Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Johnny Friday]

AND, FYI---yes, you know this already Rudi....Cineform is just amazing to work with in 3d back to FCP or Adobe.....smooth transitions and flawless codec. Wish I had listened to you years ago....

 

[Niko Pueringer]

Hi all,

I run a YouTube channel, and every two weeks we shoot a new video. Though the scale is small, it's been a lot of fun, and we get a lot of opportunities to try new things.

This week, we'd like to try shooting a piece underwater. The idea is to grab some greenscreen elements of people diving and twirling in a gunfight, and compositing this in to a non-underwater scene, giving the fight a surreal flying grace.

We currently shoot everything on our Scarlet, and I was wondering if any of you might have recommendations with who we could contact for an underwater case. As I mentioned, our scale is small, but we're hoping we might be able to find a reasonably priced case, or an owner who might be interested in partaking in a night of enjoyable film making. Our last resort is to use the GoPro or 7D underwater, but we would much rather shoot RED.

Anyways, thanks for taking a look. I would highly encourage you guys to check out our channel at http://youtube.com/corridordigital.

Looking forward to hearing from anyone that might have a lead. Feel free to shoot me a PM.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...This week, we'd like to try shooting a piece underwater. The idea is to grab some greenscreen elements of people diving and twirling in a gunfight, and compositing this in to a non-underwater scene, giving the fight a surreal flying grace...

Niko,

Sounds like a fun project.

For green screen work I would imagine that you would be looking for underwater optics that do not introduce distortions and preserve sharp image from corner to corner. I believe that there is only one housing currently available that can satisfy such requirements.

Nikonos 15mm is a wonderful wide angle lens with air-like feel to it because of the complete lack of distortions. It is also the only wide angle underwater lens that is able to outresolve Epic/Scarlet sensor across the entire frame.

Otherwise, I'd go with a small frame GoPro with a Subspace dome port for an inexpensive solution as all other underwater optics combined with large sensor would most likely give an inferior optical result due to image plane curvature.

 

[Niko Pueringer]

Thanks for the tips, Pawel! We'll see if we have to scale things back, but might as well shoot high.

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

REPEAT from thread located at: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?83013-3D-Underwater-Gates-3ality-Kelp-Forest-Filming

...after over a year and a half in development, the Gates & 3ality 3d underwater camera system has hit the water. Further testing is being made locally by Bob Cranston to confirm depth rating and develop underwater procegers of this new underwater 3d system.
To much the delight of myself, i've had the pleasure of working with John Ellerbrock and Bob Cranston who have taken this idea from design to splash down. I've come aboard in the past month and assisted Bob with deploying the rig for the second time into the kelp beds at Catalina Island. This is quite a technical achievement and once you understand the Atom rig itself, you then realize the complications of operating, setting alignment and stereo as well as, and most importantly the quality of 3d and various shots you can achieve.
....Bob and John both will have more to say about these and I'll assume they'll chime in on this. I can say that 3d is new to me and in fact quite easy to understand after shooting and working with the files. Like much other camera work you get it when you have enough hands on time.

Recently we made a trip out to Catalina from July 17-20 and began shooting this rig from Bob's boat. Two of those three days we spent on learning alignment and making the rig more efficient (cabling/monitoring) . Keep in mind this is a completely new rig for us and most of the stereo-ographers working with the Atom rig can do this practically blind-folded. Divers need a few extra tries at it. That said, mission accomplished and alignment is quite easy once one has made thirty plus tries at it. I might mention that alignment is slightly different using the underwater Gates Controllers so this is another learned procedure that is not standard based on the 3ality controls....but, it is similar.

Camera Setup currently inside of the Gates Deep Pulsar Atom (DPA) rig:
*Epic cameras
*Denecke sync device
*Kramer video amplifiers
*3ality FIZ control (w/hayden motors)
*Stereo (convergence & I.O.) underwater hand controller
*FIZ (focus, iris, zoom) underwater hand controller
*External (underwater housed) Transvideo 12" monitor

LENSES: just about any configuration of lens can be used on this rig. We chose to use Nikon Mount with Zeiss 18mm Prime lenses on this shoot, while most seem to prefer the Angenieux 16-42 PL lens combination to cover wide as well as medium work.

