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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Underwater Bubble Blowin' Users Group

Hi AquaVideoRed206: I guess it is all down to the individual project at hand. In many productions the percentage of time spent at 107.5 degrees as opposed to say 60 or 80 would of course be anyone's guess. For the establishing shots of course we all wanna get as wide as possible. If we are fortunate enough to be making a doco on Whalesharks, Blue Whales, Mantas or anything equally massive then yes we will need that almost fisheye AOV. For the most part in most documentaries I motion that the viewer is presented with portraiture and close ups to explain the story of the subject, the behavior, the rituals etc. All sequences where details would be lost if set too wide. This of course is all based on personal experience. It is for this reasoning that I will potentially be looking to use the 17/35mm pretty much as the most frequent of glass on my RED.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
Aquavideo splashcam...

Aquavideo splashcam...

Thanks aquavideo206 for your great posts.

I wonder if the Nikon 14mm lens might be a good solution for a "splash cam" system for water work less than 10m like surfing etc. I think the coverage would be similar to the Nikonos 15mm on the red one, no?
 
Andrew said:
Where did you find ACL housing of red color? any links?
Click to expand...

Sorry no links - I bought the ACL housing from a private party way back when before hi-8 even. Shot segments for Silk Stalkings and MOW's as well as Nat History w/a schneider 10mm. Very well made in the 60's by the "Flipper" guy whose name i don't recall (Jordan Klein maybe?) http://www.jordanklein.com/

It's kinda' red/orange...

I might put it up for sale if I decide to go another route...

Cool post on the cinemarine BTW
 
budget

budget

Any idea what budget, one have to have, to take RED underwater and have comfortable good equipment?
Excluding camera and lens, just underwater specific.
I love cave diving so good light is a must I think?
Andrew
Click to expand...

It would say the range is $2k to $7K for the housing dependent on depth rating. If we can convince aquavideo206 to make an interchangeable port sytem housing from aluminum tubing I think everyone would be stoked.

A port for Nikon lenses: 55mm macro, 17-35mm zoom and the 14mm?

Maybe we can get aquavideo approved by Jarred as a red vendor then set up a red one underwater housing refundable deposit for an Aquavideo "liquidred housing system so the design can move forward?

camdiver has good recommendations on lighting systems
 
Lighting options ........ no compromise.

Lighting options ........ no compromise.

I paid $3,890 for the basic block Gates housing for the Z1U as a potential gauge. With so few, to begin with, potential clients I feel that we will not be looking at a unit for less than $4,000. Thats to start with, then the individual shooter, depending on his or her pocket depth will then have to deck out with external monitors, lenses above and beyond those which the housing manufacturer builds their initial offering. Then of course, and we hear it everywhere so no reason for that to be different underwater, lighting.

We can compromise on most things, housings which may not be the Rolls Royce of options but work to our demands, lenses which may not be the latest and greatest Cooke primes, but work to our demands. However for lighting, sorry Jack but we should not be looking to compromise in this department in any way. In fact I'd suggest saving on lenses, housings, monitors etc if that means you could buy very nice underwater lighting options.

And those options are (amongst others):
Halcyon Apollo: A 200w HMI Diver Portable unit but no control over power setting. I've not been able to reach my contact there for the past few days as these units are brand new this year so I was wanting to send out a bit more info but as yet unavailable:
Price expected to be around: $6000 per unit


The Heliumizer option. 200w HMI Diver Portable unit which can be dialled down to extend burn time. Hand made by a Finnish cave diver these lights have had good reviews. I have not used them but they seem to be a very nice contender:
http://personal.inet.fi/yritys/innovanet/video_light.htm
Price: 4,600 Euro (can't find the damned Euro symbol on this keyboard).

The Nuytco "NewtLite" - From the company that bought us the deep diving 'NewtSuit'. This unit is again a 200w HMI option with power reduction feature.
http://nuytco.com/products/lights.shtml
Price: $5800 per unit.

And last but not least:
Pacific Visions Inc. PV200 modular designed 200W Diver Portable HMI light. Hand made by one of the great late Jacques Yves Cousteau's cinematographers Louis Prezelin.
http://www.pacificvisionsinc.com/pv200 light/pv200light.html
Price: $7,500 is the normal cost of these units but the company is having a sale for a limited time so units can currently be had for the bargain price of $6,450 per unit.

As you can see, lighting underwater is not cheap but it should not be shrugged in anyway. In fact with water absorbing light at a much greater rate than air we need more light to achieve similar results on land, I'm talking about color rendition etc.

