Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Pawel Achtel]

Does HID not offer the same spectrum? Would you not recommend using HID for say macro to capture all the red nuances? I guess no one has a definite answer on LEDs yet, since they keep changing.
For me at least, being able to light something during daytime at 5600K and have a burn time of 120 mins or more with low weight is very important, yet I don't want to sacrifice light quality.

What is the best compromise in your opinion?

Macro is relatively easy to light underwater because you can largely override the ambient light. So (almost) anything would be fine.

Wide angle is and always was a challange.

LEDs are not powerful enough.

HMIs are sort of OK, as long as you have more than 500W onboard, but it is difficult to get nice rich reds found in corals and much of the marine life. Most images shot with HMIs are muddy, with poor contrast and look washed.

So, I don't think there is a substitute for hernia. :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Michael Hastings]

...The batteries are crap and I am having problems with them holding a charge...... In the past I mounted the battery on the side of my evolution CCR.

NiMH and Lithium batteries are a major PITA for us small manufacturers - we don't have the volume to get decent pricing from the major, more reliable manufacturers so we are stuck trying to get something decent from the various import Chinese stuff and it seems to be pretty inconsistent and difficult to get warranted. I'm thinking of going back to Nicads for awhile. Bigger, with less power - but they work.

Macro is relatively easy to light underwater because you can largely override the ambient light. So (almost) anything would be fine.

Wide angle is and always was a challange.

LEDs are not powerful enough.

HMIs are sort of OK, as long as you have more than 500W onboard, but it is difficult to get nice rich reds found in corals and much of the marine life. Most images shot with HMIs are muddy, with poor contrast and look washed.

So, I don't think there is a substitute for hernia. :smilewinkgrin:

Pawel pretty much nailed it here.

The discharge HID/HMI and LEDs are never quite as pure of a light as the incandescent tungsten which is why I have continued to make my SuperNova tungsten lights essentially unchanged since 1983. Tweaks in the lamphead shape and connectors - but it is still a compact 2.37" diameter solid aluminum lamphead using 36volt 350 watt or 24V-250 MR16 halogen bulbs (lower wattages avail on the 24volt). It is an excellent light but needs that pony bottle sized battery pack.

I made some 50watt HMIs but didn't think they were worth the tradeoffs. Since the HMI and LEDs are actually about twice as bright (or effectively 4x if you figure filtering the tungsten) they don't really get worth it until you get to 100 watts or more where they clearly outshine the 250 and 350 watts tungsten. And you have to be careful because these days many of the companies are labeling their lights as 250 when they are really 50/70 watts HMI with that "equivalent" to the tungsten 250. I have also been working with a new ballast for 150 watt HMI and if it works out that is probably the minimum I want to promote because you are looking at at true 350/700 watt equivalent.

Because it gets kind of complicated, without getting into all of the details, I don't think LEDs are quite there yet for us high end users

 

[Joshua Raven]

Shooting Underwater in the Pacific Northwest

Shooting Underwater in the Pacific Northwest

Hey guys, I hate to distract from the good info on lighting. Is anyone shooting underwater in the Pacific Nothwest? I have a team of three divemasters with experience lighting and shooting video underwater and have looked into rental packages out of Toronto, Florida, and LA to shoot wrecks off the coast of Vancouver Island. Due to the transient and unpredictable nature of the environment I would prefer to hire a diver with a Red rig and housing from the area.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

NiMH and Lithium batteries are a major PITA for us small manufacturers - we don't have the volume to get decent pricing from the major, more reliable manufacturers so we are stuck trying to get something decent from the various import Chinese stuff and it seems to be pretty inconsistent and difficult to get warranted. I'm thinking of going back to Nicads for awhile. Bigger, with less power - but they work.

Funny you mentioned that, Mike. For years I used cheap Chinese NiMH. They are PITA. You need to match them manually and they quickly lose charge. They also need re-cycling and top-ups every few months.

The best batteries I found are either commercial NiMH for powering green vehicles or, more recent, LiFePo.

And yes, to design a 400W light compared to a 50W - 100W light is totally different ball game. Heat and current issues associated with a 300W - 400W light are quite difficult to deal with.

I ended up with a quite complex titanium design. Even sold a couple to operate down at 3,000m on an ROV, which was an interesting project.

 

[Bo Randers]

the optimal light system

the optimal light system

So what option do we have in the pro underwater area.

For HMI/HID you will need to get something over 100 watt. Real 100 watt.

Halcyon makes a system 200 watt. with a weight of 12,5 kg. 1kg in water.
about 6500 usd. about 1 hour runtime.

Hydroflex makes a 200watt as well. But the price is i very high.

Sartek makes a 150 watt HMI. I have one. 3500 usd. The light is great. But it is noisy. The ballast makes a high tone that will make you crazy while diving.
I have taken it apart. And there is parts for under 100 usd in that lamp. pretty easy DIY.

