Underwater Bubble Blowin' Users Group

[cinepost35]

Looks like the Bahamas... Great place to shoot Humpbacks. Thanks for sharing your bts pics and setup. Nice simple setup.

 

[Mark Thorpe]

These photos I post for my mates Mark (Camdiver) and Baja Johnny. They really hate my wetsuit so I thought I'd rub it in with the UW 4K camera system working the humpback whales. The whales seemed to like my suit guys

Well that's all that matters mate. Keep pushing that envelope. I also know some big fish around these parts that will lurv our 'Yum Yum Yellow' suit. Don't worry, I'll make sure I get the shredding ceremony on film.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Seems like there are some brighter folk on this forum re lens and dome performance than I am so I'll only add a frame grab from a recent 8R lens shoot as an example. I would guess that the Birger with the Canon 10-22 is going to be a great solution for many of us.

If going PL primes the Zeiss/Arri 8 - 18mm lenses are proven work horses UW. I have shot them all. The 8R is by far my favorite. This lens, behind an Aquatica 8" dome on an Aquavideo housing, enabled me to get an underwater RED 4K sequence of 8 humpback whales during a courtship event. Pretty unbelievable. I have attached a low rez frame grab.

If you look closely there are 6 males in the frame grab taken from the beginning of the shot. The entire sequence is made possible by the 8R lens and Mike Hasting's incredible help in getting the housing ready for the trip.

BTW - this is an ungraded frame grab straight out of RED ALERT - no color correction etc. The graded stuff played in proress 422 is SWEET...

Indeed looks like a nice encounter.

However, picture quality does not exceed average DV footage; very poor contrast and I can't see more than 150 maybe 200 lines of vertical resolution there. Nothing personal, but I think your frame grab well ilustrates my point: even the best lens can be severely compromised underwater.

Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

 

[Pawel Achtel]

The Fathoms SWP44 was good enough for the BBC throughout their blue chip productions Blue Planet and Planet Earth. It was also good enough for Doug Allan in Tonga whilst filming Humpbacks. I've had zero reason to question the performance of mine throughout the two years I have used it.

Cheers,
Mark.

Glad it works for you, Doug and the BBC.

I took liberty to attach some frame grabs form one of the productions that you mentioned for ilustrative purpose. I think they need no comment.

Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

Fine Print: The attached frames are copyright BBC. They have been used here for review purpose only.

 

[Ken Corben]

Sorry I wasn't clearer in my post re resolution. Pawel is absolutely right about the apparent picture quality from the posted frame grab - my bad - this is user error. Believe me, it is definitely not the camera or len's image quality I'm showing. The posted frame grab is an export of an ungraded 4K RAW frame from RED ALERT to a TIFF that is then opened in photoshop where I change it to 8 bit then resize to a max 1024 pixels and save as a low quality jpg for posting here on reduser. I do not know the math but that is an exponential decrease in resolution to say the least. I did not do any of the color correction, sharpening, contrast manipulation or other image control options of the 4K RAW footage. This is a RAW image straight out of the camera. So image quality was not my intent nor do I profess to be the post guru on how to do this.

Just wanted to share what the 8R covers rectilinearly behind an 8" dome at f5.6 with a hyperfocal distance setting and get any input from Pawel, John (GATES), Mike (Aquavideo) and the other users here that know the lens theories better than I. I can say that any other lens, even the Zeiss 10mm, would not have captured all 8 of the humpback whales underwater in one frame during this courtship event from as close as I was able to get, i.e., minimizing water column between subject and lens.

BTW - A 4K TIFF file of a frame grab is > 45 mb and can not be hosted on reduser or I would have done so for better analysis. If any one has an idea on how to do this so we can all get a look at a true underwater 4K frame grab let me know and I'll provide one.

Indeed looks like a nice encounter.

However, picture quality does not exceed average DV footage; very poor contrast and I can't see more than 150 maybe 200 lines of vertical resolution there. Nothing personal, but I think your frame grab well ilustrates my point: even the best lens can be severely compromised underwater.

Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

 

[Ken Corben]

Well that's all that matters mate. Keep pushing that envelope. I also know some big fish around these parts that will lurv our 'Yum Yum Yellow' suit. Don't worry, I'll make sure I get the shredding ceremony on film.

Cheers,
Mark.

Mark - I said I was cheap but I didn't say I was retarded. My shark gear is all black. Sorry to cheat you out of a great shot but shooting 4K tigers with you will not be in a yellow armed suit. Good to know you think like a true pro though

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Glad it works for you, Doug and the BBC.