Apart from those above which I listed you could also opt for surface supplied lighting but then you are really limited to your range which will be dictated by the length of your lighting cables etc. I have a 1200w (two times 600w) surface supplied system with 300ft of line and whilst it is a very nice option to have it is very cumbersome, takes a lot of maintaining, as anything underwater related does, and is just horrendous to work with unless the shot is nailed down with regards to model choreography and or lighting angles etc. This option is not cheap: $15,000 but worth its weight in gold.

Hope this helps,
Mark.
 
AquaVideoRed206 said:
... So I think we want to concentrate on getting the Canon or Nikon SLR lenses to work ...
Click to expand...

Hello AquaVideo,

Agreed.

Also agree that we should start off with off-the-shelf dome ports (Aquatica, Ikelite, Subal, Seacam ... whatever makes sense in terms of quality/cost) for enabling manual Nikkor wide angles (or others subject to an iris control mechanism). After all, the vast majority of these commercially available domes are made for these very lenses.

My requirement is not for a bullet proof aluminum housing (al al Gates) since most of my work is shallow / water interface stuff, so the kind of unit you produce would be fine in my case.

My current view would be to have the front bulkhead of the housing be the 'central focus point' for the housing, clearly hosting the port, plus the mount keeping the RED in register with the optics. The rest of the housing is a shell hosting the other relevant controls. (BTW : I hope the core controls will be on the body and not driven by some menu / sub-menu set of dialogs ...)

I'm sure that a carefully set up dome port system will perform adequately. My Ivanoff quest is purely to see IF I/we can squeeze better performance out of the lense(s). I base this on my experience from my SWC days, the output of which was outstanding.
In comparison, for domes, I cannot always say the story has been this consistent.

The Nikonos 15mm has always been my reference point, outstanding underwater optic (on a RED this will be the equivalent of approx 30mm on a 35mm-SLR). As it is just for u/w use (will not focus in air) it's of limited value to me personally.

As for the SWP44, I'm not suggesting it's 'the' answer. But, if you currently own one, it would be the first things I'd test on the RED equipped with a suitable lens. I've not heard a single bad report about the SWP44.
Sure, it is aimed at setups with integrated lenses, but if it does the business ... keep it and get some nice clean/sharp 4k output !

As for macro, there is no real technical challenge for the optics (other than focusing, which by all accounts, there is a novel solution built in the RED).

Roll on April 2007 (ish) ... can't wait to get some RED body measurements
 
Mark and Sharky, thanks for all the info, I really appreciate.
I would like to go to Mexico where I like the caves the most.
Dos Ojos
Nahoch Na Chich
http://www.dir-mexico.com/photo.htm
http://www.clownfish.nu/photo.asp?SlideShow=2&SlideNr=1
Look at all these pictures, non of them in high-res but still, once you have seen it only once you will know what I am talking about.

I am thinking to get RED down there, and capture the beauty of this crystal clear waters.
Visibility in the caves is more then 300 meters!
And most of all I like how Sunrays are playing in crystal clear waters of the large football field size caves
entering the cave from far above.
I am hooked on it and returning there again and again.
Maybe once I capture it in 4K I will cut my trips there by half:-)
Looks like I will need some help down there.......

Andrew
 
Andrew,

I've got three rebreathers and a "Liquidred" camera system in development. Count me in for the Mexico cenotes expedition. We will need Mark's incredible lighting gear - maybe he'll join us to help gaff and shoot second camera.
 
Hey David,
I will only be getting rid of the SWP44 IF we can't find a way to adapt it for use with RED. Its a sweet piece of glass as you well know. I'm just amazed at the performance of it. Mind you I'm diving with it almost everyday so now three months after its acquisition I need to send it back to get it re-coated. Such is life.

sharkguy, love to be in on that project. I do have some other things in the REDline so will have to put other stuff on hold for a while. Mind you with cavern exploration I guess the 7P's come into play.

Prior Planning and Preparation Prevent a Piss Poor Performance.

It would take a while to plan everything out so would love to get in on something like that. Not CCR trained though! Open Circuit?

Cheers,
Mark.
 
Mark, Sharky, great news!
Will be pleasure to get you both on this expedition.
With two REDs rolling at the same time we can get some great walk-through scene shots (don't know the exact name of this shot is?).
Sharky did you use the rebreather in Cave/Cavern environment before?