...We focused on very specific shots of animal behavior on a tripod 90% of the time and then did a few shots free swimming the housing around in the kelp. Shooting 3d and capturing good 3d is not one and the same. But on sticks underwater you have a number of better choices and options to accomplish this task underwater. This already a tried and tested method based on success by underwater legends like Howard Hall and Bob C. from their previous accomplishments.

...At the moment more testing and learning is in order and happening in California to perfect the procedures as well as the supporting equipment. Bob Cranston is working on further perfecting the ability to put this rig in action quickly and efficiently and perfecting those techniques to work in the field. We are training now and next few weeks on just those tasks and Bob is training other camera operators so that they can understand how to set up the rig and shoot the rig as well as maintain the rig in the field. I can say that it's a "required" course for anyone expecting to shoot this rig and certainly a pre-requisite for purchase or rent.

The footage we recently shot is being processed in-house and will soon be available for download on the Gates, Bob Cranston and Baja Production web sites. I'll also post a notice on this thread to when the download is available. You will be able to download a side by side promo of the 90 second promo we intend to make.

For more information on Rental, Purchase or Training: www.digital3Dsea.com <http://www.digital3Dsea.com>

PHotos attached here:

Incredible stuff Johnny, envelopes were made for pushing buddy, and you're certainly doing just that.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[John J Ellerbrock]

I received a generously complimentary email today from Jeff Wilson / Echo Bay Media. They are doing a series titled 'Descending'. I urge you to watch the teasers -- a fresh approach to underwater discovery.


Hello to our friends at Gates,


I wanted to drop a quick note to let you know how pleased our team has been with our Gates Deep Red (customized to accommodate our Birger Mount). Not only has the unit itself survived an incredible 18 months of filming for our television show, Descending, but whenever we needed any support, Gates has always been prompt and diligent.


In fact, we were fortunate enough to stop by your facility and be taken on a tour -- reaffirming that we surely made the right choice in choosing Gates.


With a complete first season of Descending now behind us, I wanted to bring some of the teaser videos to your attention in hopes that we could also be featured in your Customer Videos section of your site. All underwater footage was shot by DP Andre Dupuis in locations ranging from The Great Lakes and Pacific Coast of North America, to the Sudanese Red Sea, Raja Ampat, Silfra, Iceland and many other destinations.


You can see the 'teasers' here: http://descendingtv.com/fun-stuff/


Thanks once again -- we couldn't have made this show without our Gates.


Kindest regards,
Jeff Wilson

 

[Pawel Achtel]

REPEAT from thread located at: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?83013-3D-Underwater-Gates-3ality-Kelp-Forest-Filming

... We chose to use Nikon Mount with Zeiss 18mm Prime lenses on this shoot, while most seem to prefer the Angenieux 16-42 PL lens combination to cover wide as well as medium work...

18mm lens has about 81 diagonal angle in air. Using Descartes law, it yields about 60 degrees diagonal field of view in water.
16mm lens yields 88 degrees in air, which results in about 62 degrees diagonal in water. That's even before correcting spherical distortions (while at the same time approximately 70-80% of the frame area would fall below standard definition quality due to CA caused by flat port).

How exactly is it "wide angle"? Under 60 degrees diagonal sounds more like "normal" than "wide". Some posters here (not me) consider 75 degrees as "not wide enough" for general filming underwater.

At the other end, even at 42mm the performance of flat port is still very poor with significant CA, radial distortions, not to mention astigmatism and coma - so the image of a cross which is situated away from the optical axis will be focused on two different image planes (two different focus points). This degradation gets worse with larger apertures (beam splitter takes 1 stop of light).

Why are people still using flat ports with a 4k digital cinema camera is beyond me.

Nothing personal or specific to this particular rig, just my opinion about flat ports in general.