I took liberty to attach some frame grabs form one of the productions that you mentioned for ilustrative purpose. I think they need no comment.
Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

The first pull of a Basking shark is understandably challenging due simply to the environmental conditions. Not known to hang out in clear tropical water I motion that any lens will have a difficult time in achieving the image quality that you so heavily attribute to your work. For the second grab I cannot believe that this is shot with an SWP44 for the reason that the reflection in the image is not conducive to any of the flip filter holder charcteristics, in color or diameter, of the Gates Z1 Housing. We all know that if a scene is played out in challenging conditions it is the value to the scientific world which far outweighs the image quality. If this was Hollywood it would be different. Natural History can be a bitch at times.

Having visited your web site I am obviously in awe of your work. Having, quote, "owned and has been using cinema-grade high definition cameras underwater since 2001 - long before the BBC even knew what an HDCAM camera was!" I can only aspire to attaining similar success as yourself. I look forward with haste to your continued, and valued, feedback.

Regards,
Mark.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Having visited your web site I am obviously in awe of your work. Having, quote, "owned and has been using cinema-grade high definition cameras underwater since 2001 - long before the BBC even knew what an HDCAM camera was!" I can only aspire to attaining similar success as yourself. I look forward with haste to your continued, and valued, feedback.

Thanks Mark.

It was actually a very funny story at the expense of one (very well known) person from Bristol, who can be named :bleh:, but I just chose not to :matrix:

This was in late 2002 and went something like this:

Pawel: I just came back from a scientific expedition to Raja Ampat Islands. The reefs we found are the richest in the World. We found both the biggest diversity of corals and fishes. We also found several new species. I shot extensive amount of footage in HDCAM format there. Would this be of interest?

The Producer: Sure. What was that format, again? I didn't catch that.

Pawel: HDCAM

The Producer: Pardon me, can you spell this for me?

Pawel: H-D-C-A-M

The Producer: Er, Ok, Whatever, Can you please transfer it to Super 16 so we could have a look at it here?

Pawel: Sorry, I think I got wrong phone number. (or something to this effect)

The moral is: No need to rush with your DPX files to Bristol anytime soon.

Good luck with the whales.

Cheers,

Pawel
www.achtel.com

 

[GATES]

DEEP RED Port Strategy

DEEP RED Port Strategy

Good day,

Some comments and to better articulate the port strategy for DEEP RED:

* Gates' philosophy is to provide the underwater cameraman with the tools needed for the job. This extends to offering various ports from which to choose to suit your production requirements/shooting conditions/personal style. If you prefer a wide lens behind a dome port, great. If a Super Wide is your choice, we have that too.

* DEEP RED will have a shell section between port and main housing that will change depending on your lens of choice. This means we can accommodate a wide variety of lenses and position the Dome Port at the optimal location for that lens.

* The first targeted lenses are the RED 18-50, Canon 10-22/Birger and Nikon 14-24/Birger. Other lens support will follow depending on popularity. On a custom basis we will support individual, 'one off' lenses in DEEP RED.

J-

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Thanks for clarifying that John.

Cheers,
Mark.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Lots of stuff going on.

Lots of stuff going on.

For a month there were very few posts on the Bubble blowers, so I switch from DSL to Cable internet and lose the internet for the weekend, come back and there's 3 pages! Seems like underwater lens ports create almost endless debate.

Strictly speaking Pawel is correct in most of the factual things he says regarding dome ports even though I think he is a little harsh in his opinions about it.

The facts are that the dome in contact with water creates a curved field much like that of a diopter-type close up lens - which is one reason using diopters to compensate for the refocusing of the dome isn't as bad as it might otherwise be. Since it is a curved field, if you use a truly rectilinear lens and take a picture of a flat chart your corners will be out of focus if you don't have sufficient depth of field. The good news is that we generally use the widest available lens to reduce the amount of water between lens and subject and the other characteristic of extreme wide lenses is extreme depth of field - so quite often what might otherwise be out of focus, will be in focus because of depth of field - often even wide open or nearly wide open, but definitely as you get to higher F-stops.

The other factor is that you are rarely shooting a flat field subject. Often you are shooting an animal or person in the open where the corners are mostly just water so you can't notice it. Even when shooting a macro subject like an anemone, where you fill the frame, it is hard to tell if the corner softness is a curved field issue or just out of focus due to shallow DOF. So in most cases even if you don't have perfect edge to edge focus your eye tends to gravitate to the center, in focus, part - much more so in underwater than in regular movies.