Andrew
 
AquaVideo checks in re housing price

AquaVideo checks in re housing price

Ken:

It was nice talking to you the other day. I will try to expand on what we talked about re: pricing and getting setup with Jarred as vendor. I am scrambling to get housings for the HVR-V1 for a customer in Jordan and an HVX200 housing with Firestore for a customer picking it up early next week so I will be pretty tied up for the next few days - after that I can flesh out the details. But your ballpark numbers are about right. I figured about $2000-2500 for a PVC normal aquavideo-style housing with flat acrylic ports - depending on what we have to do re: gears or friction style controls for focus and iris. As I told you, we don't do a lot with gears as the video cameras generally have servo controllable focus, iris, and zoom, but some of the port options have that built in and there is also a guy here in Florida that does a lot of that stuff and may help me out with it. Figure about$3000 - $4000 for the same type with interchangeable ports. Either would be rated at least for 175 ft. or more. (If someone really wants just a surf type we could use 1/2" plates to lighten it up but would reduce the rating to 60ft. or so.)

I figured about $5000 - 6000 for the aluminum cylindrical style that we discussed with interchangeable Aquatica ports and the end plates would be thicker. The aluminum would be same basic style (we can talk about handle options as the aluminum would have a little more flexibility) This would be rated to at least 300ft but beyond that I have to see what the rating for the ports are and what other options for ports would be. The housing itself would be capable of 400 - 500 feet and I have made a few for the crazies here in florida that do those type dives. We just used the thick end plates with no dome - they give up some optical quality but it usually isn't as critical on the subjects at those depths. Domes or Ivanoffs for that depth might get really expensive. (PS re: crazies - no insult intended, it's just MHCO - that's my humble clinical opinion that you 300 ft+ guys are crazy! LOL)

To see an example of the normal AquaVideo PVC type housing you can look at this pdf file:
http://www.aquavideo.com/pdfs/SonyHDRFX7HVRV1Housing.pdf

As we discussed, the PVC turn around time would be just a few weeks - our normal turnaround for other housings for new cameras. We were figuring 4-6 weeks for the aluminum. Beyond that, with a few weeks more lead time we can make a shaped aluminum housing - more like the Varicam housing you can see here:

http://www.aquavideo.com/pdfs/Varicam housing.pdf

but the cost would go up by 50% or more.



sharkguy said:
It would say the range is $2k to $7K for the housing dependent on depth rating. If we can convince aquavideo206 to make an interchangeable port sytem housing from aluminum tubing I think everyone would be stoked.

A port for Nikon lenses: 55mm macro, 17-35mm zoom and the 14mm?

Maybe we can get aquavideo approved by Jarred as a red vendor then set up a red one underwater housing refundable deposit for an Aquavideo "liquidred housing system so the design can move forward?

camdiver has good recommendations on lighting systems
Click to expand...
 
Re: Nikonos 15, domes, SWP44

Re: Nikonos 15, domes, SWP44

Re: the Nikonos 15. As a historical note many people may not be aware that the 15 is really a 20mm Nikon with a dome port - when it was introduced they called it a 15 because it gave the same angle of view as a 15 did with a flat port - about all that was available in those early days. I believe they just extended the distance from the film plane to compensate for the very tight dome. (A dome port refocuses the image when it touches water - infinity is 3 times the radius of the dome in front of the dome (everything else is progressively closer on a logarithmic scale) e.g. infinity is 9 inches in front of the dome for a 6" diameter dome port, 12 inches for an 8" diameter dome. You can achieve that close focus by shimming the lens or by using a close up lens - i.e. a +3 or +4 diopter for that 6" dome. Modern prosumer video cameras like the Sony Z1 or V1 don't have to use a diopter because they can coordinate the movement of the Zoom and focus elements to achieve macro close focus even part way through the zoom range.

I agree that if you have an SWP44 you should keep it as it will probably work pretty well, however if you don't have it already you are probably better off spending that money on a used 10 or 12mm prime pl mount lens. (I'm a Century dealer so when I get a free moment I will ask them whatever happened to the old 9.5mm kinoptic - I don't see anything listed on their current literature) Again if one of the Digital type Canon EF-S 10-22 or Nikon DX 12-24 can be made to work it would be a wonderful inexpensive option.

h2opixels said:
Hello AquaVideo,

Agreed.

Also agree that we should start off with off-the-shelf dome ports (Aquatica, Ikelite, Subal, Seacam ... whatever makes sense in terms of quality/cost) for enabling manual Nikkor wide angles (or others subject to an iris control mechanism). After all, the vast majority of these commercially available domes are made for these very lenses.

