Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Mark_Thorpe]

I was kidding Mark, the last thing you need are visitors and a newborn, recipe for total domestic confusion. Take care of yer little one, most precious thing that ever happened to me, new life bursting forth, wide-eyed, beautiful innocence, the meaning of the universe, in it's truest and most profound sense.

Spent the better part of twelve years living in the Far East, mostly Japan, but also did a four-year stint in Taiwan. If I didn't know Osaka so well, I'd swear Ridley Scott shot most of Blade Runner in the slums of Taipei.

Stinking snake markets, Napoleon Wrasse lips, Whale Shark entrails, Hammerhead fins and eyes, the list is a long and gruesome one. Doesn't seem to matter, add soy sauce, sugar and chili paste to pencil erasers, it will all taste the same. As long as it's 'lucky', 'fortunate', or 'propitious', our Chinese friends will eat it. And with several billion of them, and growing, I don't have high hopes for the oceans.

I fervently hope to be proven wrong at some point.

Best to get out and document it now whilst there is still some life left to interact with. And for that you'll need a super lightweight, hardly noticeable in the carry on, super sexy looking reg set! Haha

Appetites all over the World will only increase, sad but true, burgeoning populations etc. Hate seeing Mantas and Sharks butchered on the beaches but it's not illegal here. Sad all the same.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

And for that you'll need a super lightweight, hardly noticeable in the carry on, super sexy looking reg set! Haha

That's a great try Mark, but I think you should have a model, your reg will sell alot quicker. Maybe something like this ;-)

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Well,

While others load images of unreal boobs (...and nothing wrong with that), and while we continue to pound upon the virtues of one system over other, etc, I'm sitting here while waiting for my edits to render and thought I'd share something of a different nature. This is my reason of hope for the future, not just mine but our collective one. The one thing that lightens my mood in dark times and makes me smile with her obsession for my diving gear. This is my daughter Lara, all 17 months of her. Hopefully, she will continue her mother's and mine underwater exploration tradition and do her little part to help keep our oceans alive. Any other future divers out there?

 

[Cathal Watters]

Hi,

FIrstly I must appologise as I am sure this is a question that has been answered before but I just can't find it. I am shooting with my Epic in a swimming pool for a music video and I was doing some tests today and I have a few questions!!!

The remote worked a treat by the way! The production company have hired an underwater housing which works well. However using a tokina (niko mount on canon mount using a novoflex adaptor) the surface shots look sharp but the underwater footage looks really soft - blurry I would go so far as saying!! Any ideas???? - the pool is crystal clear?
(shooting 5k 120 fps 12:1 compression - which the camera changed to!)

Also my biggest concern is the heat that it was generating?? The temp was up to 76o c really quickly with the fans up to full blast in record and standby modes. At one point the fan was 111 percent. I was only using it for a short time and it got very hot - obviously being in an enclosed space. Also - when I did open it up the heat was crazy - the body etc. etc.

Should I be concerned???

Many thanks especially as I know this must have been answered before!

Cathal

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Hi,

FIrstly I must appologise as I am sure this is a question that has been answered before but I just can't find it. I am shooting with my Epic in a swimming pool for a music video and I was doing some tests today and I have a few questions!!!

The remote worked a treat by the way! The production company have hired an underwater housing which works well. However using a tokina (niko mount on canon mount using a novoflex adaptor) the surface shots look sharp but the underwater footage looks really soft - blurry I would go so far as saying!! Any ideas???? - the pool is crystal clear?
(shooting 5k 120 fps 12:1 compression - which the camera changed to!)

Also my biggest concern is the heat that it was generating?? The temp was up to 76o c really quickly with the fans up to full blast in record and standby modes. At one point the fan was 111 percent. I was only using it for a short time and it got very hot - obviously being in an enclosed space. Also - when I did open it up the heat was crazy - the body etc. etc.

Should I be concerned???

Many thanks especially as I know this must have been answered before!

Cathal

Unfortunately not all housings are created equal.

There are many misconceptions about underwater optics. One of them is that lenses designed for land use would create sharp images underwater. They don't! The physics of underwater optics say that a perfectly good land lens would produce poor optical performance after it has been placed behind a dome or flat port.

Our product: the DeepX housing, is different. It uses lenses that were specifically designed for underwater use and produce sharp and undistorted pictures underwater. No other housing by any other manufacturer can claim that. If fact, our measurements show that any other optics attempting to adapt land leses for RED Epic struggle to resolve standard definition quality across the entire frame.

