Underwater Bubble Blowin' Users Group

[Tom Hamilton]

The 'Devil's Teeth', also known as the Farallon Islands, are in the San Francisco area code, from the Golden Gate Bridge, head west about 20 miles. Well known for its Stellar Sea Lion population and the large numbers of Great Whites that are drawn there to feed every fall.

Any relation to the title of the project?

 

[Jason Sturgis]

The "Devil's Teeth", a good book to read if one is so inclined. I assume that the film will be based on Susan Casey's work? Thanks for posting Andy. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

 

[Johnny Friday]

ABC---you drivin that vehicle? Looks WAY to fun......hope you had successful shark encounters....look forward to your future posts on this and other projects amigo.
JF

 

[Johnny Friday]

Realized should have posted on Underwater Sticky instead:

Just finished up on a 2nd trip to Galapagos for a one hour doc we are shooting entitled "Island of the Giant Sharks" - about Pregnant whale sharks that routinely pass by Darwin's Arch next to Darwin Island in the Galapagos Archipelago..... scientists are satellite tagging these 12-17meter animals and tracking their routes and hoping to expose and answer many questions about them including where do they give birth; how do the navigate and many more complex questions. The answers are unbelievable.....well rather reveling.

Frame grabs shot on R1 MX & Deep RED

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Such incredible beautiful creature... Beautifully captured John...

 

[Johnny Friday]

Thanks Ketch!

 

[Johnny Friday]

you have a housing coming soon as well yes Ketch?

 

[Ketch Rossi]

you have a housing coming soon as well yes Ketch?

Yes John... Can't wait for it, even so my Diving capabilities are to be limited to free diving at first, or Snorkeling at best he he...
But I hope that everything goes well so that by next summer I can go to 30/50' depth.

Just not giving up... Yet...

Of course when seen such MAGNIFICENT images of you in the very depths with truly sensational beautiful creatures...

Makes me fill I'm still a kid playing in the sand box, but at list I'lll get girls to come play in it he he.

 

[Johnny Friday]

Here's another ROUGH CUT trailer for upcoming INDEPENDENT doc we shot. Keep in mind, no color correction or editing beyond rough cuts....we are just looking at different ways to cut and what folks think of each and then will make a move on the best rough cut....but 3 or 4 more rounds to go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP4-cTHOUcU

Johnny

 

[Pawel Achtel]

DeepX underwater housing for Epic and Scarlet

DeepX underwater housing for Epic and Scarlet

Finally....patents are filed, all clear. Happy to answer any questions.

more information http://achtel.com/DeepX

 

[Jon Shaw]

It changed colour?

 

[Pawel Achtel]

It changed colour?

Yes. Now it is both hard anodized (type III) plus powder coated. You will need to wait a couple of weeks if you want it in pink, though.

BTW, all of you guys that I asked to keep this baby secret until all the patent paperwork was filed, you can speak now , share pictures, thoughts, ...no secrets anymore...

 

[Jon Shaw]

You will need to wait a couple of weeks if you want it in pink, though.

That would be a great look

 

[Michael Hastings]

Yes. Now it is both hard anodized (type III) plus powder coated. You will need to wait a couple of weeks if you want it in pink, though.

BTW, all of you guys that I asked to keep this baby secret until all the patent paperwork was filed, you can speak now , share pictures, thoughts, ...no secrets anymore...

Hey, you took my idea and ran with it, well done!

However, I'm a little curious how that affects a patent since I published the idea of making the front plate of the housing the lens mount for the Red camera with the nikonos lens mount in it three or four years ago on this very forum. I even picked up both an old Nikonos and a couple of Nikonos RS bodies to fool with so I could check the flange focal distances. And your implementation seems to be exactly what I proposed. And it's a fairly obvious idea to adapt nikonos system. In fact the way that I started using the Aquatica thread style domes that have been the stock interchangeable domes on our Redone and Epic housings is that I bought about 20 of the old Aqualens setups from Helix (brand new in the box) at a good price which included the six inch domes. And that's one of the things that made me think of using the regular nikonos lens mount on a housing - it was just an extension of what I was already doing. The main reason I never went through with it on the Redone was because of the major freak out and warranty voiding over the birger mount or any mount which took the Red mount all the way off, which was required. And I sketched it out for Epic but hadn't gotten around to it because this will surely require approval from Red to avoid voiding the warranty.