Anyway, I wish you good luck with it and I'm curious to see the specific shots of animal behavior that you managed to capture.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Very good point Pawel. Wide is merely a relative term used here....but what is important as far as i have learned is that a beam splitter (at this present day and age) is best suited for a "wide" variety of work. As opposed to using side by side rig where inter-axial is limited and your subject matter cannot be converged on at certain "close" distances (of course relative to your I.O setting)....which creates parallax in the background and therefore yields un-useable or painful 3d. So yes, a side by side rig can and does produce "wider" results, however one is then severely limited on much medium close work with a side by side rig. I think the common term used and heard often here and not one i've used until now...but i believe it's "horses for courses" or something along those lines. So basically we're using the best tool for the specific job or project and one that allows us much diversity.

Suffice it to say, we are producing HD results. And loss of light with the mirror is a quarter stop--not one stop. We are shooting through a flatport since that is what current technology allows us.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Hi all,

I run a YouTube channel, and every two weeks we shoot a new video. Though the scale is small, it's been a lot of fun, and we get a lot of opportunities to try new things.

This week, we'd like to try shooting a piece underwater. The idea is to grab some greenscreen elements of people diving and twirling in a gunfight, and compositing this in to a non-underwater scene, giving the fight a surreal flying grace.

We currently shoot everything on our Scarlet, and I was wondering if any of you might have recommendations with who we could contact for an underwater case. As I mentioned, our scale is small, but we're hoping we might be able to find a reasonably priced case, or an owner who might be interested in partaking in a night of enjoyable film making. Our last resort is to use the GoPro or 7D underwater, but we would much rather shoot RED.

Anyways, thanks for taking a look. I would highly encourage you guys to check out our channel at http://youtube.com/corridordigital.

Looking forward to hearing from anyone that might have a lead. Feel free to shoot me a PM.

Niko,

Sounds like a fun project.

For green screen work I would imagine that you would be looking for underwater optics that do not introduce distortions and preserve sharp image from corner to corner. I believe that there is only one housing currently available that can satisfy such requirements.

Nikonos 15mm is a wonderful wide angle lens with air-like feel to it because of the complete lack of distortions. It is also the only wide angle underwater lens that is able to outresolve Epic/Scarlet sensor across the entire frame.

Otherwise, I'd go with a small frame GoPro with a Subspace dome port for an inexpensive solution as all other underwater optics combined with large sensor would most likely give an inferior optical result due to image plane curvature.

Niko:

Pawel would have you believe that only his setup with the Nikonos lens will give good results. We proposed the idea of using Nikonos on this forum back in 2007 but rejected it as not really providing sufficient wide angle on Red1/Epic/Scarlet sized sensors for most underwater work - Nikonos is just 63 degrees on Red1 and your Scarlet versus the 97 degrees or more that is typical using the dome optical systems used on housings from AquaVideo and Gates for Red cameras - as well as virtually every high end video or DSLR system from all the SLR housing makers. (BTW the Nikonos 15 was designed to provide 94 degrees wide on the Nikonos cameras)

It is true that the Nikonos lens will be somewhat sharper on the edges (not so much in the center) but besides the fact that for most subjects you won't really notice that, the real issue is that with wider lenses you will get better overall clarity and more color saturation by shooting through less water and most of the time this is more important than a little extra resolution at the edges.

In an earlier post, there are links to these vimeo shots of olympic swimmers where you can see that the edge sharpness is still very acceptable.

I think you will find that your scarlet in either the Gates or AquaVideo housing and say a Tokina 11-16 or Canon 10-22 lens will work very well for your green screen shoot.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

AND, FYI---yes, you know this already Rudi....Cineform is just amazing to work with in 3d back to FCP or Adobe.....smooth transitions and flawless codec. Wish I had listened to you years ago....

Never you mind Johnny. better late than never, and yes, it is a great workflow. Now, listen to me about them Logicdive scooters and make the switch, nothing else comes close.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Rudi, that scooter looks the cats.....but wow does it cost. More than my car.....

