The Gentleman's Underwater Bubble Blower Thread

[Tom Hamilton]

Looking forward to it Jon, congrats. Do you know if we can watch it online as well?

 

[Scott Auerbach]

You wouldn't happen to have a spectrum shot on an Epic M-X by any chance?

I don't I'm afraid.

Graeme

Honestly, this would be a nice thing to see, especially if RED is claiming that cases of "the Magenta Blues" are all psychosomatic. Personally, I have had numerous problems with blue reproduction on MX with color-sensitive clients...both with the hue being incorrect, and with blues brightening into the pastel range when the actual object was darker and more saturated.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Scott, are you specifically referring to underwater imaging? If so, can you provide some R3D grabs with a brief description of housing-port-lens configuration, camera settings, plus the water conditions, depth, time of day, fresh/salt, sky condition, turbidity, etc, you were shooting in?

I have personally had some considerable recent success with the new H2OLPF, and, happily, with intensely 'color-sensitive' clients as well.

Big subject here with lots of variables, let us know, more than a few uw pros here who can help out with the technical.

The psychosomatic is another story, no shortage of well-meaning egos in this biz .

Cheers

 

[Johnny Friday]

I thought i would post a before after of RAW settings on Epic X and old color science vs. NEW color science...i've seen the biggest gain in imagery so come from the NEW improvements with color science that users can apply to OLD footage. This is a very quick - Down & Dirty one pass look at the end result and it's fairly obvious the improvement in the Magenta RAW to colored (in RCX only) - and the removal of much of the magenta.

I hope the images turn out given i'm only attaching them and not linking them.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I think i may have posted this at one time long ago, but here are some better examples and these i don't think are the latest Red Color Science:

[/url]RCX-BeforeSetting by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]White Shark: before @ 5k by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]RCX-AfterSetting by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]White Shark: after @ 5k by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Definitely a more robust red spectrum histogram in the second set of images Johnny, is that the Luma S-curve shown that you applied, or is that a direct result of Graeme's latest color science?

 

[Johnny Friday]

Well, i got myself involved on this now...Not that anyone would be interested...but for sake of adding latest color science, here are some BEFORE & AFTER shots of older EPIC MX footage shot at 5k in very blue water and that had a terrible Magenta Cast to all of the images. With the advent of Dragon Color 2 and Redgamma 4, the improvements with reference to the magenta cast is very evident. It's not completely clean, but far far better:

NOTE: this is the Epic X with Skin Tone OLPF

[/url]RAW Settings -Neutral by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]BEFORE-No Post by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]AFTER: Post Settings Applied: RCX by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]AFTER: Post Settings Applied by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[Johnny Friday]

Definitely a more robust red spectrum histogram in the second set of images Johnny, is that the Luma S-curve shown that you applied, or is that a direct result of Graeme's latest color science?

I have some early examples wiht only redgamma and rec709 and with Luma applied and individual RGB channel curves and it got far better from the original...but once i applied Graeme's new DC2 & RG4....it was like hitting a light switch vs. using a candle...just night and day difference. But yes, every image has some sort of S curve or funky other shaped curve when i grade...That said, i usually do a very LIGHT grade in RCX and then move to Resolve...but in most cases i'm going into FCPX and using some plugins that make the grading simple and idiot proof. Anything very tehcnical i send off to a Colorist. But all my stock gets graded in house at my desk using RCX/Reslove or FCPX.

Johnny

 

[Lee Kelly]

I would love to see some examples from Pawels OLPF. He showed me some examples with histograms and stuff but we didnt have the time to get right into before/after examples or literally before the filter and then after it was implemented. It kind of looks like the new H2OLPF still suffers from a decent amount of red contamination in some conditions and this is really hard to remove, as you end up just adding more blue and green to drown it out and you are back to square one.

On a different note, I just decided to start a little thread in the cinematography section for all you guys to post examples of your recent work.
Dont be shy.

 

[Scott Auerbach]

Scott, are you specifically referring to underwater imaging?

Cheers

Hi Tom -
In my case, I'm talking about blue reproduction in general. I've only recently gotten certified for scuba, so the underwater work is a new area I'm getting ready to explore. Was looking at this thread partly for that reason, and partly because I was looking at Pawel's OLPF as a possible solution to achieve better color fidelity, which has been a frequent source of irritation with the Epic.