BTW: Customers that go this route may be very interested in buying one of these Aqualens setups because as far as I know the widest lens that was available for the regular Nikonos mount is the 15mm which is really a 20mm - 94 degree diagonal lens on 36x24mm SLR full frame so only about 75 degrees on the Epic 5K and 63 degrees on 4K - when these days (past 10-15 years) we are typically shooting 95 to 110 degrees on high quality underwater sytems .

Nikon called the UW15 a 15 because it has the coverage if a 15mm behind a flat port which was the comparison back in the 1960s when it first came out. Domes were just becoming known at the time. With the Aqualens you can use regular Nikon lenses and the gearing for focus and iris control is built into the aqualens just like it is on the regular nikonos lenses (although you need a gear on the lens itself as well but these are pretty common) which would allow you to go wider (for example the 14mm Nikon):

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/201421-USA/Nikon_1925_Super_Wide_Angle_AF.html

which behind a dome would get you back to a true 94-96 degrees on 5K.

Here's a link to an article about the aqualens:

http://undercurrent.org/UCnow/issues/y1995/ID0995/Aqualens0995i.pdf

I'm not knocking what Pawel did, he did a nice job of implementing it and I may even want to sell some for him if the deal is okay because there are some potential uses where compact size trumps all else regardless of a lot of other shortcomings. I just think that, however sexy it looks at first glance, it isn't the end all/be all - there are some serious caveats - primarily the lack of sufficient wide angle, (kinda bad at 5K, superbad if you shoot 4K) which will mean a substantial loss of clarity in normal shooting due to shooting through much more water. The widest Nikonos lens was designed for full frame and not even superwide by today's standards so really only makes sense when we get to a true full frame 24x36 sensor like the proposed 6K FF Epic - due who knows when?

Secondly, since virtually all of the available lenses for that mount were discontinued a long time ago you will probably only get them that are probably 15-30 years old - which doesn't bode well for reliability. Nikonos lenses are known to leak occasionally (and certainly more likely the older they get) and if it does it will be leaking directly into the sensor area and mount area of the camera which is almost certainly going to be catastrophic as opposed to a port or other leak in a regular housing that will usually first pool at the bottom of the housing and is much less likely to damage the camera. Possibly trashing -(although some of the Nikonos' could be easily fixed even after flooding)- a $350 Nikonos camera is annoying, but drowning a $30K Epic is a lot scarier.

Third, although use of the Aqualens will allow use of other lenses, it still attaches to the base Nikonos mount which is fairly small (45mm or so) so there is a lot of leverage there when you add the big Aqualens housing and would seem to allow a bump of the housing against a reef or wreck to cause a leak, which again would likely be catastrophic.

Finally, since this replaces the red mounts, it seems certain that it will require approval from Red to allow it without voiding warranty, and given the above safety concerns combined with the difficulty other much simpler mounts have had getting approval I wonder how this if Pawel has submitted it to RED and where that stands.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Hey Mike,

Thanks for the comments, greatly appreciated. I responded in the other thread here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...rwater-Housing&p=946302&viewfull=1#post946302

...but, happy to continue the discussion in this thread

 

[Michael Hastings]

Here's some further thoughts copied from the other thread since I try to keep the bubble blowers thread up to date:

snip:

Hey, Mike.

Thanks for the questions and feedback.

The patent is not affected. The essence of the patent is the way the interchangeable mount connects the camera and the lens. It is not about using Nikonos lenses. Nauticam has done it before.

Pawel:

Understand on the patent.

