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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

Hey Terry,
Hmmmm, good question. What would a collective of underwater snappers be? Anyone?

SA is great but I tend to enjoy wherever I can get wet and come into contact with the regions signature species as well as the more common and obscure.

It's a way of life.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
AquaVideoRed206 said:
There is an aluminum channel on the bottom which serves as a base as well as holding a weight which can be slid forward and aft to adjust balance.
Click to expand...

hi mike,

thanks for update.

what do you estimate this weight will need to be please?

will we be able easily to adjust the housing so that the centre of gravity is bang-slap in the middle and hence we are able to tilt the housing effortlessly?

cheers,

david
 
Next UW test for RED...

Next UW test for RED...

Headed South to dunk RED in Mexico next week for a series of tests and training dives with Baja Johnny. We are testing drysuit/sharksuit combinations with our rebreathers for diving in cold water and strong current conditions while shooting 4K UW for a Nat Geo special. Unable to say more at this point other than you've never seen this before and it's very cool :-)

We will be using the Aquavideo prototype PVC housing Atlantis with the RED 18-50 lens for this round of testing. We plan to ND down to the sweet spot of the RED lens this time instead of the f11+ range we have shot thus far except for the manatee footage here:

http://www.mammothhd.com/XRED1/REDL16/MHD_REDL16.html

Shot in 2:1 4K 24fps at 320 ASA with no ND at f5.6 with a RED 18-50 lens under overcast rainy conditions in 2-5 foot vis and the results are amazing.

The Aquavideo pro housing for the Arri 8R with external RED LCD housing will be ready for the humpback shoot the first week of March. This will be a cool test to say the least.


Any guesses what this photo is?
 
Shark Expedition diver killed in Bimini (Not Ft. Lauderdale as being reported)

Shark Expedition diver killed in Bimini (Not Ft. Lauderdale as being reported)

Sadly, a 49 year old Austrian diver Markus Groh, died after being bitten by a shark on the first day of a shark expedition on Jim Abernethy's Scuba Adventures dive boat, the Shear Water.

Jim, has been running regular shark expeditions to the Bahamas for several years and there has been a certain level of controversy in the past but this is sure to raise a total shit storm in this area.

I don't really want to weigh in too heavily on the controversy, but I would like to clarify a couple points before too much misinformation is put out.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/state/epaper/2008/02/25/0225shark.html

1) The bubble blowers should raise a glass to Mr. Groh - a fallen comrade - and offer condolences to his family, and friends. And sympathies to the guests and crew who suffered a very traumatic experience as well.

2) Of fifteen stories that came up in google only one headline got it right that it was off of the Bahamas, the other 14 said it was off of Ft. Lauderdale or Miami, when it actually was 50 miles east - just off Bimini.

3) There may be some politics at work - the Bahamas people have left some pretty harsh impressions. Jim was certainly pushing the envelope on these trips, but there may also have been some resentment that he was "stealing the pootie" to paraphrase Cuba Gooding's Jerry Maguire character by operating out of Riviera Beach, FL - so there wasn't much benefit to the Bahamas.

Wetpixel has a pretty good thread on it:
http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/bahamas-shark-bite-aboard-shear-water-official-thread/
 
I'm so sorry to hear this, sorry for the poor fellow who the accident happened to, it will probably cause some problems with us going to Tiger Beach on March 5th. I'll make sure to wear my chain mail suit when I work with the animals now. I'm just wondering if the trip will still go. Saw that apparently the animal involved was a Bull Shark. But I'll be anxious to hear what really happened and not what's written in the newspaper, aired on TV, or written on the internet.

Since our trip is not with Jim on Shearwater, the trip hopefully will still go but there may be ramifications from the incident. Would be a shame if they try to shut the Tiger Shark diving there down. But I'm certain that all concerned will be quite a bit more cautious and not take the animals for granted now. It can be done safely. I'm sure what happened will weigh heavily on everyone's mind and it won't happen again anytime soon.

Will be anxious to read the details and talk with some people who were actually there.
 
Second hand, but pretty reliable hearsay that they had strung out the crates with the chum and the bull shark grabbed a crate, bumped into the diver and then turned and bit diver on the calf. Heard that QuikClot was used, beyond that don't know what first aid was performed.

Just read a reference to the possibility of other cause of death - maybe due to rapid ascent. I doubt if we will know much until coroner's report released and then the rest of the story filters out through the grapevine.

May want to borrow your chain mail suit Frazier - it seems like the sharks generally let go quickly, so chain mail could literally be a lifesaver.

Again, sad for everyone involved.
 
