Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Pawel Achtel]

Of course, depends on what you want to achieve. From "artistic" point of view, anything goes.
However, from the optimal exposure point of view, I would think that, other than macro, you would struggle to fully expose red wavelengths underwater.

From my article:

"...Water is a very effective colour filter of about 0.12 red. This means that you
lose 1 stop of red for every 2.5 m. ...
...If the lighting is mounted on the camera you lose 1 full stop of red
with only 1.25 m from the subject. This is because light travels from camera to
the subject and back. ..."

Consequently, "daylight" or "tungsten" light balance do not make any sense underwater.

CRI will always be heavily skewed towards blue or green, even if you start with perfect 100% (which, BTW is only produced by halogen tungsten, but not LED, HMI, MH or other common light sources). But, as it travels through the water, even warm colour temperature tungsten light will be depleted of the spectrum around red wavelengths.

By the time it gets to the camera it would be often cooler than a daylight source on the surface. One can roughly estimate that, for a subject more than a meter away from the camera, a 3200k light mounted on the camera would be rendering it as if it was illuminated with 6500k light on land.

And, this is not including the ambient light!

 

[Johnny Friday]

I can only tell you my experience with this sensor.....it is daylight rated and accepts daylight rated light much better than tungsten.....this is not only my opinion, but that state of many others that have extensive time testing for shoots where we have used both forms of lighting. this however only means that our tests found that we had better color rendition with daylight rated lights and results from said lighting allowed much better post work. Utilizing tungsten lighting created a far greater red hue than anticipated and therefore more post work.

.....this from several shoots where we utilized both topside fed lighting as well as battery lighting that traveled with us. This is far from your scientific explanation, but one that yielded first hand results that lead me to change all of my lighting (wich in the past I've always used tungsten lighting underwater) to daylight rated lights. This is not about artistic control, but what the end result yielded and required for further post.

this is not always the case with most cameras underwater and I thought just as you are saying, but the results revealed otherwise---and yes, this is not typical...but the sensor was the culprit.

....so therefore i can unequivocally state that yes, daylight vs. tungsten light using the RED camera underwater do in fact yield far different results.

 

[Ron Lagerlof]

Come on, guys. Lighting underwater is about balancing ambient light with artificial light, killing off the cyan glow of death, and trying to make it look natural. It was a lot easier with my Sea & Sea YS-250 strobes shooting stills. Even with four Light & Motion Sola 4000s about all I can effectively light is about 3 to 4 feet from the lens. You can use any color temp light you want but you're still not going to light the scene completely with artificial light, unless your James Cameron and you take a bank of HMIs down with you.

What I want to know is how to shoot in relatively low light and be able to eliminate (or minimize) the red channel noise. With anything slightly underexposed as soon as I bring up the ISO or adjust FLUT I get a ton of red noise and find myself desaturating the red channel. Any thoughts?

 

[Johnny Friday]

Ron,
this discussion (as i understand it) revolves around how the red's sensor handles daylight vs. tungsten lighting underwater. I believe we all understand the basics of lighting and what we wish to achieve. I have found that red's sensor is particullary sensitive to both 3200k vs. 6500k lighting....and until you see that difference and make a decision as to what lighting you plan to use, a discussion of theory is a moot point (for me) since i know what both look like underwater with this sensor/camera. In fact i had an entire tungsten pkg. of lighting for 10 days on a trip that i had wished i could have changed out for daylight. So theory of lighting is in fact a discussion that revolves around how we light based on choice of daylight vs. tungsten for sure.....and this decision will highly affect the outcome of what you shoot.

As for low light & red channel.....this is something we cannot fight and i deal with it in post using the RGB channel mixer. This is where you can really eliminate some noise. And working with someone that knows this is a plus.....i had a fine gentleman out working with me on coloring footage named Paul that had some great post workflows up his sleeve that i had NEVER seen before that greatly reduced noise in red and blue channels by utilizing a few effects on those isolated channels.

 

[Michael Hastings]

I tend to agree with Pawel that tungsten lighting has the ability to be the purest if used properly - for this reason. The incandescent photo type lamps (i.e. those that are 3200 or 3400K) tend to have the purest light spectrum or in other words they don't have the "holes" in the spectrum that are there in HMI, HID, Fluorescent, and LED light sources. This is the nature of incandescence versus "arc" or fluorescence - with incandescent it is just the hotter it gets the brighter and whiter it gets but all of the frequencies are there.