Not surprisingly, we are the only manufactuer actually publishing optical performance of our (as well as competitive) housings. We also publish full resolution 5k frame grabs of real-life images for everyone to see the difference: http://achtel.com/DeepX/images.htm

Regarding overheating: cheap and poorly designed underwater housings, often made out of PVC, provide poor ventilation and insufficient heat dissipation. Many of them have not been assessed or approved by RED. Again, our housings are different: as the lens mount is part of the housing, it provides excellent heat transfer design and efficient heat dissipation. To my knowledge, no other housing from any other manufacturer uses this (patent pending) method.

Like with any other equipment, you need to do some research as some products are not all they're cracked up to be. Some of them are well-known and established brands.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Cathal,

The heat generated by the Epic is considerable, and certainly, enclosed in a housing, I understand your concerns. But, the Epic is very robust in this regard, in fact, astonishingly so. A recent shoot saw my Epic, encased in a housing, on the deck of a pitching boat, in full tropical sun, without issues of any kind. This camera is a trooper.

Re focus softness, the virtual image produced by a dome port underwater is a function of dome diameter, you will find that sharp focus distance is approximately twice the diameter of the dome you are using. And that, is irrespective of actual lens to subject distance. Feckin magic I know, but that's the way it works.

Best you do controlled underwater pool tests with your rig, find the sharp focus plane, mark it on the lens barrel, and don't touch it thereafter.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Cheap shot Pawel. My experience with a PVC housing does not agree with your statements...

I said "often" not "all" and the fact that you did not have a problem in particular one scenario does not negate the fact that PVC is poor heat conductor and PVC housings require thicker wall thickness - both contributing to lower heat dissipation than an equivalent metal housing by one or two orders of a magnitude. This is just pure physics and common sense. You have not offered any sensible explanation or solution. Instead, you have just ignored the real issue that Cathal has experienced.

...shooting 5k 120 fps 12:1 compression...

...and so was the shot below: shot by Philip Barthropp (DOP) from the UK at 5k and 120 fps, 12:1 compression using DeepX in an Olympic dive pool.

Let's put it bluntly: DeepX is the first and only underwater housing for RED Epic able to produce undistorted images underwater and the only one that uses optics that are able to out-resolve the sensor across the entire frame. If this does not help Cathal with the problem, I don't know what else will.

If you (or anyone else) want to see this shot in motion displayed in full 4k, please contact Brett at Band Pro in Burbank to arrange for private screening.

​

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

Well,

While others load images of unreal boobs (...and nothing wrong with that), and while we continue to pound upon the virtues of one system over other, etc, I'm sitting here while waiting for my edits to render and thought I'd share something of a different nature. This is my reason of hope for the future, not just mine but our collective one. The one thing that lightens my mood in dark times and makes me smile with her obsession for my diving gear. This is my daughter Lara, all 17 months of her. Hopefully, she will continue her mother's and mine underwater exploration tradition and do her little part to help keep our oceans alive. Any other future divers out there?

Mine's still swimming, due to swim into our World, water birth planned here in Bali, around 17th November. Joshua Masuo Thorpe has already been christened and will be the focus of my life. Will share pics when the little water baby surfaces.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

... I suspect it may be an Ikelite product with a 6" acrylic dome port, in which case, paired with the Tokina 11-16, diopters required. Soft focus issues explained..... Without that info, we are helpless to assist her in any meaningful way.

Tom, I respectfully disagree. I think I can help in a meaningful way regardless what housing brand she is using as I'm not aware of any other housing dealing with loss of image sharpness underwater other than DeepX

However, I can agree with your statement if you replace "we" with "I" in your last sentence and call it a compromise :laugh:

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Well Pawel, we can both agree that the Nikonos system is the only underwater-specific optic ever designed by man or beast, (God Bless the Japanese and their engineering talent), to resolve acceptable definition across frame corners as per your spec. I'm hearing it on a really annoying and repetitive basis. Fine, I'm an easy-going kinda guy, I can take it.

But, you are coat-tailing on past accomplishments, distant in nature, thirty years by my reckoning, long dead and gone. Pawel, you appear to have the engineering smarts to design a brand new optic, one that will take advantage of the very latest lens improvements from Canon and Nikon.

Fer Christ's sake, are you waiting for?

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Well Pawel, we can both agree that the Nikonos system is the only underwater-specific optic ever designed by man or beast, (God Bless the Japanese and their engineering talent), to resolve acceptable definition across frame corners as per your spec. I'm hearing it on a really annoying and repetitive basis. Fine, I'm an easy-going kinda guy, I can take it.

