stands. I can confirm that we have the capacity to reproduce the problem at will. And we need the sensor in order to test it. It is just as simple as that. I'm a scientist not a magician.
Click to expand...


Mmmm, my dear boy, please, if you don't mind, there are some grown ups people here trying to have a mature and constructive conversation , so if you could stop annoying them and go play outside for a while , thanks, it would be appreciated.
 
david cheung said:
Good to know the "management" finally stepped in to help solve this issue.
cheers

David
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Ouch.. worst thing we have been called all month :)

heh heh heh.

This should be fun... Graeme is getting a ton of great feedback already so thank you.

I have a question for you guys.. with your UW Epics, do you use them very often out of water during a specific shooting day? i.e if you had a custom build with color science and some internal optics that you could use but it would be tuned specifically for UW work, would that be of value?
 
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