Regardless of their CRI, with arc and fluorescent sources there are significant wavelengths that are simply missing in their spectrum which are almost impossible to compensate for. The way to handle tungsten for shooting with RED is to use a light blue filter then you still have the full spectrum without the holes but you get it to the 5000K or more balance that the RED sensor likes and that more closely balances the overhead sunlight. Obviously underwater you need less blue filtration than you would on land since the water is filtering it as well.

The downside is you lose about half your light output as described below:

Our supernova that we have sold for almost 30 years use the extremely compact MR16 bulb that is 2" diameter by 1.75 inch long with an aluminum lamp head that is 2.3 diameter and about 5" long including room for onboard switch and produces a 75 degree wide very even beam.

These bulbs produce 28 lumens per watt of very pure light at 3400K so our 350 watt bulb produces 9800 lumens, but when you filter you cut it in about half so about 5000 lumens.
But it is still drawing 350 watts so our 6400MAH 37 volt battery gives us 236 watt/hrs or about 40 minutes of burn time.

HMIs produce about 55 lumens per watt (including loss through the ballast) and don't need to be filtered so we can get the same amount of daylight balanced lumens with 90 watts of power (or more typically two 50 watt HMI/HIDs since there aren't many practical underwater HMIs over 50 watts). Although you lose a little purity of light, you gain a lot in terms of power consumption and it is mostly this reduction in battery size and cost plus the simplicity of no filter that drove the development of underwater HMI/HIDs. Many of the HIDs have a limited beam spread.

LEDs have taken the advantages of HID a step further - higher output, lower cost and simpler electronics:

We are getting 2500 lumens out of a compact LED with a high CRI and near perfect 110 degree spread that fits in a 2" x 2" x 1.5" aluminum lamp head, and draws just 39 watts or about 64 lumens per watt. We expect further efficiencies in this form factor, but we also have a slightly larger version (3" x 3" square) that produces almost 10,000 lumens. Again, unless you do some complex color balancing with multiple LEDs, nobody's LED produced that pure light - there are holes in the spectrum. Although, I haven't had as much underwater time as I would like with these LEDs, I have been favorably impressed with the results even with facial tones when used as a fill light. LEDs using the latest technology are probably the sweet spot for most users.

The only other light source that truly gives a very full spectrum is the new LEP light emitting plasma. I'm working on but right now the smallest is a 270 watt 16,000 lumen version, but because of the size of the driver and the need to separate it from the RF source, it will be more cumbersome than any of the types above.

There probably won't ever be a "magic" answer for underwater lighting in daylight shooting (night shooting is easy!) - you are always trying to create a balance between the ambient light and artificial light - but the ambient light is being progressively filter both from the surface to the subject AND from the subject to the camera, and the light is being progressively filtered from the lamp head to the subject AND back to the camera as well. Unless you can stop the earth's rotation AND set up a static shot with static lighting, you are stuck with a lot of variability.

-----

BTW I know it is the nature of CMOS sensors, does anyone find it a little funny that the RED camera doesn't handle red particularly well .

 

[John J Ellerbrock]

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[Tom Hamilton]

Nice!

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Come on, guys. Lighting underwater is about balancing ambient light with artificial light, killing off the cyan glow of death, and trying to make it look natural. It was a lot easier with my Sea & Sea YS-250 strobes shooting stills. Even with four Light & Motion Sola 4000s about all I can effectively light is about 3 to 4 feet from the lens. You can use any color temp light you want but you're still not going to light the scene completely with artificial light, unless your James Cameron and you take a bank of HMIs down with you.

What I want to know is how to shoot in relatively low light and be able to eliminate (or minimize) the red channel noise. With anything slightly underexposed as soon as I bring up the ISO or adjust FLUT I get a ton of red noise and find myself desaturating the red channel. Any thoughts?

There is nothing wrong with shooting at f/2.8 unless....you are using a dome port. Land lenses perform (very) poorly wide open when placed behind underwater dome ports due to image field curvature.

Did I mention DeepX and Nikonos 15mm? Plenty sharp fully opened. No field curvature to fight with. No problem with low light situations.

BTW, Regardless of the optics, Light and Motion Sola 4000s are complete and utter waste of time.

