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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

Diver Magazine Cover shot

Diver Magazine Cover shot

Fun stuff, made the front cover of Diver Magazine, John Bantin, shot the photo of me during our recent shoot with the Great Hammerheads of Bimini. They used the shot of me filming the Hammerhead in a double page centerfold going nose to nose with my Aquavideo housing. Imagine me a centerfold. Insert big laughs here...
 

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John J Ellerbrock said:
Imagining.........Ohhh! That's just wrong!!! :)

Congratulations Frazier, you deserve it, as does Mike Hastings for a fine underwater EPIC housing.
Click to expand...

Thanks, John for the kind words.

And thanks to Frazier, John Bantin for the picture and of course the shark for posing for this dramatic shot - without damaging housing or diver!
 
Congratulations! Nice picture too.
Frazier Nivens said:
Fun stuff, made the front cover of Diver Magazine, John Bantin, shot the photo of me during our recent shoot with the Great Hammerheads of Bimini. They used the shot of me filming the Hammerhead in a double page centerfold going nose to nose with my Aquavideo housing. Imagine me a centerfold. Insert big laughs here...
Click to expand...
 
Help Needed
I have an underwater shoot tomorrow that requires high frame rate stuff. The production company has asked me to shoot at the maximum frame rate that the epic can do. I have no experience with epics but quite a lot with scarlets.
Please correct me if I go wrong: Max @ HD 1920x1080 is 240 FPS and 1KHD 1280x720 is 359 FPS.
My understanding is that both the scarlet and epic do not do well with picture quality at these resolutions.
Given shutter speed aof 480 or 720 and aperture of f11-f16 for a reasonable depth of field for the fast moving subject that will move from far to very close and even mouth the port. This leaves me with an ISO of 1600 or above.
Is there anything I can do in camera to reduce image noise and improve sharpness.
Any suggestions would be welcome
Thanks
 
Mark van Coller said:
Help Needed
I have an underwater shoot tomorrow that requires high frame rate stuff. The production company has asked me to shoot at the maximum frame rate that the epic can do. I have no experience with epics but quite a lot with scarlets.
Please correct me if I go wrong: Max @ HD 1920x1080 is 240 FPS and 1KHD 1280x720 is 359 FPS.
My understanding is that both the scarlet and epic do not do well with picture quality at these resolutions.
Given shutter speed aof 480 or 720 and aperture of f11-f16 for a reasonable depth of field for the fast moving subject that will move from far to very close and even mouth the port. This leaves me with an ISO of 1600 or above.
Is there anything I can do in camera to reduce image noise and improve sharpness.
Any suggestions would be welcome
Thanks
Click to expand...

mark, here are a few things to think about. First, what is actually required when they say as many FPS ? Then, what is actually reasonable. If you drop from 5k down to say 2k or 1k you are then windowing the sensor and making focus that much more difficult. I have no answer WHY this is the case, it's just the case....so shooting with as much of the sensor as possible gives you best results when comes to sharp imaging. Then, what is this you are shooting? Does it require a pan underwater or a subject moving past you? Is it in a pool with clear water or open ocean with sediment?

So then if you are going to maintain a 180 degree shutter, again what is your subject? and why do you need ISO of 1600? This is preceded with even more questions....what depth, day/night shoot; do you have fill light; pool/ocean etc.....Not an easy question to answer w/out all of this information....but in the end i'd test it if it's that critical. Personally i try to shoot full 5k or 4k at highest FPS......you'll then of course get a message about redcode and what is possible---but i've seen no problem to 12:1 to 16:1 range for tv.....

....most of these questions you pose will be based on what available light you have at a given time and depth in the pool or ocean you are shooting in....Fill light would allow you even more options.
 
I shot some recent video. I deleted audio track on the first one as nobody really needs to hear me yelling at my buddy Bob LOL and then there was profanity. Profanity as he missed the entire shot :P

The mating damage was pretty awesome to see with my eyes and on the camera.


 
Jonny Friday said:
mark, here are a few things to think about. First, what is actually required when they say as many FPS ? Then, what is actually reasonable. If you drop from 5k down to say 2k or 1k you are then windowing the sensor and making focus that much more difficult. I have no answer WHY this is the case, it's just the case....so shooting with as much of the sensor as possible gives you best results when comes to sharp imaging. Then, what is this you are shooting? Does it require a pan underwater or a subject moving past you? Is it in a pool with clear water or open ocean with sediment?

So then if you are going to maintain a 180 degree shutter, again what is your subject? and why do you need ISO of 1600? This is preceded with even more questions....what depth, day/night shoot; do you have fill light; pool/ocean etc.....Not an easy question to answer w/out all of this information....but in the end i'd test it if it's that critical. Personally i try to shoot full 5k or 4k at highest FPS......you'll then of course get a message about redcode and what is possible---but i've seen no problem to 12:1 to 16:1 range for tv.....

....most of these questions you pose will be based on what available light you have at a given time and depth in the pool or ocean you are shooting in....Fill light would allow you even more options.
Click to expand...


Hi Johnny,
Thanks for your reply. This shoot should be done with a Phantom which the production company booked for three days earlier in the year but got blown off the water by bad weather.
The production company wants slow motion footage of seal pups, which they want to be able to slow down approximately 15 times. The shooting conditions are as follows:
late morning ambient sunlight, from the surface to 5m. The viz is approximately 6m I will hopefully be using my 8mm - 16mm fisheye .
The seal pups' behaviour is incredibly fast and erratic. They will come charging up to you then grab your housing and then they are gone again . This is in open ocean with sediment. The production company has asked for both tracking and stationary scenes.
Could you elaborate on the red code messages when shooting high frame rate stuff. I am afraid that there is no time to do test as because the production company has only hired the camera for tomorrow and there is more bad whether all of next week.
Thanks
 
Mark,
I wouldn't go less than 3k you loose to much and the image suffers but as jonny says 4k would be better, shoot lowest compression possible.
 