In comparison, for domes, I cannot always say the story has been this consistent.

The Nikonos 15mm has always been my reference point, outstanding underwater optic (on a RED this will be the equivalent of approx 30mm on a 35mm-SLR). As it is just for u/w use (will not focus in air) it's of limited value to me personally.

As for the SWP44, I'm not suggesting it's 'the' answer. But, if you currently own one, it would be the first things I'd test on the RED equipped with a suitable lens. I've not heard a single bad report about the SWP44.
Sure, it is aimed at setups with integrated lenses, but if it does the business ... keep it and get some nice clean/sharp 4k output !

As for macro, there is no real technical challenge for the optics (other than focusing, which by all accounts, there is a novel solution built in the RED).

Roll on April 2007 (ish) ... can't wait to get some RED body measurements
Click to expand...
 
Andrew said:
Mark, Sharky, great news!
Will be pleasure to get you both on this expedition.
With two REDs rolling at the same time we can get some great walk-through scene shots (don't know the exact name of this shot is?).
Sharky did you use the rebreather in Cave/Cavern environment before?

Andrew
Click to expand...

Shot name: underwater glidecam shot - $100 fins instead of $$$$rigs/harnesses-hehe.

I was not one of the amazing wakulla (sp?) cis-lunar cave guys - but yes, I have shot in caves and caverns with rebreathers.
I was doing open water diving with the beta versions of the cis-lunar in '97 (Photo is from Alcyon mount, Cocos Island 30+meters) before taking delivery of Cis-Lunar MK V ser#3. This rig is still my primary choice for all underwater work.
 
Wow Mike,

Nice job on the varicam housing! That is an elegant and simple design with what looks like a good optical solution for the Fujinon.

It will be interesting to see if RED will require all presets, for frame rate etc, before closing the housing or ????
 
Sharky, just asking since it is bit tight in few places down there to get to some caves.
But as Mark said as per 7P rule we will go once or twice in there to check all including clearances and we take some high res still pictures first, only then, next day, we go down there with the cams.

Andrew
 
I have done Cavern exploration in an unchartered system in the Canary Islands. I was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (Spain Office) for the gig and was paid by the Finnish National TV station, YLE. They were after the images of an endemic blind crab. The whole mapping and line laying was carried out by nationally recognized (Spanish) cave diver / instructor / world record holder, Uri Belen. That said I am not cavern certified but am more than comfortable anywhere with a reg in my mouth.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
Mark, I read all about you and Sharky already, very impressive!
I use OceanReef full face masks for its excellent underwater communication capability.
http://www.oceanreefgroup.com/pdf/oceanreef2007catalogfinal.pdf
and this is good as well:
http://www.oceanicworldwide.com/img/p_computers_datamask1.jpg

Configuration has only two hoses, one main supply hose the second hose for common, BCE and spare reg. All the rest are transmitters, or in mask readouts.
Let you get through tight places down there and less things to get caught on.
OceanReef has even camera receiver so you can record live underwater communication.

Andrew
 
No one can hear you scream at 500 feet...

No one can hear you scream at 500 feet...

AquaVideoRed206 said:
(PS re: crazies - no insult intended, it's just MHCO - that's my humble clinical opinion that you 300 ft+ guys are crazy! LOL)
Click to expand...

None taken, it is very dangerous. I do it in pursuit of great stories and images. The real scary thing about 300+ ft dives it that it feels just like being in 30 ft unless of course something goes wrong - there is no direct ascent option. I have had only one malfunction at depth in ten years with the cis-lunar system at depth - o-ring failure on sensor pod. Switched to open circuit bail out and 90 minutes of deco later back on deck safely.

The cool thing about rebreathers in caves is no percolation from exhaust. Pristine visibility is maintained. Well worth the cost for the image results.
 
Red underwater shooter expedition...

Red underwater shooter expedition...

ATTN all RED U/W shooters:

I think it would be a blast to get a big animal expedition together for an underwater RED shootout. I realize we are all spread out around the globe and delivery dates are soft for the camera.

That said I think the following options are doable and with 4-6 of us we can get our own boat/accommodations in most cases with operators I have worked with before:

October '07 right whales in Patagonia

November '07 Orcas in Norway

Feb '08 Humpbacks at Silverbanks

March '08 Africa Sharks - tigers/whites/raggies and whale sharks

April '08 Spotted dolphins Bahama Banks

Would be a real blast,

Sharky
 
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