No problem Mike, if you're going call me and you can borrow my chain mail. I've also got a line on some suits if you're interested. Good pricing. I've bought 3 of them in the past and the quality is great. The sharks if they do bite try to let go as soon as possible. They don't like the chain mail at all. Pain in the butt wearing it but it works. But I am going on the trip to Tiger Beach next week unless it gets cancelled due to this accident. I'll be taking the chain mail with me for sure.

I'm sure the guy came up fast, anyone would want to get to the surface fast. Bad situation all around, hopefully it won't affect anyone's shark diving operations and everyone will want to be a bit more cautious.

If you're going over to Stuarts in Nassau, they usually also keep a couple extra sets of chain mail around. I just used his last month when I was there. I'm now considering a helmet to keep my head covered. Better safe that way if you're in the middle of a feeding.

I'm sure that Jim is feeling pretty bad himself. Man, what a bad thing.
 
Sad turn of events. Now watch as the media turns this into a circus. My feelings and condolences go out to the family of the victim.

My observations.
Here in south Africa, as is the case in Jim's trips, people sign a waiver of understanding that diving with large Tiger, and other potentially dangerous sharks, is done so at their own risk. I have seen on so many dives, and it continues to amaze me, the rapidity with which people become complacent when diving with these incredible animals. I have video footage of first time shark divers entering the water with massive concerns only to have them, 20 minutes later, actively finning toward the shark to touch, and stroke the animal, and on occasion hold on to the Dorsal for a quick ride. This should not reflect on the dive operation in a bad light. They do provide cover and safety divers but these guys can't be everywhere at all times. The 'touchy feely' behavior is frowned upon but nonetheless some people do feel an over riding urge to make contact with these animals, literally.

Amongst seasoned shark divers, and its great to see, most individuals show a great respect to the animals but there is also a certain complacency there too. Its a difficult one. I can tell you without any shame that I am cautious at all times when I first get in the water on any given day with any shark species. I personally need some time to see, interact and judge the individual shark(s) before I can suss out their frame of mind etc. Only then do I start filming. A good Tiger shark today can be a bitch to work with tomorrow. I guess they have bad days too!

Nothing comes close to the rush of diving with large predatory animals. By that I don't mean just sharks. A bad day in the office with a Sperm Whale, the largest toothed predator on the planet, almost ended in disaster for me a few years back. However all of these voluntary interactions need to be embarked on with the understanding that the playing fields are not even, especially in the marine environment, the animals definitely call the shots. It's a shame the media World is not as level headed and enlightened as, for the most part, divers and Ocean lovers tend to be who see these animals as the gracious beings they most definitely are.

Again, my condolences to the family.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
White balance actually doesn't do anything. (or gain, or ISO, or gamma, etc.)

White balance actually doesn't do anything. (or gain, or ISO, or gamma, etc.)

ScubaBob asked this over in another thread but I thought it would be useful here.

ScubaBob said:
Another question, I'm a little confused by the references in this thread regarding using the "new paradigm" of shooting RAW (e.g. white balance is not an option - assuming grading will be done later?) and therefore no control for WB is needed. WHAT??? I've have reviewed some of the RAW RED footage (which looks like really stepped down footage) compared to the CC footage, and the color looks great. Will this be a common practice for U/W with RED as well?

MyDivingBlog
Click to expand...

Bob, you can set white balance but it doesn't affect your recording AT ALL, it only affects the output at the time, it doesn't change the recorded data, so it makes no difference whatsoever if you set the white balance or not.

Here's why. (This is for illustrative purposes only - technically it may be a little different) Single chip sensors use what is called a Bayer filter - microscopic RED, Green, and Blue filters over the pixels on the sensor. For example in a group of four pixels you would have two pixels covered by green filters, one covered by red, and one covered by blue. The pixels themselves are only reacting to the BRIGHTNESS of the signal, it is only by knowing the pattern of the filters that you can interpolate and reconstruct the color of the image. In a normal single chip video camera the data would be immediately processed, so whatever white balance you selected (and whatever gamma, colorimetry, saturation, highlight rolloff, etc. that the designers selected-and traditionally this is where the "art" of the engineering came in and why people might like the Ikegami, or Sony, or whatever "look") alters those ratios and it is turned into a color signal and then recorded. Once you convert it to RGB and record it, you are very limited with the amount of change you can make without creating noise or other artifacts.

The "RAW" paradigm says "we don't need to process this data right now - let's just store the RAW BRIGHTNESS data and if we wait, we can make major adjustments later without messing things up". You do all of those calculations after the fact and basically you are only playing with the "look" - you always have the raw data - even when you want to output an NTSC or DV or HDCAM or whatever signal you only basically create a copy.

As far as the white balance setting, it only tells the camera to do a quick "debayer" to show a color signal on the LCD/Viewfinder or on the live camera output - but the harddrive or CF card is still just recording the RAW BRIGHTNESS data. It also records the white balance number as METADATA - i.e. just a text code similar to when you look at your digital still photos and if you hit the INFO button it tells you that you shot at F3.5, 1/125 of a second, on Feb 25 at 1:25 PM. But again, that just allows you to set your software to default to that setting when it comes up on your computer screen.