 

[Ron Lagerlof]

Hmmm, so I guess I'm wasting my time both in the water with my Epic / Gates rig, and on this forum...
The last person who said to me "I wouldn't waste your time"', was James Cameron a little over a year ago when he was telling me to not bother with the Red One and wait for the Epic and its housing. Well, I didn't take his advice either, shot the Red One / Gates and ended up with a deal with another client to purchase my Epic / Gates system, and the results are beginning to show after just two trips. I have a whale shark trip in August and Mantas in the Maldives in October. This, while building professional 2K, 4K, & 3D screening rooms for my "day job". So, Pawell, I guess I won't be taking your advice either and continue wasting my time making images instead of worrying about the "science"... Peace, out.

 

[Ross Isaacs]

Deep Atom expedition

Deep Atom expedition

Next week we leave on our first major 3D expedition out into the Coral sea to start shooting on Deep Atom with a new pair of the Gates LED lights. These babies are extremely bright and I am very excited to put everything to work in some gorgeous locations. Will have a 3D show reel soon to show off Deep Atom capabilities.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Ross,
....can you elaborate on what you have inside there. What are you using for sync and timecode? Denecke box? Also, are you using Pix240? Can i ask for what.....why do you need or have the 240--for prores only or another reason? Then i think an AJA 3gm? I ask because you seem to have a complete "other" setup inside---is it to assist with 3d or purely for 2d? And why not just shoot via Denecke or Gen 10 with camera sync cables and forgoe the Pix, AJA and sound devices....

....that said, you have one heck of a setup and i know you must have a damned good stereographer.
Johnny

 

[Johnny Friday]

Ron,
those Sola's are indeed great lights for travel and beam spread.....i have four of them. I passed on the Gates lights since they were out of them and awaiting a new revision with different power settings. The only down side of the Sola's i see is the 45min run time at highest setting. The Gates would be obvious choice when they have these various settings....and the battery run time on the Gates far outlasts the Sola's...I wouldn't give LED's up ever. What I think some here miss point on is that very few productions will ever have a budget for HMI lighting and it's obvious when one is on set and EVERYTHING is moving in the direction of LED--for obvious reason. Might not be best light to use....but $$$ usually makes that decision for us.

....Anyway, i stand behind you in saying those are great little lights and great bang for the buck. Just used them on a commercial last week where i'd have prefered surface fed HMI's, but production didn't have the $7500 in budget for us. They did however have $800.....and this a million plus budget.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Next week we leave on our first major 3D expedition out into the Coral sea to start shooting on Deep Atom with a new pair of the Gates LED lights. These babies are extremely bright and I am very excited to put everything to work in some gorgeous locations. Will have a 3D show reel soon to show off Deep Atom capabilities.

I had an opportunity to use Gates LED lights when filming with Bob Cranston off Catalina Island last month. In fact, most of the time I was handling the lights while Bob was shooting.

I think they were adequate for up to about 3 - 4 ft in the conditions that we had. You would need significantly stronger lights in clear blue water, like GBR, or coral sea. Also, considering 1-stop light loss due to beam splitter you effectively need to double the luminous output for equivalent results.

I personally do not like LED lights as the main light source because of their segmented spectrum and relatively cool light that they produce. However, I use a 6,000 lm Keldan LED as supplementary light to much bigger halogen lights punching 12,000 lm of warm light on each side, which gives me total of about 30,000 lm of nicely balanced light that I can configure in various combinations depending on the target and ambient conditions. This is with a mirrorless camera. Double that for a beam splitter.

Look forward to see your 3D show reel.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Top box- PIX 204 (for playback of rushes so we don't have to cook the R/L images)
Second from top- Ambient 204 (for sync and TC)
Third from top- Distribution amplifier right camera
fourth from top- Distribution amplifier left camera
Bottom box- AJA multiplexer (feeds the PIX 240 multiplexed images ready to view)


Ross: Ok, so you went with 204 instead of Denecke then. That's a lot more addition you have there to produce prores files. You should make another back plate off the back of the Atom---did you see what Bob made? We mounted Denecke there aong with multiplexers. You could likely make a split level to handle all the extra hardware you have going on there.

....It seems no matter how big they are we find ways to stuff them...whether luggage or housings.
Well done Ross.

 

[John J Ellerbrock]

Mike PItts sent these over.