And I agree that the beauty of the Nikonos 15mm is that the glass dome on it is perfectly matched to the lens which is VERY difficult to achieve with standard housings and larger domes. The nikonos flat front lenses don't have much advantage other than size (not trivial when it comes to 3D, see my comments below). My point with the Aqualens was just that there is an off the shelf answer to using standard nikon lenses with your system that has the built-in focus and iris gearing and multiple dome and flat port options.

snip:

If the Nikonos 15mm is not wide enough, you can try Sea&Sea 12mm fisheye. I haven't tested it yet as I do not have one. The Nikonos 15mm is classified as super wide-angle and I personally do not consider it too narrow for the vast majority of large underwater subjects. I think the trend to use extremely wide lenses (more than 90 degrees) underwater was more to do with the increased DOF and to counter act the inability of land lenses to close focus on the virtual image through the dome. Nikonos lenses do not suffer from those problems and close focus just inches from the lens.

This is where I have to strongly disagree and think you're being a bit misleading. The general definition of a super wide is that the focal length is smaller than the short side of the sensor/film size. i.e. 24mm for SLR full frame; 14.5mm for Epic 5K and 12.4mm for Epic and Red1 4K.

The 15mm (which again is actually a 20mm - 15mm was a 1960s marketing misnomer/lie) is only a super wide on the FULL SLR 36mmx24mm FILM FRAME FOR WHICH IT WAS DESIGNED. On Epic 5K it is only a moderate wide angle and even less so on 4K.

Secondly, I think it is completely inaccurate to suggest that the trend to wider lenses was about DOF or inability to focus on the dome virtual image. The vast majority of high quality underwater footage has been shot on 2/3" or smaller sensors where DOF is much greater than on the large Red1/Epic sensors, and focus was never a real issue. Virtually all AF video cameras for the past 15 years have had no problem focusing on the virtual image, and the wide cine and video lenses focus down into the range needed as well. If focus was the issue then Fathom, Amphibico and Light and Motion would never have made their special underwater optics in the 90-110 degree range since they created the focus within the optic so they could make it focus wherever they wanted.

In the past 25 years I have worked with, talked to, rented to, or sold to, virtually every major underwater filmmaker and I don't know ANY that would suggest that 75 degrees (diagonal) on the Epic 5K (or worse 63 degrees if you shoot 4K) would even approach the degree of wide angle you would prefer to shoot with.

No, the reason for going wide as reasonably possible is two fold:

First: in both still and video - even in the clearest water - clarity AND COLOR SATURATION is dramatically increased by being able to move even a bit closer to the subject.

Second: In motion pictures, unwanted camera movement tends to be disturbing and the on-screen effect of camera movement is greatly reduced the wider your lens.

Finally, yes you could use the 12mm fisheye but besides the obvious issues of shooting with a fisheye, you lose most of the advantage of dedicated underwater lenses like the Nikonos 15 since fisheyes actually perform quite well in the regular dome ports on most housings since the optics of a fisheye match quite well with the dome.

3D version coming very soon

Now 3D is where I see some significant advantage to what you are doing. From what I understand It allows you to get a very compact unit with a side by side interaxial of 4 inches or so. Certainly not ideal, but pretty good for large subjects/scenes where you can stay back at least 4 or 5 feet or so (but even there you are pushing it for proper 3D and will lose a fair amount of picture when you software converge). However, you are getting the quality of the Nikonos without giving much on the angle of view since with regular housings in either side by side or beamsplitter you are kind of stuck with flat ports and limited wide angles anyway. And there is no question, you are approaching the limit of compact size - at least until Jim makes us a dual lens 2/3" scarlet with those mini primes

Beamsplitter rigs will still be required for closer subjects and macro - but I'm working on a (relatively) compact beamsplitter dedicated macro unit that might be a great complement to your side by side 3D rig.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Mike,

Agree with you on all counts. I'll add another reason for wide angle lenses underwater, it being that usually speaking, at apertures of 5.6, and even 4.0 on some, you basically sharp focus from MFD to infinity, and you don't have to worry about focusing your lens. And no, a 75 degree is not, by any means, a super wide lens underwater, regardless of whether that's "enough" or not.