Greenforce make some systems as well. Calling them something like HID250. And that is not 250 watt...but 50watt. not really a lot of power. And i would bet they have a magenta spike.



Tungsten there a lot of option. But for pro work we need a lot of power.
Price to watt i would go for aquavideo.

None of the systems uses Lipo . So big battery.

Led systems are to small. If you need something big...then DIY

If any know of any other great light. Please share info.

Cheers

Bo Randers
www.underwaterdop.com
www.tvteknik.dk

 

[Bo Randers]

By the way ...red underwater

By the way ...red underwater

Just wanne a share a musicvideo i did on RED.

Location Denmark. Water studio.

Housing . Splasbag with video out and airsupply for lens port.(not my camera9 not my idea

Camera . Red1 with ultra primes.

Crane with hothead.

And a 5D mark2 was used outside.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC9VCA-IfnM

Cheers

Bo

 

[Amund Lie]

Wow, a lot of good replies here, thanks guys.
You have put me off LEDs now, doubting HIDs even more and understood that HMIs are too expensive and big, so in the end I'll probably go for tungsten. Who would have thought? :biggrin:

I found some decent info on Hartenbergers site too, they offer all but HMI and should be fairly unbiased with their information:
http://www.hartenberger.de/english/e_hartenberger.html?technics-illuminant/001.html

 

[Bo Randers]

LIght

LIght

Hi Amund.

For the setup you are running i think you will need more light.

The tungsted setup will be same size as HID/Hmi system.

Red one is balance to daylight. So one of the reasons i went for HMI.

It is true that you will get a lot of the red spectrum light from tungsted. BUt you will also get that from HMI. 200 watt tungsted or 200 watt HMI will produce that spectrum. The HMI just produce a lot more on the blue end as well.

SO for bounce at daytime the Hmi will be gold worth.

And you can allways use a correction filter on your HMI.

Bo

Wow, a lot of good replies here, thanks guys.
You have put me off LEDs now, doubting HIDs even more and understood that HMIs are too expensive and big, so in the end I'll probably go for tungsten. Who would have thought? :biggrin:

I found some decent info on Hartenbergers site too, they offer all but HMI and should be fairly unbiased with their information:
http://www.hartenberger.de/english/e_hartenberger.html?technics-illuminant/001.html

 

[Amund Lie]

Yes, but isn't HMI very expensive? Do you have any recommendations?

 

[Amund Lie]

Even more confusing, Halcyon states:
HID and HMI lighting provide much improved color temperature over halogen, approaching the color temperature of sunlight. HID and HMI technologies are very similar, though the greater intensity of HMI together with its enhanced and more consistent color temperature make it a favorite among professional videographers.
http://www.halcyon.net/?q=node/222

So, HID has the full spectrum after all, but with less consistent colour temperature? (I can live with that, as long as reds register correctly). Reading this I am thinking HID would be the best compromise re: output and burn time. HMIs are still outside my budget, I'd rather have 2 - 4 HIDs than one big, expensive HMI (bar that NatGeo should call tomorrow...)

Gates recommends NiteRider and Green Force HID with their housings, this could of course be for a variety of reasons. Anyone with some impression of their kits?

 

[Matt Ferraro]

Lights

Lights

I feel all your pain. I have been using Pacific Visions 200w HMI http://www.pacificvisionsinc.com/ for a number of years now. The company I work for has 6 of them and was involved in the early development. Honestly I have yet to come across a battery powered light system that fulfills all the demands of underwater work, but these are the best I have had the opportunity to use. There may have been improvements in the latest models but the ones I have used suffer from the same draw backs as most HMIs. The cool thing about the lights is that they can be configured to run two lights off of one battery. We have even made a three light head set up that runs off of two batteries that are attached to the diver's tank or rebreather. This is not something that would be very manageable for the camera operator to use but if you have a someone to light for you it works pretty well.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Even more confusing, Halcyon states:
HID and HMI lighting provide much improved color temperature over halogen, approaching the color temperature of sunlight. HID and HMI technologies are very similar, though the greater intensity of HMI together with its enhanced and more consistent color temperature make it a favorite among professional videographers.
http://www.halcyon.net/?q=node/222

This is the kind of misleading stuff that is common, particularly in the dive industry. There is no such thing as "improved color temperature" - the color temperature just is what it is. If you are trying to match 5800 daylight (and daylight actually moves all over the place from 5K to 8K and more) then it is "improved" over a 3200 source, or a 4700 source, or whatever.

A better measurement of the "quality", i.e. the full spectrum nature of a light, is the Color Rendering Index (CRI). But it kind of boils down to this: Incandescent sources (tungsten halogen) are almost perfect emitters in terms of not having "holes" in the spectrum. As you take the filament and heat it, the higher the temperature it moves from red to a more bluish white. Home type bulbs are about 2700, photo bulbs burn hotter and are 3200 or 3400. You can go higher with tungsten but you go to minutes or even seconds of bulb life.