 

[Rudi Herbert]

I told you I'd hook you up with Jon Nellis, he'll give you a good deal. Trust me, talk to him and look into the Genesis 600, that's all you need, that's the one my daughter is hugging up in a photo a few pages back, so tiny yet powerful...

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...It is true that the Nikonos lens will be somewhat sharper on the edges (not so much in the center) but besides the fact that for most subjects you won't really notice that, the real issue is that with wider lenses you will get better overall clarity and more color saturation by shooting through less water and most of the time this is more important than a little extra resolution at the edges..

Colour saturation does not depend on the type of port that you use, contrast does. Colour saturation only depends on how much you have manipulated the image in Photoshop, and it looks like you have been very generous in your examples, to put it mildly. :laugh:

Contrast is tightly linked with MTF and resolution and according to my measurements performed in controlled conditions, Nikonos 15mm lens exhibited higher contrast than that of dome ports that I have tested. The higher contrast was observed across both medium and small details (high frequency) and was about the same for small frequencies.In field testing, I shot alongside a DSLR behind a dome and the "overall clarity" coming from the Nikonos 15mm was consistently better than that of the dome port in the same water conditions. This was communicated to me by the still photographer that took the stills, not just my subjective assessment.

Do you have any evidence to back up your statements?

Anyway, there is nothing stopping you from using a dome port with DeepX and as wide lens as you like, just the optical performance will be compromised and would raise questions why not to shoot it with an HD camera with a smaller sensor size. In this specific case, I do not think that having image plane curvature in underwater shots for an overlay with a flat image green screen is such a good idea. Just my (educated) opinion.

Edit: attached picture taken with a DSLR and a dome port when filming sea dragons showing contrast and water condition (less than 10 ft visibility) which can be compared with the image shot with Nikonos 15mm at the same time and place http://achtel.com/DeepX/A001_C021_061337.0000712.jpg

 

[Michael Hastings]

Colour saturation does not depend on the type of port that you use, contrast does. Colour saturation only depends on how much you have manipulated the image in Photoshop, and it looks like you have been very generous in your examples, to put it mildly. :laugh:

Contrast is tightly linked with MTF and resolution and according to my measurements performed in controlled conditions, Nikonos 15mm lens exhibited higher contrast than that of dome ports that I have tested. The higher contrast was observed across both medium and small details (high frequency) and was about the same for small frequencies.In field testing, I shot alongside a DSLR behind a dome and the "overall clarity" coming from the Nikonos 15mm was consistently better than that of the dome port in the same water conditions. This was communicated to me by the still photographer that took the stills, not just my subjective assessment.

Do you have any evidence to back up your statements?

Anyway, there is nothing stopping you from using a dome port with DeepX and as wide lens as you like, just the optical performance will be compromised and would raise questions why not to shoot it with an HD camera with a smaller sensor size. In this specific case, I do not think that having image plane curvature in underwater shots for an overlay with a flat image green screen is such a good idea. Just my (educated) opinion.

Edit: attached picture taken with a DSLR and a dome port when filming sea dragons showing contrast and water condition (less than 10 ft visibility) which can be compared with the image shot with Nikonos 15mm at the same time and place http://achtel.com/DeepX/A001_C021_061337.0000712.jpg

Pawel:

You continue to distort both my meaning and the truth. Color saturation in underwater photography has a lot to do with how close you get to the subject because the water is progressively filtering colors out and getting closer is the whole point of using wider lenses.

Which is why I, and virtually all other other serious underwater shooters, as well as even your "sort of" endorser Bob Cranston, have said the Nikonos 15 on Red1/Scarlet/Epic/Epic Dragon sensor size is significantly less wide than it should be for most underwater photography (except obviously macro where you use short to medium telephotos with flat ports).

You can use Redcine, photoshop or other software to "pump up" the colors to get the most out of whatever color saturation you have, but it is not as good as having greater and more accurate color information actually hitting the sensor - by moving closer with a wider angle lens.

