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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

These look very promising. Thanks Jeff and Ron.

Jeff Whitehurst said:
Hey John,
Check out RainCoat Spray:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cspages/rainc.php

FAQs say it's safe for acrylic:
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cspages/rainc.php

I've used it on flat acrylic ports shooting from a jetski or swimming, bigger water drops fall right off. Tiny droplets of spray sometimes don't have enough weight to break the surface tension, this can usually be overcome if the surface can be dunked to sheet off the water right before the shot.
Hope it helps!
Jeff
Click to expand...

Ron Lagerlof said:
Thanks, Jon! I shot only with the H2O OLPF this trip and loved it!

John E - I found this stuff called REJEX http://www.rejex.com/rejex.html
I've been using it on my glass dome after a good cleaning with Novus and it works well to keep bubbles from adhering. The also claim it to be good for acrylic...
Click to expand...
 
Ron Lagerlof said:
Thanks, Jon! I shot only with the H2O OLPF this trip and loved it!

John E - I found this stuff called REJEX http://www.rejex.com/rejex.html
I've been using it on my glass dome after a good cleaning with Novus and it works well to keep bubbles from adhering. The also claim it to be good for acrylic...
Click to expand...


You using Novus plastic polish on your glass dome Ron? And I haven't pulled the trigger on the H20 OLPF yet. Your thoughts on it's value would be appreciated, haven't seen much comparison as of yet, with and without.

I have the Novus plastic polish kit and use it for plastic all the time, haven't tried it on my glass dome.

Best,
Frazier
 
Great looking shots Ron!! Beautiful blues too ;) Can't wait to see the motion...
 
Sean R. said:
The H2O OLPF in action on it's first time out of the lab:

http://nateandsean.red.com/post/122468304423/nate-and-sean-dsmc-h2o-olpf-and-dragoncolor2

There are a good number of these H2O OLPFs out in the wild now and in the hands of true professionals. I am really looking forward to seeing the results of their work with these new tools involved...
Click to expand...
I (finally) should be in the dreaded Cayman waters next week with Dragon-H2O on a production shoot.
The conditions (depending on sun) should be ideal to stress the sensor.
I'll keep you posted, Sean!
 
Ron Lagerlof said:
John E - I found this stuff called REJEX http://www.rejex.com/rejex.html
I've been using it on my glass dome after a good cleaning with Novus and it works well to keep bubbles from adhering. The also claim it to be good for acrylic...
Click to expand...

I can thoroughly endorse RejeX, but not in this application. I use it on my wheels, and brake dust sprays right off with a garden hose.
 
Orca

Orca

Hiya it was lit with 6 x surface fed Orca's 22,000 and 2 x Battery versions. Coming up at the end of the last dive with our DSMB, delayed surface marker bird, photo by Kat Brown
 

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Hi All,

Just back from Bora Bora, couple of things to report.

H2OLPF seems to perform in a similar manner to LoLight OLPF, attached topside grab is taken with H2OLPF, blues are very evident. All easily adjustable in post, uw footage at various depths and light under NDA, will report as able.

We worked with the DP topside, cam control and monitoring via FoolControl and HDSDI, 250-foot wrapped tether bottom to boat, sometimes problematic in the handling (and entangling), but all in all very successful. Kudos to Mikael again for that amazing piece of software! The Lemon sharks and the Giant Mantas were very cooperative, BB really a magic place to shoot, for what we were trying to accomplish. All in all, a big success!

Bag Nazi Alert!

We were a crew of five with full kit, housings, cameras, light packages etc etc, charged once by AA, then again by Tahiti Nui, and yet again by Air Tahiti. That was the one way charge. It happened all over again going home! Take your excess bag budget, and multiply by five, or ten, you just might come close. That was expensive!

All the best,

T
 
I tested H2O in Cayman, the waters of "terror" ;-)
Did some 10 dives with it now on the Gates with the glass dome (SP80) and the results are very well, both ambient as with artificial light.
Dives were surface to 40 feet. Will do a 100ft wall dive tomorrow too so... fingers still (a bit) crossed!
Big thank you to Graeme, Sean and Rudi. It took a while but the result is as hoped for.

Will post some R3Ds in the next days (sorry, no time now).

PS: REDMOTE still behaves badly from time to time ;-/
 
So yes... it is true... I flooded my Dragon :thumbdown:
Neptune slayed The Dragon :-(

I'm sure it's a "human error". It have been two hectic weeks, weighing on me and Wednesday's shoot was on a super-tight schedule.
The shot was setup for a submarine "de-gassing" (going down): 1 shot, 1 chance, many unknown factors. Not good for stress, aka mistakes.
Yes, I had a flooding alarm, which took too long for my mind to realize, near that crazy noisy submarine. At first I thought it was the sub.
Pulling vacuum was "not an option" due to the high rate of different setups during that day.
All human mistakes...
But.... nobody died! That's way more important.