Am I the only one expecting almost perfectly uniform black frames? :)
 
Are you shooting a Phantom?

Are you shooting a Phantom?

Mark van Coller said:


Hi Johnny,
Thanks for your reply. This shoot should be done with a Phantom which the production company booked for three days earlier in the year but got blown off the water by bad weather.
The production company wants slow motion footage of seal pups, which they want to be able to slow down approximately 15 times. The shooting conditions are as follows:
late morning ambient sunlight, from the surface to 5m. The viz is approximately 6m I will hopefully be using my 8mm - 16mm fisheye .
The seal pups' behaviour is incredibly fast and erratic. They will come charging up to you then grab your housing and then they are gone again . This is in open ocean with sediment. The production company has asked for both tracking and stationary scenes.
Could you elaborate on the red code messages when shooting high frame rate stuff. I am afraid that there is no time to do test as because the production company has only hired the camera for tomorrow and there is more bad whether all of next week.
Thanks
Click to expand...

According to this post he's shooting Phantom. Not Epic. Should be a interesting project. Confusing, he had first mentioned Epic and Scarlet.
 
Mark van Coller said:


Hi Johnny,
Thanks for your reply. This shoot should be done with a Phantom which the production company booked for three days earlier in the year but got blown off the water by bad weather.
The production company wants slow motion footage of seal pups, which they want to be able to slow down approximately 15 times. The shooting conditions are as follows:
late morning ambient sunlight, from the surface to 5m. The viz is approximately 6m I will hopefully be using my 8mm - 16mm fisheye .
The seal pups' behaviour is incredibly fast and erratic. They will come charging up to you then grab your housing and then they are gone again . This is in open ocean with sediment. The production company has asked for both tracking and stationary scenes.
Could you elaborate on the red code messages when shooting high frame rate stuff. I am afraid that there is no time to do test as because the production company has only hired the camera for tomorrow and there is more bad whether all of next week.
Thanks
Click to expand...

Mark: conditions on the day of shoot will of course dictate what you will be able to line up.....of course light is most critical here if you want to maintain anything close to F8 to F11 range. Topside should not be a problem. Still, i'd keep things at 5k & 4k at highest frame rate possible based on your project settings. As for the warning about redcode...this is nothing to worry about. It just means when you choose a FPS that is not compatible with your current redcode settings, then the camera will tell you that you need to change settings, and do this for you automatically. This said, you should of course have all of this planned out already with production or advise them based on best settings appropriate....Such As:
*Timebase to shoot: 24, 30 ?
*5k, 4k, 3k etc...?
*HD, 16:9, 2:1 ?
*Redcode settings: 7:1; 8:1 or 12:1 (much depends where it's going and how much material is shot on RED since takes quiet a bit of space)
*Color and Gamma settings: this requires knowing what will be done in post or who will do post....(not critical, since can be changed)
....these things i'm assuming are a known and if not, require someone to make that decision and set it up....first foremost

....ok, now that you have your program settings all setup and ready, you can then take the temperature of the day and shoot as high speed as you can to maintain a balance in your histogram vs. aperture setting. This will usually be a constant change throughout the day and just requires you to change as you loose or gain ambient light

There might even be times when you want to increase shutter speed a bit in order to maintain a more crisp image as well....but again, these are things you can only do on the spot.

Good luck.
 
Hi all,

Posted in the For Sale section, but thought I'd post here as well in case some of you don't look there. I'm looking for rates for renting an EPIC housing for a shoot in the Midwest (USA). It looks like it would be a one day shoot in a swimming pool, either May or August. I've usually rented from Hydroflex, but just seeing what's out there. I've been contacted by a couple people and really appreciate it. Thanks!
 
Just as a note.

All the footage I have posted and will post in the future comes out of water near Maui Hawaii. I sit down at up to 35m doing deco on a rebreather at cleaning stations. My buddy and I sit there and wait for sharks to show up and thats where the magic happens. You have to be very patient and willing to go possible months without sighting a shark in the winter but usually the summer is pretty good. I am documenting behavior of sharks that has never likely been seen before. Lots of the footage I have is not viable for public to view however it does show some incredible behavior. Of course my buddy has even more footage than me as he has been doing it longer than I.

I spend immense amount of time out there its on the order of 6 hours a week.


Edit: To add some footage of today :) I would say the hammerheads are back for now.
 
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Just completed 8 day shark shoot featureing STUART COVE in Nassau..thanks again got a little hairy with 4 tiger sharks swimming around my feet.. did the irish jig to move up in water off bottom..shot 2 , 14 year kids in shark suits doing feeds... show called Shark Haven for our Blue Realm Discovery show..thanks again to the find staff at Stuart Coves dive centre and to Stuart as well...thanks again FRASIER for all your help..kozzzzzzzzzzzz
 
Hammerhead sharks shot 2009 on seamount using red1 m sensor and Aquavideo housing with Element Technical modified gears using 18-50 red lens
Location: seamount off of Baja Peninsula (un-named) at 165' to 130'---shot while using closed circuit.

Excuse my poor quality h264. i should and will replace it sometime soon.

 
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