But, you are coat-tailing on past accomplishments, distant in nature, thirty years by my reckoning, long dead and gone. Pawel, you appear to have the engineering smarts to design a brand new optic, one that will take advantage of the very latest lens improvements from Canon and Nikon.

Fer Christ's sake, are you waiting for?

I have tried many other solutions over the years including optical achromatic doublets and more complex setups. I trully believe that Nikonos lens solution is very good - much better than I initially anticipated. It is future proof as to the frame size too as it covers 35x24mm frame. It meets and exceeds my needs in terms of optical performance, size, simplicity and reliability. So, I don't try to fix a problem that doesn't exist anymore....not for me, anyway

I prefer to focus my efforts on other exciting innovations and spending more time in the water.

I'm only repeating all this because Cathal did not want to go through 133 pages of argy bargy, which I can fully understand :laugh:

 

[Jeff Whitehurst]

Any other future divers out there?

Here you go Rudi, our little bubble blower. His fascination with diving gear is in full swing, we hope it never ends ;-)

 

[Michael Hastings]

I If this does not help Cathal with the problem, I don't know what else will.

Well, simply focusing on the virtual image would probably solve the problem.

Cathal as Tom said, the dome refocuses the image to approximately 7 inches in front of the dome for a 6" diameter dome and about 6.5 inches for an 8 inch diameter dome. You simply need to refocus your lens to those distances when you go underwater.

Infinity is refocused to 3 times the radius of the dome in front of the dome (so 9" for 6" diameter dome and 12 inches for an 8 inch diameter dome) so if your focus setting is farther than that you are actually completely out of focus and the only reason you are seeing anything but a blur is from depth of field.


Even though I make both PVC and aluminum versions of our Epic and Redone housings, for some reason Pawel seems obsessed with constantly dissing the PVC, even though quite a number of people find the PVC very useful for surf zone, swamp, river, etc shooting as well as allowing much easier handling of buoyancy issues for underwater shooting, when you use lighting systems or other add ons, and of course is lighter weight for travel which is an important consideration these days. However, his representation of cooling isn't very accurate. The front plate of our PVC version is aluminum with quite a large area for heat transfer and since aluminum transfers heat much quicker than titanium it may have just as much or more cooling capability than his DeepX.

In practice, in a warm pool environment both Plastic and metal housings are going to build up some heat. However, overheating has not been a big issue. We have been making housings in both PVC and aluminum for Redone since 2007 and March of 2011 for Epic (firsts for both R1 and Epic) and there are many, many times more underwater experience with these cameras in our housings than Pawel with his.

If you look through his past 50 or so posts you will see that Pawel has taken every opportunity - regardless of relevance to a poster's question - to tout his housing using the old Nikonos 15mm lens, even though it is an idea I proposed on this forum in 2007 and have so far rejected since the 60-75 degree field of view of the Nikonos on epic is not generally considered wide enough for top results in normal wide angle underwater shooting. This is not just my opinion it is the opinion of almost all serious underwater shooters (normally we are shooting with lenses with 95 to 110 degree FOV with rectilinear lenses and some go much wider with fisheye lenses.) The reason is the wider FOV allows you to get closer for better clarity, greater color saturation, and smoother shots, even though the edge sharpness might not be quite as good as on the Nikonos. (but if you look back a ways to my shot of olympic swimmers and the stripes in the pool you will see the edge sharpness is still quite acceptable.)

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Well, simply focusing on the virtual image would probably solve the problem

The problem with this recommendation is the fact that, and unlike on land, the virtual image created by an underwater dome port is not flat. It is curved and, in case of an S35 size sensor, it is curved a lot causing softness on the edges of the image.

For this and other reasons domes requie stopping down to f/8 or even f/16 to achieve satisfactory results and even then fail to reach even standard definition quality on the edges. They are a disaster wide open. The curvature of virtual image plane is the main reason for poor performance of rectiliner lenses placed behind dome ports, but not the only one.

Another problem with placing land lenses behind a dome port is that, when close focused on virtual image, most (all?)land lenses suffer from significant distortions and aberrations. Just place a zone chart 1 foot in front of the lens and see what you are getting: not a pretty image, is it?

I have shown earlier that even the best lenses, such as Master Prime, perform very poorly when placed behind a 9" dome. And, the performance of land lenses placed behind a 6" dome would be even worse - much worse!

At the end of the day the images speak for themselves. Opinions vary, depending who you talk to

If, as you say, the solution is that simple (to focus on the virtual image), why don't you publish a zone chart or SFR chart to prove your point?

The only land lenses that work well behind a dome port are fish-eye lenses, if that's what the film maker likes. DeepX can use fish-eye lenses too. In fact good selection of them.

