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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 :)

Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

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Jim,

As far as I know, Piranha 3D did not shoot native 3D underwater, but resorted to converting all uw footage in post. I was consulted very early on in the project, but they were set on using beam splitter rigs which, after some testing, were determined unsuitable due to unbalanced light transmission and mirror reflections between the cameras, so they decided to bypass the side-by-side option altogether and deemed underwater 3d an "impossibility", so they shot 2D and converted in post.

The EX1 with Fathom super wide is by far my favorite underwater set up, including RED, for its outstanding quality and portability, that is compared to the bulk of either RED or Aquavision underwater. Shooting to the Nano Flash will increase quality considerably but what will be even better is shooting to the Cinedeck, which records to 10 bit Cineform instead of 8 bit MPEG 2. The Cinedeck does not fit inside the Gates housing as does the Nano, but it would be very easy to build a custom housing for it, since it is basically a box, and run a SDI cable from the Gates housing to the Cinedeck housing, which would be mounted on top of the Gates. This is the set up I'm contemplating for a project later in the year. Mike should be able to build a housing for the Cinedeck easily and you would have a much more robust format than the Nano Flash. Lastly, I've developed a few Picture Profiles for the EX-1 for different kinds of water conditions, blue, green, clear, murky, deep, shallow, etc, etc and I'll be happy to share them with you.
 
Rudi Herbert said:
Jim,

The EX1 with Fathom super wide is by far my favorite underwater set up, including RED, for its outstanding quality and portability, that is compared to the bulk of either RED or Aquavision underwater. Shooting to the Nano Flash will increase quality considerably but what will be even better is shooting to the Cinedeck, which records to 10 bit Cineform instead of 8 bit MPEG 2. The Cinedeck does not fit inside the Gates housing as does the Nano, but it would be very easy to build a custom housing for it, since it is basically a box, and run a SDI cable from the Gates housing to the Cinedeck housing, which would be mounted on top of the Gates. This is the set up I'm contemplating for a project later in the year. Mike should be able to build a housing for the Cinedeck easily and you would have a much more robust format than the Nano Flash. Lastly, I've developed a few Picture Profiles for the EX-1 for different kinds of water conditions, blue, green, clear, murky, deep, shallow, etc, etc and I'll be happy to share them with you.
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Funny you should mention that, I just talked this afternoon to Ari from Silicon Imaging about a possible rush job making a housing for the the SI3D system. THe cinedeck is 8 x 5 inches which doesn't quite make the nine inch size of our red housing would easily fit in a 10 inch diameter housing, and of course it isn't just a deck but a very nice 7" monitor as well. I would probably just incorporate it into the housing for the camera if we were housing both.

But since it is very similar to the RED Lcds that we have built rectangular housings for, it should actually be easier to make a separate housing for the cinedeck since the cabling would be a little easier than dealing with the red lcd cables.
 
GATES said:
Good Day to all,

We just completed a custom modification of DEEP RED to support the Birger mount. Very straightforward -- one new control that presses the buttons on the left side of the mount to open/close the iris. Focus/Zoom remains operable by the original geared system.

So if you have a Birger mount you are now supported with DEEP RED. Contact Gates for further details.

John
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Hey John - Did you see the cover of the new Alert Diver yet? Howard Hall's frame grab from his RED, using your housing. See http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=48840 for details.
 
Thanks for all the replys..I just returned from a 10 day National Geographic..Canada/uk production called Drain the Great Lakes..we purchased a brand new GATES EX1R housing with the Fathom super wide and the Nano attachment inside....we used the housing to 250ft. in Lake Superior and Lake Michigan at Alpena and Whitefish bay..great waters and weather..best Freshwater wrecks in my 41 years of Great Lakes diving ..The 3 masted schooner upright in 200 ft of freezing water off Alpens was totally intact with 120ft of visibility..we had some fogging issues in the really hard to see eyepiece mostly ever deep dive with a severe thermocline.The Gates housing with heavy wetsuit 3 finger gloves is very hard to manipulate the tiny shaft controls at depth under lowlight conditions...with drygloves, on my left hand knuckles grabbing the handle kept rolling onto control knobs changing settings.Thank god for the big external monitor..the Fathom was heavy and very awesome to use...the nano produced amazing footage under extreme dive conditions...We used 5 Evolution rebreathers on trimix 10/50 mix and run times of 90minutes.off to Fiji in Nov and Dec to do 2nd Nat Geographic show..Shipsinkers 2 with the sinking of the navy dive vessel
 
Sorry Tom Nat Geo owns all the footage..2012 release date
 
Check it out

Check it out

Check this out.

http://usa.canon.com/cusa/professional/products/camcorders/hd_video_cameras/xf100

Canon xf100. Size like the Jvc hm gy100 but 50Mbps 4:2:2 approved by BBC and others for full production use. About $2999 they have a $3999 version with HDSdi and genlock with 3d sync features and also could be recorded uncompressed to a nanoflash. Available 1st quarter next year.
 