The truth of it is that it all varies based on the dome size, the particular lens used, the position of the lens in the dome etc. But generally speaking a six to eight inch dome with a good wide angle lens placed reasonably close to the optimum position in the dome (and there is a pretty decent tolerance for being off) will provide excellent results - and have been providing excellent results for many, many years of shooting with high end still photography, 35mm motion picture photography, HDCam, Varicam, HDV, etc.

As Gates has pointed out, the Fathom style port is geared most closely to the prosumer size and style of lenses. For the most part any type of optic beyond the dome port is going to need to be fairly closely designed to a particular lens, is going to need to be physically fairly large for lenses designed for an S35 sensor, and thus - even just in terms of the grinding of large glass elements - will be quite expensive - not to mention the extensive design work that would go into it. So for example if you accept that the Arri 8R is the best available superwide optic for underwater work (which I believe it is) - a specialized underwater optic port would probably have to be priced in the $20K to $30K range if you made say 25 units, with a $150K+ development budget. If someone wants to fund that project, I will pursue it. (my brother is a senior manager in the Electro-optical division of Raytheon and can probably get us access to the worlds finest optical engineers, even beyond the Zeiss people). But I doubt if it makes much sense since you are still likely only to get a slight increase over using the 8R behind a dome port. And even the jump between using still camera lenses like the 10-22 to the 8R is probably not justifiable for most people - since the 10-22 or similar lenses are likely to give results on a par or better than we have been seeing in high end movie or still photography over the last 30 years. A Fathom type optic might be feasible for something fairly small like a still zoom or the RED 18-50 but the added cost of even the smaller Fathom ports is $5K or so and probably would be better spent getting a used Zeiss 12mm.

IMHO the hierarchy is:

1) HDV-type systems behind dome
2) HDV-type systems behind Fathom type optic
3) HDCAM & Varicam systems with 5.5 mm Fuji/Canon HD lens behind dome
4) HDCAM & Varicam systems with 4.7 mm Fuji/Canon HD lens behind dome
5) (maybe) HDCAM & Varicam systems with 4.7 mm behind amphibicam type optic. I say maybe because I haven't seen direct comparison evidence that it is truly better than item 4.
5/6) older pl mount lenses like kinoptic on a RED behind dome
7) 10-22 EF-S with birger mount behind dome
8) (maybe) 14mm prime on birger behind dome
9) Hopefully someday 9 or 10mm prime still lens on Birger behind dome
10) Zeiss 10 or 12mm pl mount behind dome (10mm too big*)
11) Zeiss 8R behind dome.
12) Zeiss 8R behind special underwater optic (at $200K for first one)

What we tried to do with the housing we are making already is to allow any of the 5 thru 11 options by using a port system with a 143mm opening and readily available 6 and 8 inch domes as well as multiple flat port options. *All except the 10mm will work either directly or with a simple extension ring. The 10mm zeiss is physically too large and would require a special frontplate (not that hard).

I suspect we will find the Superwide Still lenses provide us very impressive quality. We can squeeze a little more quality by spending quite a bit more on the Cine lenses - but at least that investment is in highly desirable Cine glass as opposed to investing an extreme amount of money in special underwater optics.

 

[GATES]

DEEP RED Port Strategy -- Correction

DEEP RED Port Strategy -- Correction

The target Nikon lens for initial support in DEEP RED is the 12-24 DX, not the new 14-24.

J-

 

[Mark Thorpe]

Flat Ports and Super Macro

Flat Ports and Super Macro

OK so some of you may know that I love to shoot macro, even though my clients keep trying to feed me to the big fish!!

That said I have just found this lens offering from Canon. It shows that the Iris actuates with a telescoping action of the lens so the main question is would this be a viable option for RED using a flat port(s)? I guess I would need to get actual measurements to see if the lens could fit behind one flat port and still be able to be used through to 5x due to the reduced DoF at each increment. It would sure be a challenge.

Pygmy Sea Horses as five times life size.

Thoughts?
Mark.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Mark:

Your post was looking a little lonely so I thought I would give a quick response.

We are just now getting into some tests for macro stuff. Canon/Birger is still going to be the slickest method but we are also looking for some PL options for Ken Corben's housing.

As far as ports, we already have availability of multiple lengths of macro ports for our housing, using the Aquatica ports.

One of the biggest issues will be getting close enough to be able to do 5x macro with a 65mm lens - I haven't checked but I think you have to get REALLY close. That's why I have been looking at the Canon 100 and some longer macro lenses.