I was asking for an Epic-X spectrum in response to Jarred's comment

I just wanted to make sure that people don't take the "scientific" information on his advertisement as actual technical fact, because it is, well, total bullshit

along with Graeme's publishing (post 2434) of the Dragon spectrum (but not the MX),
and Jarred's comment

The unfiltered spectrum from our cameras looks very different than whatever he is showing there.

I can tell you that my MX blues look far more like Pawel's results than Graeme's Dragon spectrum. I've NEVER gotten a blue that resembles Graeme's Dragon spectrum. But I've certainly had issues where blues are far from true when the rest of the scene looks good... and there's a dramatic difference between EpicX blues versus the better channel separation on 3-chip dichroic prism cameras.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Well, i got myself involved on this now...Not that anyone would be interested...but for sake of adding latest color science, here are some BEFORE & AFTER shots of older EPIC MX footage shot at 5k in very blue water and that had a terrible Magenta Cast to all of the images. With the advent of Dragon Color 2 and Redgamma 4, the improvements with reference to the magenta cast is very evident. It's not completely clean, but far far better:

NOTE: this is the Epic X with Skin Tone OLPF

[/URL]RAW Settings -Neutral by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/URL]BEFORE-No Post by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/URL]AFTER: Post Settings Applied: RCX by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/URL]AFTER: Post Settings Applied by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

Johnny, not sure if it's my monitor, but the White shark has a pronounced greenish cast, whereas the water blues look great, thoughts?

 

[Johnny Friday]

Correct...i should have lowered the green levels on the RGB settings....i was making that a bit quick and noted it later. But one only has to lower the green level to get the sharks skin to come back to gray. If you look at the RCX settings, you'll see the green levels peaking.

Perhaps this a bit more out of the green zone.

[/url]Y004_C022_0910JT by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[Mauricio Handler]

Much nicer- looks great.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Canon 11-24 FX Lens Underwater

Canon 11-24 FX Lens Underwater

Everyone probably knows there is a new Canon wide lens: Canon 11-24 FX Lens

The tests for this lens can also be found i believe somewhere on Wetpixel. I tried this lens recently and shot all of this past week with it in Baja. I have to say it's impressive. In many instances, it's even too wide. But if you are shooting the Canon 8-15 (possibly one of the sharpest lenses out there till now)....this lens offers sharpness and a rectilinear view. Personally i found myself using this lens from 14-18mm much of the time until i had something to fill the frame with.

Below is a non-scientific test/screen grab from R3d to Tiff...no sharpening has been added, but a slight curve and WB/Tint adjustments have been made as well as auto color in Photoshop.

I shot this using the Gates Deep Epic along with the 486 port extender. It's a bit of a big, long and heavy lens, and requires a rather long PE, but the 486 may not be ideal as it seems to have the lens just short of an ideal position in the dome port. That said, the lenses shade takes up space that would possibly have allowed a smaller dome port extender to be used. I'm not sure if there is another smaller dome port extender that is idea for this lens, but i'm guessing Gates is looking into it.

[/url]Canon 11-24 FX Lens by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[Johnny Friday]

Canon 11-24 Lens

Canon 11-24 Lens

Here are a few more examples of the Canon 11-24 Lens:

[/url]J023_C042_0804RK by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

[/url]J023_C027_0804E0 by Johnny Friday, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Very nice, thinking of getting one of those myself. How did the weight of that lens affect trim on your housing?

 

[Johnny Friday]

Very nice, thinking of getting one of those myself. How did the weight of that lens affect trim on your housing?

Weight of the lens actually helped to counterbalance the larger air space that the longer port extender added. So pretty much nearly neutral (gates housing) with only a about 6oz of counter weights added.

 

[Michael Maes]

I just got my Dragon back from RED.
Their fantastic tech team was able to get my flooded/dead camera back into top condition or "repaired back up to factory spec" as RED calls it.
I cannot thank Trevor Whitecotton, Roberto Alatorre and the entire tech-team enough for making it all happen!
The best part is the camera kept its upgrade status to Weapon
Thanks guys!

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Fantastic news Michael! Roberto is also my B-Squad rep, super nice guy and very on top of it all.

So, my computers are choking on 6K ingest, edit and render, indigestion even, what's the plan for 8K? ;-)

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Question for our Oz folks;

Have been watching Director/Writer/Producer Nick Robinson's Life on the Reef, shot on the GBR over a one-year period, currently airing on PBS. Very compelling story telling, the topside and aerial cinematography is gorgeous, really creative stuff, blue chip by any standard, does anyone know who the u/w crew was, and what equipment they were using?