 

[Ross Isaacs]

Top box- PIX 204 (for playback of rushes so we don't have to cook the R/L images)
Second from top- Ambient 204 (for sync and TC)
Third from top- Distribution amplifier right camera
fourth from top- Distribution amplifier left camera
Bottom box- AJA multiplexer (feeds the PIX 240 multiplexed images ready to view)


Ross: Ok, so you went with 204 instead of Denecke then. That's a lot more addition you have there to produce prores files. You should make another back plate off the back of the Atom---did you see what Bob made? We mounted Denecke there aong with multiplexers. You could likely make a split level to handle all the extra hardware you have going on there.

....It seems no matter how big they are we find ways to stuff them...whether luggage or housings.
Well done Ross.

I made a nice little adjustable back plate which holds everything and hinges up to allow access to change batteries.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...
Bottom box- AJA multiplexer (feeds the PIX 240 multiplexed images ready to view)
...

We have solved this with an adaption of MARSHALL OR-70-3D Orchid 3d monitor

This little 7" monitor actually fits inside 3Deep housing alowing for very streamlined setup and, at the same time, alows multiplexing of two HD signals into one for either off-board recording or/and additional surface monitoring. We also have full integration of this monitor with 3Deep allowing control of the monitor from the buttons placed on the housing. The integration is electronic, not mechanical.

Soon we will be announcing a very small and fully featured external housing for the MARSHALL OR-70-3D monitor. The housing will be available as an accessory for 3Deep, dual DeepX Wet Mirror rig and stand alone for other 3rd party housings. We intend to make all controls accessible.

I strongly believe that underwater 3D film making greatly suffers from heavy, complex and therefore difficult to use setups preventing capture of animal behaviour and sequence work ultimately compromising story telling ability. I believe a perfect underwater housing should be small, light weight, highly portable and allow for uncompromised image quality.

 

[Johnny Friday]

I used this marshal Monitor last december....it's an excellent monitor, small compact, but is realy nice to have larger monitor to make alignments like the transvideo

 

[Pawel Achtel]

There your go again Pawel bagging everyone else. Your 3Deep doesn't allow for small IA so it can only be used for limited applications. The only program you have ever produced to my knowledge is "Aliens of the Sea" so talking about story telling is all in your head mate. If your 3Deep is proven to create great 3D for all situations I will eat my words but until you can show it actually works to the 3D community please refrain from bagging everyone else.

What exactly was I bagging?

All I can see is you bagging 3Deep here by saying that, because I produced one film therefore 3Deep housing, which weighs 14kg instead of 400kg and produces sharp and undistorted images underwater, is not good for getting sequence footage and animal behaviour. Interesting "logic".

3Deep has (at least) two great advantages over any other cinema grade underwater 3D rig ever made: uncompromised optics and small size, while still offering a very workable range of stereoscopic depth budget for many situations. I'm proud of it and very excited about it. The fixed IA is nothing more than that of Solido IMAX and every other side-by-side 3D rig used on every single underwater IMAX except one ("The Last Reef 3D", which interestingly had very bad 3D, no story line and not even one animal behaviour sequence).

Clearly, in the right hands, 3Deep is a big improvement over what has been used this far. If IA distance is a limitation for macro and CU shots, I am offering a dual DeepX with a wet beem splitter - all under 30kg ready to shoot. How is that limiting for obtaining compeling sequence footage? I find it exciting and refreshingly innovative.

Each time when I mention my products and pointing out the advantages and improvement, you find it threatening ("bagging everyone else") because of your own poor investment decisions. That's the essence of your constant antagonism on this forum. You just can't accept that someone else can indeed have a smarter, better and cheaper solution than the one you just forked out a small fortune on.

I'm sorry that I can not give you positive validation for your investment. That's my personal opinion. You don't have to agree with it, but your choice of arguments defending it is laughable at best.

Good luck with your 3D demo reel on the GBR.

 

[Will Keir]

For underwater work, are there any tips / resources to learn how to keep a shot steady? Lots of After Effects, Warp Stabs but what about in camera? I'm not talking about "house-piping." Additions to an underwater kit perhaps to take some shake out.

Do larger housings help reduce shake? Not sure if an underwater tripod would help here, I'm swimming most of the time. Maybe control my swim better by smoothing my strokes out or adding leg propellers? My subject is shallow rivers so fins are challenging as you can image.

Any recommendations and certainly it's well said, practice.

Practicing with a GoPro until we house our Epic.