The flood happened dive 1, minute 3 so.... no footage either, alas...
It was one of my first thoughts too: "if it hàd to happen, couldn't it have happened on the last dive, in the last minute"...


Thus the Dragon died; REDMOTE became "DEADMOTE".
Still no clue what the RED BRICK status is. It's power leds still work, but I'm afraid to connect it to my M, thinking it might blow it up :-/


Electronics in the Gates seem to have been untouched.
Even the leak alarm, which has been submerged for maybe 5 minutes, still works.
The lemos seem to have some salt on the outside.


I dived this setup for 3 hours the evening before.
Only opened the shell to replace battery and media.
Also removed the dome for a good clean of glass and o-ring.
Else, nothing changed on the setup.


I was maybe 3 minutes underwater at 5ft.
As soon as I realized it (Epic was still working), I put the housing in a vertical position, but dome upward as I saw barely water in the dome.
I had no idea how much water was inside, so decided to take advantage of the big volume behind the camera, not wanting to risk flooding the Epic by putting the dome downward.
Wrong and expensive bet I guess….


The only thing I find until now is the shell o-ring molding seam being black.
Something I’ve never noticed before.


The Dragon is on its way to RED….

Many things I've learned on this dive, mainly not to fall in the "everything becomes automatic" trap.
I'm not proud on my "achievement" but share this, hoping it will prevent happening to others.
It's my first flooding ever.

I hope the RED wizards will be able to rescue my Dragon.
Only the bottom part of the camera seems to have been in contact with water.
The sensor, visually, looks OK.
It's been my pal for 3 years now and it would be a bummer to say goodbye in this way :-/

Thank you so much Tom (Hamilton) for your reach out!
That is extremely generous of you.
(Tom PM-ed me)

This is the last frame it shot, I was still positioning myself towards the submarine to get his descent (de-gassing) at 72fps.

Submarine_right_before_Dragon_died.jpg
 
Tom Hamilton said:
We worked with the DP topside, cam control and monitoring via FoolControl and HDSDI, 250-foot wrapped tether bottom to boat, sometimes problematic in the handling (and entangling), but all in all very successful. Kudos to Mikael again for that amazing piece of software! The Lemon sharks and the Giant Mantas were very cooperative, BB really a magic place to shoot, for what we were trying to accomplish. All in all, a big success!
Click to expand...

Thanks Tom for the feedback :)
 
Cheers Michael, very glad to hear you had Plan B in place, hope the shoot worked out as intended, let us know when and where we can see some of your work, very much looking forward to it.

Mikael, great stuff, updates eagerly anticipated. The DP did mention he'd like to see access to deeper levels of the various menus. One of the things that came up, the ability to change stored Blackshade calibration on the fly, for example. Also, we did have to do the occasional reset/restart, but that may have been more to do with the Blackmagic video converter unit than anything else, any guidance much appreciated.

One issue of some annoyance we did have was the 250' tether twisting as the housing was maneuvered underwater, now in development is a rotary bulkhead connector that will pass HD-SDI/Ethernet signals through a single high strength cable, should be a significant improvement. Will post updates as they become available.

Attached topside grab is taken with H2OLPF, I'm thinking the land-based folks could have a lot of fun with this installed, it definitely lends a unique character to the image.
 

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Tom Hamilton said:
One issue of some annoyance we did have was the 250' tether twisting as the housing was maneuvered underwater, now in development is a rotary bulkhead connector that will pass HD-SDI/Ethernet signals through a single high strength cable, should be a significant improvement. Will post updates as they become available.
Click to expand...

Might be more practical to move to fiber optic cable with a converter/combiner or dual fibers. Multi-conductor Rotary bulkhead is doable but likely to be quite expensive as well as a source of signal degradation and at 250 feet you are already at the ragged edge of maintaining a good SDI signal.

I believe the distance capability spec for the good belden SDI cable is about 200 feet for 1080 signal.

As an example the move the distance capability for fiber - the black magic fiber converter specs something like 28 miles!
 
For those of you interested a 3 part series on the Great Barrier Reef in which I was underwater DP airs tonight on PBS. The series is called 'Life on the Reef' and was shot on 2 Epics (MX) and a 1DC for some shots

http://www.pbs.org/program/life-reef/

EDIT: Sorry guys its Wed 22nd forgot the time difference
 
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