Discharge, flourescent, and LED lamps by their nature tend to have "holes" i.e. missing frequencies in their output. This is pretty serious in normal flourescents and LEDs. Special flourescents have been created that have much improved CRI and LEDs are getting better. And truthfully HMIs are pretty good.

The HMI vs tungsten is really just an analysis of the tradeoffs of efficiency, simplicity, and cost. HMI/HIDs are about twice as efficient in actual light output. For night diving, tungsten are probably the closest to a perfect light - you don't usually need quite as much light and you can use them at 3400 without worrying about balancing daylight. In daylight you take another 50% hit when you filter to get to 5800. And in daylight you generally need more light just to match the ambient level (which typically is quite bright even if it is very blue).

So for high powered tungsten halogens the trade offs are:
downside: you need heavy duty aluminum lamphead with quartz glass front and pretty hefty batteries that handle the current and sufficient watt hours to give a reasonable burn time. 350 watts is about the practical limit for battery operated.

upside: very simple, turn it on and it works, instant start up with no ballast or igniter. Very compact for up to 350 watts (bulb/reflector is just 2 inches in diameter). Easy to repair, no expensive electronic components to go bad, that heavy duty lamphead is near indestructible - lampheads we sold in 1984 are still working today. And for the purist it has a near perfect CRI

For high powered HMI the trade offs are:

downside: typically have been very expensive. 60 to 90 second start up time means you tend to run them constantly rather than just when shooting. More complicated with electronic ballast and igniter, so harder to repair (replacement components are pretty expensive.) Somewhat minor holes in spectrum.

Upside: energy efficient, Daylight temperature and even higher output battery operated now available - 150 and even 270 watts (320 to 620 watt actual lumens equivalent to tungsten, and 600 to 1200 equivalent for daylight color temperature.)

With RED sensors being more 5800 friendly and travel restrictions getting worse the tradeoffs are moving toward HID/HMI for the highend stuff.

One possibility I can offer is AquaVideo's SuperNova 250 for $1699 (Use 35, 75, 150 or 250 watt tungsten bulb/108 watt hour battery) with a trade up/exchange (probably just the lamphead as the battery system is the same) to the $3300 150 watt HID lamphead/ballast/igniter when it is available in a few months - for just the difference in price.

PS Edit:

I have been using Pacific Visions 200w HMI http://www.pacificvisionsinc.com/ for a number of years now. The company I work for has 6 of them and was involved in the early development. Honestly I have yet to come across a battery powered light system that fulfills all the demands of underwater work, but these are the best I have had the opportunity to use....

Matt we posted at the same time. I'm trying to shrink the lamphead a little bit but those are very similar to what I'm working on with the 150HMI. Mind telling the approx. price on those?

 

[Matt Ferraro]

I can't say for sure since we did not purchase the lights outright so don't hold me to this but I do remember others mentioning they paid somewhere around $6500 for one light head and battery.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Thanks, Matt

I thought that was about it, but wasn't sure. So If I come in at less than $3500 for the 150 it should be a pretty good deal.

 

[Matt Ferraro]

Thanks, Matt

I thought that was about it, but wasn't sure. So If I come in at less than $3500 for the 150 it should be a pretty good deal.

I'd say!! Especially if one could take several out into the field for an extended period of time and return with the same number of lights still working.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

 

[Amund Lie]

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39096

 

[jim kozmik]

I will buy it..

I will buy it..

Thanks, Matt

I thought that was about it, but wasn't sure. So If I come in at less than $3500 for the 150 it should be a pretty good deal.

Mike if you can come up with a bullett proff,300ft rated long burn 150watt I would buy 4 of them for my deepwater wreck project coming this summer..koz

 

[jim kozmik]

Can you tell us about the optitek nikon 14-24 and 10-17 fisheye underwater test please

 

[Michael Hastings]

Mike if you can come up with a bullett proff,300ft rated long burn 150watt I would buy 4 of them for my deepwater wreck project coming this summer..koz

Need to do some more testing. It is looking very good.

 

[George Evatt]

Phanton High speed underwater footage

Phanton High speed underwater footage

Hi,

I posted a while back that we had managed to house a Phantom high Speed camera in my modified RED ONE u/w housing and used it for a Nat Geo shoot. Checkout the result.

http://www.coralseatv.com/html/body_showreel.html

It is such an exciting camera to use especially in the water.
Sorry this is a non-red underwater post, but we all love underwater shots, so I just want to show off this amazing footage. We should be doing another shoot soon with this camera so I will hopefully post some more footage.

I would really like to see more posts of peoples RED underwater footage. Surely someone owns some of the u/w footage being shot with their RED ONE housings and can post it, besides just screen grabs. Here's some seal shots I did last year. http://www.coralseatv.com/html/body_red_seals.html

Regards


George Evatt
www.coralseatv.com
Sydney, Australia