Many respected underwater film makers: Bob Cranston, David Hannan, etc... are shooting with smaller, 2/3" sensor cameras and achieve better results than with S35 mm sensors because the image curvature does not cause as much problem as with large sensor.

So, another solution would be to use a small sensor camera and the lergest dome you can find. CinePort comes to mind

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...If you look through his past 50 or so posts you will see that Pawel has taken every opportunity - regardless of relevance to a poster's question - to tout his housing using the old Nikonos 15mm lens, even though it is an idea I proposed on this forum in 2007 and have so far rejected since the 60-75 degree field of view of the Nikonos on epic is not generally considered wide enough for top results in normal wide angle underwater shooting. This is not just my opinion it is the opinion of almost all serious underwater shooters (normally we are shooting with lenses with 95 to 110 degree FOV with rectilinear lenses and some go much wider with fisheye lenses.) The reason is the wider FOV allows you to get closer for better clarity, greater color saturation, and smoother shots, even though the edge sharpness might not be quite as good as on the Nikonos. (but if you look back a ways to my shot of olympic swimmers and the stripes in the pool you will see the edge sharpness is still quite acceptable.)

Michael, you are clearly confused:

I don't think Cathal's problem was about angle of view. Cathal's problem was that she could not achieve sharp images underwater. Clearly, you do not seem to have a solution to her problem.
What you seem to try to solve (field of view 95...110 degrees) is the problem that you have and that is that your products do not seem to meet Cathal's needs.

...even though quite a number of people find the PVC very useful for surf zone, swamp, river, etc shooting as well as allowing much easier handling of buoyancy issues for underwater shooting, when you use lighting systems or other add ons, and of course is lighter weight for travel which is an important consideration these days....

DeepX weighs 4.5 kg (10 lbs). It is machined from a solid piece of high grade aluminium alloy. What is the weight of your PVC housing and how exactly is it lighter or smaller or easier to handle buoyancy issues?

 

[Cathal Watters]

HI Everyone,

I really appreciate all of the feedback and advice. It's encouraging to know that the Epic can withstand the heat! Also I intend to use some different lenses today to see if I can get a clear image. I know it is difficult to offer advice when you don't know what housing I am using. In any case I am doing more tests this morning and hoping to shoot the music video tomorrow.

I'll let you all know how I get on!

Cathal

Cathal

 

[Mauricio Handler]

Pawel
I, I, I, Me, Me, Me..... Damn Brother...

I and many on this forum are not your target for selling you brilliant housing.
so stop dismissing other housing manufacturers.
I can't wait to hear what comes out of your mouth on the new ROUGE!
We are here to share, compare and learn.
I have learned a ton from you.. most interesting reading.
But your tone and personality puts me off completely on what you have to say.

Take a break and indeed follow your own advise - Go Spend Some Time in the Water.
Cool down and come back chilled!

Ahh- that feels better... second coffee coming up.

 

[Frazier Nivens]

Mauricio, thank you..for saying what some of us are thinking..

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

I would suggest that would be 'most of us are thinking'.....

Well said Mauricio.

 

[Cathal Watters]

Hello everyone!

Firstly thank you all for your input. Today I did anther series of tests and things were much better thanks to everyones advice!

Firstly the issue of focus was resolved - I was using the Tokina 11-16 (nikon mount with a novoflex adaptor onto RED canon TI mount) Shooting wide open pretty much at 2.8. I set focus at various close ranges from .5 meter to less than .3 meter - (close focus of lens .3 meter or less than 1 foot). Things were so much better - I adjusted focus several times while always within this close distance but looking back on the tests the closer the focus the better the image. The lens was zoomed to 16mm as I saw the housing at 11mm. Nothing was lit but there was a good light level. I was shooting mainly 120fps at 5kws. the shots worked really well - main singer in front of camera. Tomorrow we light the pool with 4 575 HMIs and 3 1.2K HMIS - creating hopefully pockets of light to create an etheral world!

Shot some test of ballons bursting under water at 400 fps at 1kws - where as it did look good the loss in image quality is significant and obvious.

Tomorrow I will be using a Zeiss superspeed 1.3 25mm with a small remote focus unit so focus should not be an issue.

As regards the overheating - I shot for almost an hour and tried to keep housing under water between takes which seems to keep the temp down a bit. It seemed to work but I feel alot more confident as regards the heating issue after the feedback yesterday.

Again thanks for all of your time and I feel slightly bad at having seemingly stirred up some issues.

I'll let you all know how it goes!

By the way Cathal is a guys name!!!! (Irish)

Thanks,

Cathal