The same goes for image contrast - even the clearest tropical water is essentially a progressive diffusion filter - and real contrast will be greater by moving closer with a wide angle lens - Underwater Photography 101.


Coming from "Mr Science" I find it laughably unscientific that your "control" comparison shot for contrast is one with a large, obviously flaring light source aimed almost directly at the camera.

As far as green screen of diving and twirling gunfighters (probably in a pool) I think either DeepX with Nikonos 15mm or a Gates/AquaVideo type system would work fine. Most of that type of chromakey work is just using the subjects from the center of the frame with little or no detail from the edges used in the final composite - so edge resolution and/or mild plane curvature is irrelevant.


And yes, I know you can use dome ports with the Nikonos mount - since I mentioned it with my original proposal to use Nikonos lenses back in 2007 and since I kind of cornered the market on the Aquatica Aqualens setups (which is the main way to mount other wider lenses and dome ports onto a Nikonos Mount) when I bought about 30 of them from Helix (who had bought out the remaining Aquatica inventory from Nikon when Nikon was the distributor and shut down Nikonos sales). However, it was always a little scary mounting those big ports to a small mount surface like the Nikonos mount but not so bad when it was just the small Nikonos camera (kind of like a Canon dSLR on a 600mm lens, the mount doesn't support the lens weight, it just supports the camera weight) but I would be a bit concerned with Aqualens combined with the much larger Epic/Scarlet housing.

 

[David Nardini]

well, the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, so technically speaking my statement was correct in the absence of yours

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting rig. Good to see other people making an effort to get high quality images.

I would be very interested how you managed to covnert the Nikonos to PL. I must say this never crossed my mind, so kudos for thinking outside the box. I can see many technical challanges that you needed to overcome.

I'd be very interested to see how you managed to solve some of the technical problems: sealing the lens against the housing, focus and aperture gears, mount conversion, etc...and, of course the images, which I'm sure are excellent.

Well done.

I've put a small clip compilation (assorted conditions) @ http://vimeo.com/46390805 (output from RedCine-X > into FCP sequence)

I used to strip / repair Nik15s in my youth ... if you took one apart you will see they are quite a simple set up to re-house. I have never been too keen on the standard Nikonos mount & the 'jewellery' grade fittings they use(d) scare me - the PL mount is a good host ;-)

The 15mm dome port is mounted on a bayonet bulkhead (port) which when removed allows other lenses to operate (traditional dome ports etc) ... will post some stills in near future.

The 'which is best' debate ? I personally consider the 15mm as THE reference u/w lens, it will cover & behave @ 36mmx24mm coverage (as and when sensors will get there !); it's not bad for close-ups also ...

The Tokina 11-16 (+ similar) is certainly a fine lens, but it does vignette at 5k (@11)

At the end of the day, build or hire some kit and make up your own mind ... if you have the luxury, do a side by side test. Bottom line for me, I wanted something compact ... and with this rig I am there, with no compromise in quality; now it's down to the operator ...

Refinements continues ... HAPPY BUBBLING.

Cheers ... D

 

[John J Ellerbrock]

Howard Hall w/Sea Nettles and DEEP EPIC off the California coast. Photo courtesy of Jerry Allen.

 

[Mauricio Handler]

David

I just saw your Vimeo clip using the 15mm... looks very nice, cinematic....
It is nice to finally see some footage from this concept. Footage like this trumps charts,
discussions, and physics on "what this lens and red can do underwater"
This sequence speaks louder and clearer and to the point of non-scientific brains like mine.

Thanks for posting...

Mauricio-

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

Hey David,
I keep getting 'Video encountered an Error' screen on Vimeo? Could also just be my crappy connection here in Bali.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[David Nardini]

Hey David,
I keep getting 'Video encountered an Error' screen on Vimeo? Could also just be my crappy connection here in Bali.
Cheers,
Mark.

Hiya Mark ... PM'd you ...

@Mauricio / Frazier : thanks for your comments ... journey of discovery continues & will update the sequence with more clps soon ...

Cheers ...

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

Got it, finally. Left a comment buddy, nice work.