Lee Kelly
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- Apr 17, 2012
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- Sydney, Australia
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Some rigs work differently for different shoots and is why I have a few options and often use more than one of those on the same shoot in the same hour!
To answer some questions:
Greg, thanks for your offer. I am not sure if my previous posts were alluding to needing a housing, which I dont but thanks for the generous offer. Those SPL housings are great.
M Young, the Red really isnt hard to learn. Its digital camera with a screen that can tell you if you are doing it wrong. You can see it with your own etes whereas when people used to shoot film you had to have experience and know the magic to get a result. Now there really is no excuse. Dont go backwards in tech. That being said Sony has great sensors for shooting underwater from what I understand.
Phil, do some research. I think there might be an option for a sony A7r with Nikonos. Nauticam is your friend.
Rui, I face these lens choice issues every other job. My custom surf housing is restricted to custom ports, meaning only lenses that I specifically had a port made for will fit. There are so many cine lenses that it would be impossible with this kind of housing and the level of control I want in my system to have ports for them all. So there is a compromise and most DPs when they realise that shooting in the water means they might have to go a different route come around. Underwater, its not like you will see the benefit or one cine lens over another unless you compared superspeeds to master primes or something.
Same with the stills lens vs cine lens. Once they are behind a port underwater I dont think you can really tell what was what. Underwater behind a port, every lens will degrade slightly as Ryan suggested. You might get slightly better results with a super sharp master prime over a cheap still lens but its more about how the lens and port are setup to work with eachother that is more important in my experience.
The big wigs will likely use the best housings with the best lenses available to them and have those tuned to work optimally. My Nauticam housing is great because I can get my dome in the right spot with various extensions etc. You still need to know what you are doing and sometimes its down to millimeters of perfect alignment but that system works for me the best. I can use almost any lens you can think of and get really good results.
My DeepX and Nikonos setup is simply the smallest simplest housing I have found but there are limitations. Image is the key and this setup makes amazing images that you cant compare because its designed around the nikonos lenses and the high resolution of the Red Dragon with no other elements to interfere with the light hitting the sensor. Its great, however, and I am in the middle of this right now with a client and competing operators. There are very limited controls for the camera. With my setup I cant remotely control or change the camera. The lens is a prime and manual and my client was hoping to get a system where you can change your settings remotely from the surface and zoom in and out and adjust focus etc and the deepx is not that guy. BUT image wins in the end and we want the best image possible and for this particular shoot, and 99% of my shoots, I dont need to have an assistant 'pull focus' change settings etc. Another positive about deepx is to change a lens is as quick as it took you to read this sentence. There is not port to undo or gears to take off its literally dry the housing, like you would do with any other system, twist off lens 1 and twist on lens 2 and jump back in the water. Literally takes 45 seconds including drying the housing first. Cant beat that.
Would the big wigs jump ship and use something like this? I think they would if they were open to the idea of trying it. We get comfortable with what we know and what we know works. Underwater footage has been good enough all these years the way it is so why bother trying to make it a little bit better? Plenty of housing makers implemented the Nikonos system as an option but the big downside of not being too good above the surface means its not for everyone and not for every shoot.
To answer some questions:
Greg, thanks for your offer. I am not sure if my previous posts were alluding to needing a housing, which I dont but thanks for the generous offer. Those SPL housings are great.
M Young, the Red really isnt hard to learn. Its digital camera with a screen that can tell you if you are doing it wrong. You can see it with your own etes whereas when people used to shoot film you had to have experience and know the magic to get a result. Now there really is no excuse. Dont go backwards in tech. That being said Sony has great sensors for shooting underwater from what I understand.
Phil, do some research. I think there might be an option for a sony A7r with Nikonos. Nauticam is your friend.
Rui, I face these lens choice issues every other job. My custom surf housing is restricted to custom ports, meaning only lenses that I specifically had a port made for will fit. There are so many cine lenses that it would be impossible with this kind of housing and the level of control I want in my system to have ports for them all. So there is a compromise and most DPs when they realise that shooting in the water means they might have to go a different route come around. Underwater, its not like you will see the benefit or one cine lens over another unless you compared superspeeds to master primes or something.
Same with the stills lens vs cine lens. Once they are behind a port underwater I dont think you can really tell what was what. Underwater behind a port, every lens will degrade slightly as Ryan suggested. You might get slightly better results with a super sharp master prime over a cheap still lens but its more about how the lens and port are setup to work with eachother that is more important in my experience.
The big wigs will likely use the best housings with the best lenses available to them and have those tuned to work optimally. My Nauticam housing is great because I can get my dome in the right spot with various extensions etc. You still need to know what you are doing and sometimes its down to millimeters of perfect alignment but that system works for me the best. I can use almost any lens you can think of and get really good results.
My DeepX and Nikonos setup is simply the smallest simplest housing I have found but there are limitations. Image is the key and this setup makes amazing images that you cant compare because its designed around the nikonos lenses and the high resolution of the Red Dragon with no other elements to interfere with the light hitting the sensor. Its great, however, and I am in the middle of this right now with a client and competing operators. There are very limited controls for the camera. With my setup I cant remotely control or change the camera. The lens is a prime and manual and my client was hoping to get a system where you can change your settings remotely from the surface and zoom in and out and adjust focus etc and the deepx is not that guy. BUT image wins in the end and we want the best image possible and for this particular shoot, and 99% of my shoots, I dont need to have an assistant 'pull focus' change settings etc. Another positive about deepx is to change a lens is as quick as it took you to read this sentence. There is not port to undo or gears to take off its literally dry the housing, like you would do with any other system, twist off lens 1 and twist on lens 2 and jump back in the water. Literally takes 45 seconds including drying the housing first. Cant beat that.
Would the big wigs jump ship and use something like this? I think they would if they were open to the idea of trying it. We get comfortable with what we know and what we know works. Underwater footage has been good enough all these years the way it is so why bother trying to make it a little bit better? Plenty of housing makers implemented the Nikonos system as an option but the big downside of not being too good above the surface means its not for everyone and not for every shoot.