Bottom line is that even though we may give you a white balance control on the housing - IT HAS NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER ON YOUR RECORDING.

The same is true of other things that you might normally set on on your Z1, HVX200, EX1, HV20, etc. where you have picture profiles so you can choose settings for GAIN, colorimetry, "filmlook" GAMMA, white balance, knee setting (highlight rolloff), saturation, black stretch, etc. NONE OF THOSE THINGS AFFECT YOUR RED "RAW" RECORDING - all of that is done in post processing (REDALERT, REDCINE, FINAL CUT, SCRATCH, ETC.)

It does mean that your footage kind of looks like crap on the computer until you do at least some processing - curves and such - in REDALERT or REDCINE.

Besides the fact that people that are good with color processing can really make your footage look great, it also means your footage can actually get better looking over time as guys like Graeme Nattress and all the other gurus figure out improved algorithms for debayering, noise processing, etc..

In other words, footage that Sharkguy shot last September - even if he had it color graded by a top colorist and it looks great now - could actually get better looking, in terms of noise, sharpness, or color separation, later this year if RED or someone else comes up with a better debayering algorithm.
 
Major testing of 4K REDCODE underwater coming up next week. Plan on using build 14, 4k, 16:9 RC28 29.97fps as the project setting.

Built a custom slip on ND filter ring for the Arri 8R and plan to shoot native 320 ASA in the 5.6-8 sweet spot for this lens in clear water with big animals under full sun in depths less than 20 feet exposing for highlights with histogram display on LCD.

Should be very informative after reviewing the footage projected in 4K and the also downrezzed to HQ 1080p prores on the cinetal. Will post findings later the week of March 17th. Also curious to test a cmyk print out of a 4k TIFF frame grab.

Sharky
 
sharkguy said:
4) PORTS
The beautiful super wide SMP44 optics on the front that maximize the Nikon 104 degree @17mm lens optics and focal lengths. 4K RAW CMOS sensor will see everything UW.
Click to expand...

Has anybody tried this ? ie: the SWP44 in front of the Nikon 17-35/2.8 ? I've never owned a SWP44, but I have been suggesting to Mark for some time that this might be an option ... my concern is that the Nikon 17-35 might not close focus enough.
Options :
- shim out the Nikon 17-35/2.8 so that it can use SWP44 (to let it achieve close focus)
- the RED 18-50, which does have CF ability, might also work 'out-of-the-box'

Keep us posted ... :umm:

With regards to manual control of the newer Nikon lenses (eg : the fantastic new 14-21/2.8) there might be a way of controlling the aperture via the aperture actuator level on the back of the lens ... arghhh ... my technician is awaiting the arrival of my RED (as I am). Why none of the Nikon 'dumb' mount solutions have considered incorporated this I do not know (two versions could be provided, one dumb, one with this control ?).
Has anybody else considered this ? (yes, I know Birger will do it for us (in 2020 !) ... but hey, like others ... I'd like get going eh !

Cheers
 
h2opixels said:
Has anybody tried this ? ie: the SWP44 in front of the Nikon 17-35/2.8 ? I've never owned a SWP44, but I have been suggesting to Mark for some time that this might be an option ... my concern is that the Nikon 17-35 might not close focus enough.
Options :
- shim out the Nikon 17-35/2.8 so that it can use SWP44 (to let it achieve close focus)
- the RED 18-50, which does have CF ability, might also work 'out-of-the-box'

Keep us posted ... :umm:

With regards to manual control of the newer Nikon lenses (eg : the fantastic new 14-21/2.8) there might be a way of controlling the aperture via the aperture actuator level on the back of the lens ... arghhh ... my technician is awaiting the arrival of my RED (as I am). Why none of the Nikon 'dumb' mount solutions have considered incorporated this I do not know (two versions could be provided, one dumb, one with this control ?).
Has anybody else considered this ? (yes, I know Birger will do it for us (in 2020 !) ... but hey, like others ... I'd like get going eh !

Cheers
Click to expand...

If the SWP44 is the fathom port. It might make good sense if you were already owned it like Mark (Camdiver) and you had the 18-50 and were planning to stick with PL mount. However, the Fathom port is basically an underwater wide converter for converting lenses that are not wide enough like the fixed lenses on a Z1/HVX200.

But even a perfect wide converter only preserves the quality of the prime optic. It is extremely unlikely the Fathom/whatever combination would be better than a direct lens like the 10-22 Canon or 12-24 Nikon behind a good dome port, and might not be as good. And again, if you stuck with PL you would still probably be better off buying a used Zeiss 10mm or 12mm (8-10K) or one of the new russian 9.8mm whenever it is available (supposedly $5-6K) and use it behind a dome.
 