More to the point of Pawel's design, and I might be banned for this, and so be it, what a cheek he has after all the noise he made and all the bashing he freely and handily passed on to Gates. So this is his great revolutionary concept? Give me a break for crying out loud! The amount of people that have thought of using Nikonos lenses for underwater video has be quite large, my second or third post on this thread 4-5 years ago was in fact asking who would want to build me such a thing on my R1, and I remember trying to convince Mike about creating such a front plate, where he desisted based on the fact that it wouldn't be easy to find a steady supply of Nikonos lenses. Just this last December I met a guy in PNG who had built such a front plate onto a RED MX but was using the awesome 13 mm 2.8 super wide for the Nikonos RS, and he was laughing at my concerns of focal flanges saying that you could still place that lens a couple of feet off the sensor and get a good 90-100 angle view. He showed some images and they were amazing. In fact, I am sending him my full collection of RS lenses plus a R1 body for him to build me a housing.
The concept of housed, self contained amphibious lenses was pioneered by Nikon in 1963, it will be 50 years old next year, and so will be the majority of the lenses that will allow Pawel to provide this revolutionary leap in performance. Jesus man, Jesus! Don't get me wrong, it is a great idea, a simple yet effective concept with high quality imaging results, the holy grail of underwater imaging, but to pain himself a prophet for actually putting this old idea into effect, not even being the first one at that, well, that is something. I was secretly hoping he was gonna blow my mind and come up with something I would have to buy and eat my proverbial hat, but hey, I guess my hat will continue to serve solar defense duties over my head after all....

I have a feeling the people at Gates are NOT quivering in their shoes right now. Anyway, the best of luck to you Pawel, especially defending that patent.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Rudi, if you would like to publish MTF, distortions and CA data for whatever underwater optics you are using I would consider it, unlike your post above, interesting and useful.

I do not appreciate your trolling and baseless accusations that I "bashed" Gates. I have never "bashed" Gates and I respect their products. I believe that they have their place in the industry. I clarify that I invited them to publish any evidence that their optical ports resolve more than a few hundred lines because they claim on their website to provide 5k underwater imaging, which I found unbelievable. Gates never responded to my invitations.

I'm exited that for the first time we can resolve and capture 4k underwater.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Thanks Mike for the feedback.

The Nikonos 15mm has about 76 degree angle on the current Epic sensor and 94 degrees on a full frame. It has superb contrast in comparison to housed lenses as I found from my measurements with Imatest and real-life images seem to confirm it.

I also tested the standard and inexpensive Nikonos 35mm kit lens and it is actually quite a good and sharp lens from about f/4.0. It actually performs better underwater than a housed land lens especially in the corners. It seems to have sharp and undistorted edges with no chromatic aberrations (measured at less than 1 pixel)

I agree with you about the 3D. We can actually put two 15mm Nikonos lenses side-by-side with less than 4" inter-axial distance. You are also correct about macro and closeup, which would be much better covered with a conventional beam splitter rig. I can't wait to test the 3Deep with some large subjects, like whales, coral reefs, kelp forests and big schools of fish.

I think the biggest advantage is freeing yourself from using ports. Water contact submersible lenses have no distortions underwater and render very natural, high contrast, razor sharp images corner to corner, which is essential for cinema, and particularly 3D.

The part I would question is your implying that the available ports for "land" lenses are so much worse. Remember the Nikonos 15mm is "just" a 20mm lens with a glass dome port and the proper extended flange distance to correct the focus for the refocusing that occurs with that very small diameter dome. (for those that haven't studied dome optics - the dome when put in contact in water refocuses the image to where infinity is 3x the radius of the dome in front of the dome - i.e. a 3" radius dome puts infinity at 9" in front of the dome, and all other distances are progressively closer. All of this was studied quite scientifically for the US Navy in the early 1960s and published by Gomer T. McNeil. I was given a copy in 1986 by the late Rick Frehse) This refocusing is handled in the 15mm Nikonos by extending the FFD in the same manner as using extension tubes for Macro. The 15 also probably benefits from some internal AR coating on the glass dome which tends to increase contrast.

