Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Pawel Achtel]

Hard to believe, I've never filmed underwater without lots of flaring. Most of my work is close to the surface, on the half way mark between water and air often. I've never filmed underwater with the Epic and your housing. Both are soon to change..

I used to film sea lions a lot (for several years) mostly close to the surface and I used to fight (big) flares when using Seacam Superdome port (with HD-CAM camera). The SuperDome had a very wide angle and collected a lot of light, which then bounced off the lens optics and created strong flaring. I then changed to CinePort, which had light controlled very well with double light traps, special coatings, hood and optimised angle of view....big improvement.

You can search the net for pictures other people took using Nikonos 15mm with Nikonos V film camera and I have not seen any examples of strong flares. It is a reference lens for underwater.

...What about external monitors, does your housing come with one, do we buy these separately, any recommendations? Getting ready to give Band Pro a couple dates on the possible upcoming demo. An external monitor is not completely necessary for the tests but would be a great option if available. Looking forward to the demo..

In my view (and it seems shared amnong others on this board) an ideal housing should have flexibility in monitoring options.

In order to have flexibility the housing has to be designed with flexibility and modularity in mind. What we have done is based our hardware on industry standards. One of them is external ports and connectors.

The side port in DeepX and rear ports in 3Deep not only allow HD-SDI out (for external monitor or cable to surface or both) or additional switches and push buttons, but this port is fully compatible with other industry standard ports and connectors. One of such standard is Nauticam NA-DP4 for smallHD DP4 HDMI monitor, which Bob Cranston kindly pointed me to (he has one).

So, each of our housings can be configured with a variety of HDMI or HD-SDI monitors either internal or external or both.

When using an external monitor with DeepX, you can easily flip it up-side-down and achieve extremely low angles that are not possible with any other housing. You can even do the flip underwater by using thumb screws and it takes less than a minute! - a feature that Peter Cragh and Bob Cranston were (extremely) excited about because pointing the camera upwards underwater creates nice looking backgrounds and lighting.

We can quite easily adapt other monitor housings and monitors too.

I'm currently in discussions with Nauticam and may be able to offer you a package deal including Nauticam NA-DP4.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Flaring:

Google images for "Nikonos 15mm". I came across the following picture taken with the Nikonos 15mm: no flaring, which is quite remarkable considering the range of contrast and composition:

Nikonos V, 15mm UW-Nikkor, f8, 1/90s, TTL Fill Flash via Sea & Sea YS-120. Fuji Velvia 100.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Nice day at Guadalupe and great shot Johnny. What compression? BTW, thanks for the call the other day, shed some light on my buddies edit.

Best,
Frazier

Hi Frazier, i believe it was 8:1 compression. I had great luck and the best day for my sub driver in all the time he has been using this machine the past 2-3 years at Guadalupe. Lawrence is his name and he runs the shark operations on Solmar out of Cabo. I doubt i was able to help that much with premier, but i try to pay attention to the details of mine and others problems on this site.
Best Frazier.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Can you upload a few short clips? I gotta see more.

Sorry Will, it's a commercial for WWF and telCel and i have not even asked if i can post video knowing the answer. But the frame grabs i have permission.

 

[Will Keir]

Had a similar experience on the river. Filming with ropes, camera guys dangling off the cliff, were flipping off high rocks, had a crane perched way up high, and this dude just swims right on by without a care in the world. I love it. The oceans are for everyone, so are the rivers. A good reminder to the super serious on set directors, like I was, that there is always a bigger picture.

Hey Rudi,

In my limited experience with u/w talent of the human kind, the DP and cam ops had full-face two-way comms. Whenever the talent needed alternate instructions, they were handed an earpiece; listen, acknowledge, and do. It worked for most situations.

The key, in my view, however, is before you ever go into the water, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, an open circuit shoot can only last so long. And it goes by really, really fast. Before you know it, it's over, people bolting for the surface.

Not telling you anything you don't already know I'm sure, one of the scenes I shot in the Red Sea last year involved a chance group of Dutch tourist divers happening on the set, without so much as a by-your-leave, swam straight into mid-shot, stared at the cameras close-range, flashed pics, waved, smiled, hung out for 20 minutes, enjoying themselves immensely. Christ, what a disaster. As hilarious as it was.

Expensive day though.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Well, it seems that all things come home to roost, here is my assessment of the last 50 pages or so of this thread.

Some award-winning shots of Humpbacks and White Sharks, all captured @ 5K with fisheye lenses, Tokina 10-17mm, and Sigma 15mm. Seems the very competent folks who shoot u/w fisheye have now come to grips with the fisheye event horizon. No evidence of distortion in those shots whatsoever. Fecking spectacular camera artistry.

And then, some seriously evocative Red Sea video posted by Dave Blackham using the Nilonos /Epic arrangement, edge to edge glory. Somewhat claustrophobic, as Rudi mentioned. But worthy of major accolades nonetheless.

Seems Pawel has had a significant effect here, his edge-to-edge sharpness stuff having embarrassed all of us to run for the dome-fisheye combinations.

So where do we go from here folks?

 

[Johnny Friday]

So where do we go from here folks?