Well, I will have both the 18-50mm, in my accessories order and the SWP44 currently attached to my Gates Z1 housing so if anyone out there wants to supply a test housing we can see if it will work. I have a potential buyer for all of the HDV gear I currently own but I also have Domes and spare domes for the Gates. I might be planing to get a second hand HVX200 as a backup cam but have to wait and see what happens with the coffers. First is to get RED and all accessories sorted and then go from there.
 
CamDiver said:
Well, I will have both the 18-50mm, in my accessories order and the SWP44 currently attached to my Gates Z1 housing so if anyone out there wants to supply a test housing we can see if it will work. I have a potential buyer for all of the HDV gear I currently own but I also have Domes and spare domes for the Gates. I might be planing to get a second hand HVX200 as a backup cam but have to wait and see what happens with the coffers. First is to get RED and all accessories sorted and then go from there.
Click to expand...

Mark:

I could probably mate it to either the Honolulu (or Atantis) prototype housing that was setup for the RED 18-50 but would have to get the SWP44 from you and then some specs on the mount (bayonet?) either by measurement or from Paul Remijan ? at Fathom.
 
Mike,
My RED, and I, will be in California in three months. How long would you need the SWP44 and where are you based? I could bring the SWP44 as I may also be selling all of my HDV gear (except the SWP44, maybe).

Cheers,
Mark.
 
CamDiver said:
Mike,
My RED, and I, will be in California in three months. How long would you need the SWP44 and where are you based? I could bring the SWP44 as I may also be selling all of my HDV gear (except the SWP44, maybe).

Cheers,
Mark.
Click to expand...

I'm in Ft. Lauderdale (weston is a suburb about 14 miles west of the FLL airport - 25 miles NW of Miami International)

2265 Columbia
Weston, FL 33326

It is probably an all day project to make a SWP44 frontplate. But it depends a little on getting the bayonet info from Fathom and then fitting a day into the rest of the stuff going on. I would probably want to have it for a week or two.
 
Well let's see if we can make it happen? 117 degree FOV and I have the sucker already. It would be very interesting to see.

I will let you know of my movements as time gets closer.

Cheers,
Mark.
 
You may want to look for a Canon 14mm PL conversion

You may want to look for a Canon 14mm PL conversion

CamDiver said:
Guys,
I've made the decision to go PL mount with my system and not with the Birger / Canon deal. That said I'm looking around for a very good PL dedicated Macro lens somewhere around the 100 - 135mm mark. I am one of those feared 'Noobians' with this tech so rip gently.

Thus far lens wise I am going for the Peleng 8mm, a Red 18-50mm and have a Tamron f2.8 90mm on the way. I will get that lens retrofitted with a PL Mount in the U.K. The Peleng will be used sparingly maybe within shipwrecks and fresh water mountain lakes. The 18-50mm a general work horse lense and the Tamron as one solution to a macro app. I want to get real close options too without the need for achromatic diopters etc so please fire away any great glass you may think could work.
Click to expand...


You may want to keep an eye out for a 14mm Canon pl mount conversion as it is probably the most cost effective underwater wide lens at about 90 degrees (your 18mm RED is only about 65 degrees). Otherwise you start getting into the Zeiss 10s and 12s at 10K to 15K used or the 8R at 30K.

The 18 RED is about the same wide angle as your Z1 with no conversion so if the fathom can be made to work well it would give the same coverage you have been getting. It would be even more with a 14mm. The big issue will be if the Fathom can be made to work with the physically larger lenses like the 18-50 and such - I suspect that is going to be the problem. (The F900 Amphibicam uses a similar type of optic but is a combination of plastic and glass because of these size issues.) You get into some huge (read very heavy/very expensive) glass elements when you convert larger lenses.

As you can see from all these factors, there's a reason I've been praying to the Birger gods.

I'm up for investigating the Fathom option. It would be helpful if you can post a picture of the back/bayonet end of the fathom port and maybe an approximate measurement of the rear size.
 
Hi all,
I am newbye in underwater shooting but I am doing a short film as DOP in the south coast of spain, and we are going to be 3 to 4 meters down the water with the RED. I don´t need to change the focal or the T-stop, i will do that in the surface.
I will like to know what models of "fishbowl"(thats how we call them in spain) will we need for the RED. Could you give me a couple of examples. Do you know if you see easy to adaptate any from S16 or 35mm?
I am going to be shooting that a week and a half from now and i am a little bit nervous because nobody has done it yet in Spain so there is nobody to ask to and there is not enough money to hire an expert. (thanks for your time)
Jon Corcuera
 
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