So, if you read through that you will see that it isn't radically different than current land lenses behind glass domes with AR coatings. IIRC your tests were done with some acrylic domes which had no AR coatings - hardly a fair apples to apples comparison. I'd really like to see a side by side test between the Ruby 14-24 (or the Nikon 14-24 it is based on) behind our glass dome versus your version with the 15mm Nikonos. If you can get one to the states I think I can arrange some testing with some people that you would agree would be pretty fair minded about it.

I can tell you that the 14-24 Nikon is one of the finest super wide lenses ever made, the combination of the nano coatings, ED glass, and aspheric lenses gives it superb contrast and chromatic aberration correction that was clearly better than the 14mm ultra prime in a side by side projection test where all parties (including the owner of three sets of ultra primes) agreed. We also agreed that sharpness was very close and if anything the 14-24 was slightly sharper.

It is hard for me to believe that this ultramodern design (august 2007) can't be made to perform better underwater than a 20mm housed lens from the early 60s. I think our glass dome may be sufficient to do that, but it may also be time to let it out that I know of at least one full water correction optic (similar to those made by Fathom for video cameras) is currently being developed and near completion for the 14-24 Nikon.

Even with just the glass dome the 14-24 Nikon gives a 96 degree wide angle on 5K and 83 degrees on 4K. For 4K shooters you can simply switch to the tokina 11-16 and get 96 degrees.

Rudi, if you would like to publish MTF, distortions and CA data for whatever underwater optics you are using I would consider it, unlike your post above, interesting and useful.

I do not appreciate your trolling and baseless accusations that I "bashed" Gates. I have never "bashed" Gates and I respect their products. I believe that they have their place in the industry. I clarify that I invited them to publish any evidence that their optical ports resolve more than a few hundred lines because they claim on their website to provide 5k underwater imaging, which I found unbelievable. Gates never responded to my invitations.

I'm exited that for the first time we can resolve and capture 4k underwater.

While I understand Rudi's frustration, I'll let his stand as the "call you out" post, and try to keep my comments on a fairly objective basis.

While defining "bashing" is a bit difficult, I don't think it is a stretch that you were fairly intense in implying that Gates' optics (and presumably mine as well since they are fairly similar in concept and probably execution) were vastly inferior to your cineport AND your upcoming radical improvement for the Epic, and that somehow Gates was virtually lying to people in talking about providing 5K underwater imaging.

And I think we were all a bit floored to find that your hyped and anticipated radical 4K super solution was an almost 50 year old lens that - while it may be slightly better executed in concentricity and nodal point placement since it is a dedicated lens, it is still based on the same dome port optical principles that we have all used for years. (Edit: after some reading, I see that they updated the Nikonos 15 in 1982 about the same time as they updated land version 20mm it is based on. So only 30 year old design.)

As far as Gates speaking of 5K underwater, I don't think that anyone that knows anything about digital imaging thought thet Gates was claiming 5K end result resolution, but simply that they were offering a state of the art housing for the new 5K Red camera.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Mike,

Gates writes: "5K Digital Cinema Underwater Imaging", which should probably read something like "Less than 1k Underwater Imaging using 5K Digital Cinema Camera".

The point I was making is that I questioned and not received an answer about the optical performance of their optical ports underwater and believe that they are far from 5k...in fact very far.

On the other hand I have posted a 1:1 corner crop of an low contrast SFR slanted rectangle filmed with the Epic underwater through 15mm Nikonos lens. The corner CA was less than 1 pixel. The MTF was nearly as good as that of a Master Prime in air. If anyone thinks they can match that, I'd like to see it.