Story! beats rez & latest equipment any day

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Story! beats rez & latest equipment any day

Exactly! Most, if not all, of us in this thread already have more than adequate tools to capture stunning underwater images, images which would have made the best stuff shot a few years ago pale. Time waits for no one, life moves on, and every day, it becomes just a tad harder to come up with something unique and original, made all the more difficult if we spend that precious time discussing technicalities instead of shooting. Commissioned or not, paid for or not, we just need to dip below the surface and shoot. And remember, like someone said, if audiences are looking at the corners of your images, then you've done something really wrong. Ironic how bothered I get every time I notice corner softness with a certain lens, and then I watched a whole feature film whose underwater scenes were shot with that exact lens and I did not notice once any problems with the image, given how absorbed I was with the story.

 

[Mark_Thorpe]

Story! beats rez & latest equipment any day

Bingo!

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Story! beats rez & latest equipment any day

tell this to IMAX executives and see how you go....

 

[Rudi Herbert]

tell this to IMAX executives and see how you go....

He'll go just fine, since obviously, he wouldn't be shooting in a system other than IMAX, so still, story is what will get any project greenlit or not, not the corner MTF of the optics used...

 

[Johnny Friday]

tell this to IMAX executives and see how you go....

Huh? Howard Hall is shooting an imax film now on two formats for McGilvary Freeman: 70mm & Epic 5k. Bob C. and I have been shooting an Antarctic film slated for IMAX release on Epic and they'll likely fill in a lot of shots with 720p & 16mm footage that makes the story. Antlantic Productions in UK is using some my epic stock combined with Alfredo Barroso's P2 720 footage because the shots make the story. Not sure i understand what you are saying pawel.

 

[Frazier Nivens]

Huh? Howard Hall is shooting an imax film now on two formats for McGilvary Freeman: 70mm & Epic 5k. Bob C. and I have been shooting an Antarctic film slated for IMAX release on Epic and they'll likely fill in a lot of shots with 720p & 16mm footage that makes the story. Antlantic Productions in UK is using some my epic stock combined with Alfredo Barroso's P2 720 footage because the shots make the story. Not sure i understand what you are saying pawel.

Surely the EPIC 5K footage is not being shot for the IMAX project from a housing with a lens behind a dome port, oh my...

Frazier

 

[Johnny Friday]

Surely the EPIC 5K footage is not being shot for the IMAX project from a housing with a lens behind a dome port, oh my...

Frazier

Actually yes. But i think they are willing to listen to any pitch and talk about equipment at a later time. But certainly nice looking footage for your pitch reel helps regardless of what it's shot on. That discussion happens later and i think many of us that have been in on those discussion realize that many of the check writers know nothing about or very little about the equipment used and only what they read in trade mags etc...AND especially so when comes to underwater. I hope this statement does not come off as argumentative or confrontational. Only trying to state my own and i'm sure many others experience. that all said, it's up to film-maker to bring home best images they possibly can.

 

[Frazier Nivens]

Actually yes. But i think they are willing to listen to any pitch and talk about equipment at a later time. But certainly nice looking footage for your pitch reel helps regardless of what it's shot on. That discussion happens later and i think many of us that have been in on those discussion realize that many of the check writers know nothing about or very little about the equipment used and only what they read in trade mags etc...AND especially so when comes to underwater. I hope this statement does not come off as argumentative or confrontational. Only trying to state my own and i'm sure many others experience. that all said, it's up to film-maker to bring home best images they possibly can.

Not at all Johnny, I get your point exactly. Anything Howard shoots I'm sure is going to be some of the best imaging out there regardless of what he shoots with. EPIC in a housing and dome port can make some beautiful moving pictures.

Best,
Frazier

 

[jim kozmik]

FRASIER. DAN TELLS ME WE JUST BOUGHT SOME WRECK FOOTAGE FROM YOU.....you owe me now dude...QUESTION.. IF i were to pick one wide lense would I go Sigma 15mm or tokina 10-17mm.travelling superlight soon in very small plane..koz

 

[Frazier Nivens]

FRASIER. DAN TELLS ME WE JUST BOUGHT SOME WRECK FOOTAGE FROM YOU.....you owe me now dude...QUESTION.. IF i were to pick one wide lense would I go Sigma 15mm or tokina 10-17mm.travelling superlight soon in very small plane..koz

Will email you Koz with details. The footage will arrive on Wed. via FEDEX International by 5 pm. Tell Dan, sent him an email but never heard back.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Fraizier,

I realize your question/statement was meant to be derogatory.....just adding to the heap we've all posted on the subject.

 

[Tom Hamilton]

Any votes for the best underwater natural history production ever made? Best story? Best cinematography?

BBC's Blue Planet certainly ranks very high on the list, anyone else?

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Huh? Howard Hall is shooting an imax film now on two formats for McGilvary Freeman: 70mm & Epic 5k. Bob C. and I have been shooting an Antarctic film slated for IMAX release on Epic and they'll likely fill in a lot of shots with 720p & 16mm footage that makes the story. Antlantic Productions in UK is using some my epic stock combined with Alfredo Barroso's P2 720 footage because the shots make the story. Not sure i understand what you are saying pawel.

There are exceptions where other formats are used because the fridge-sized, noise-making Solido is too limiting, but IMAX insists on IMAX aquisition and I'm yet to see an underwater natural history film in IMAX cinema with a strong story....most have no story at all.