Did you ever shoot with the little JVC 100 Michael?..maybe they`ll follow suite with a 50Mbps version..
 
That little JVC records on the 35 mbps XDCAM-EX format used by Sony for the EX-1 and EX-3, but alas, the JVC has something like a 1/4" sensor, so quality, especially when the footage is graded and worked on and then seen on a large monitor, breaks apart too painfully and too quickly for my taste....
 
Graham_C said:
Did you ever shoot with the little JVC 100 Michael?..maybe they`ll follow suite with a 50Mbps version..
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Made a couple housings for other people but haven't seen much.

Presumably, all the players will start increasing record data rates and quality now that sufficiently large and fast memory cards are cheap.

I've been working with rudi and another friend here on 3d stuff and the big interest for us is the xf105 that has hdsdi and genlock as well as some other 3d oriented features. He also does some infrared 3d stuff so has been stuck having to shoot the sony's and rerendering everything to get progressive. Recently been working with hacked panasonic gh1s (very nice) but synchronizing is a problem.

With the xf105, it's like canon read his mind on the wish list for low cost 3d.
 
John Bock said:
Yeah John,
Nice cover and great article!
What's this I hear about Gates making underwater video lights?
Any news you can share yet?
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Yeah, heard about Gates new video lights.....LED if i recall.....where's the beef? Show me the money! Can we get a picture and some specs on these new LED lights? Rumor has it they are twice as bright as the 50watt HID Green Force Squid 250's.

More info and photos PLEASE!
 
Michael Hastings said:
Recently been working with hacked panasonic gh1s (very nice) but synchronizing is a problem.

.
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I believe they`re getting some pretty high rates over standard,like 70Mbps but that less extreme rates were more stable?..and it`s certainly a tiny camera.
Guess you`re thinking roll on Scarlet though,as i so wipes the floor size,rate, code,well everthing wise?
 
Graham_C said:
I believe they`re getting some pretty high rates over standard,like 70Mbps but that less extreme rates were more stable?..and it`s certainly a tiny camera.
Guess you`re thinking roll on Scarlet though,as i so wipes the floor size,rate, code,well everthing wise?
Click to expand...

Graham: my friend that is working with the stereo setup says that with most underwater stuff you can go pretty extreme without breaking the codec. I think he said you could probably go over 100Mbps. Apparently a lot of the things that make underwater 3d friendly also are codec friendly.
 
I had liked these quite a lot when I did a preliminary dry test:

http://www.cathxocean.com/products/eu_product/euphos_wide_beam

Battery integrated, daylight balanced, which allows you to get very close to subjects without "burning" them and with several power levels for subtle lighting on macro work. they are very small, super sturdy and very bright. A little narrow beam at 40 degrees but since they're so small, my plan was to use 4-6 of them, 2-3 per side, arranged in a pattern where each side covers 70-90 degrees for a nice, evenly illuminated field. They are expensive, but maybe I can inquire into a discount for RED users with Adrian, their marketing guy. They are very, very nice lights.
 
Rudi Herbert said:
I had liked these quite a lot when I did a preliminary dry test:

http://www.cathxocean.com/products/eu_product/euphos_wide_beam

Battery integrated, daylight balanced, which allows you to get very close to subjects without "burning" them and with several power levels for subtle lighting on macro work. they are very small, super sturdy and very bright. A little narrow beam at 40 degrees but since they're so small, my plan was to use 4-6 of them, 2-3 per side, arranged in a pattern where each side covers 70-90 degrees for a nice, evenly illuminated field. They are expensive, but maybe I can inquire into a discount for RED users with Adrian, their marketing guy. They are very, very nice lights.
Click to expand...

Rudi,
looked at them online....but very little information on them and their brochure does not give any technical specs. Are these LED or HID lights? they say excellent color temp, but what is it? I can't seem to find much other than very basic info. Do you have any further detailed info on them? And yeah....expensive. Is that per light or per pair? But i think they'll need to add some tech specs in order to illuminate the public.
 
Johnny,

Yeah, the site lacks a lot of needed features and info. For what I know, this is a predominantly engineering driven company with little grasp on the marketing side of things. that said, they make lights for the oil rigs in the northern sea so they have lots of expertise in making very durable, no failure allowed products. They're trying their hand now at diver and video oriented products, so let's see. For what I remember, they are daylight balanced, or slightly cooler at 5000K, and they are LED for sure. they are very small and portable, you could stash a few of them easily in your bc pockets and add them as needed, but have great water penetration and consistent edge to edge illumination on an about 40 degree angle. They do push out 4000 lumens for 75 minutes, and much longer when power is reduced, they have 4 power levels I think. At almost 1400 euro per light, not pair, they are priced ridiculously out of the range of the current market, but perhaps that could drop soon, we'll see...there's no such thing as the perfect underwater light, but what I love about these is their awesome power/size ratio and how you could potentially push out a lot of light if you use several of them with very minimal bulk, as opposed to carrying heavy battery packs on your tanks or housing.
 
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