The other issue is gearing for PL type lenses. There are definitely ways to do it - but it is going to be expensive because it is pretty fussy work. That is why I keep harping on Birger. It really solves a lot of issues because you can leave the camera in the same spot in the housing and switch to any of 50 canon lenses of any length and you still have iris and focus control. All you need is an appropriate port - which we can accommodate today with off the shelf components.

OK so some of you may know that I love to shoot macro, even though my clients keep trying to feed me to the big fish!!

That said I have just found this lens offering from Canon. It shows that the Iris actuates with a telescoping action of the lens so the main question is would this be a viable option for RED using a flat port(s)? I guess I would need to get actual measurements to see if the lens could fit behind one flat port and still be able to be used through to 5x due to the reduced DoF at each increment. It would sure be a challenge.

Pygmy Sea Horses as five times life size.

Thoughts?
Mark.

 

[mike luzansky]

Well, I finally got the email 2 days ago that my red is about ready for delivery...now I just need the housing since I never seem to shoot anything topside! I just want to get the RED underwater with some Tigers or Bulls.

 

[mike luzansky]

Im curious from those of you currently shooting the camera, what lenses you have tested topside, and which you expect to use underwater. My intent is to take delivery of the camera with the 18-50. However, having been a Nikon shooter for years, I have a large arsenal of Nikon lenses, and as a Canon dealer, I have access to plenty of Canon lenses.

I'm curious from those with a lil RED experience if I would be best suited holding off on getting the 18-50 and just shoot the Nikon lenses with the adapter. Obviously there will be support for the 18-50 in the Gates housing, so the lens will surely get use...but I dont mind saving $6,500 right now.

Any thoughts or ideas??

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Any thoughts or ideas??

I'm getting Zeiss 14mm Master Prime for wide end. Haven't decided which one for closeup yet.

Pawel
www.achtel.com

 

[Michael Hastings]

Im curious from those of you currently shooting the camera, what lenses you have tested topside, and which you expect to use underwater. My intent is to take delivery of the camera with the 18-50. However, having been a Nikon shooter for years, I have a large arsenal of Nikon lenses, and as a Canon dealer, I have access to plenty of Canon lenses.

I'm curious from those with a lil RED experience if I would be best suited holding off on getting the 18-50 and just shoot the Nikon lenses with the adapter. Obviously there will be support for the 18-50 in the Gates housing, so the lens will surely get use...but I dont mind saving $6,500 right now.

Any thoughts or ideas??

Mike:

I think besides the cost, you will find that the ease of controlling the Canon (or Nikon later) lenses via the Birger mount will be the slickest way to handle focus and iris AND more importantly being able to use a wide range of lenses i.e. going from say 10-22mm at 3.5 inches or so to a long macro like the 100 or 180mm that is over 7 inches long. With the Canon/Birger you just change the lens and the port and no headaches. With a manual pl or manual nikon you have the whole gearing issue.

We have incorporated simple controls for the RED 18-50 and my Arri/Zeiss 12mm and are now getting Ken Corben's housing set up with some very slick gears for his Ultraprime 8R. But the gearing is fairly expensive and unless all of your lenses are about the same size you have some significant headaches in using them with different lenses.

Also, regarding my earlier post - yesterday I bought a Sigma 18-50 Macro which has the same focal length and close focus capabilities as the RED 18-50 so I could do some image size tests. At 50mm, to fill the frame with myBMW car key (about 2.5 - 3 inches long) I had to have it just 3" from the front of the lens. I could move back to about a foot to fill the frame with a paperback book. So I think the 18-50 will be fine for mid-size fish shots, but it would probably be a little tough to get close enough to get the tiny stuff. I think we will need a 100mm macro or even the 180mm macro to get those shots, and again this where being able to easily go from short lenses to long lenses on the Birger mount is pretty cool.

 

[Ed Sauer]

Red #360 Gets Wet!

Red #360 Gets Wet!

Our Red One showed up 3 weeks before the big two week underwater shoot! After a few sleepless nights, finishing all the underwater housing parts with an hour and 1/2 to spare, we left for the air port. And so it happened that Ed Sauer and his wife Sandra of Watering Life Productions & Design, LLC dove the Red One fitted with a Nikon mount, 17-35mm lens, LCD and a Red Raid all tucked into its custom underwater housing for 34 hours and recorded 40 gig a day. Try that with an 8 gig SD card! Below are some pictures of the happy duo, Ed and the Red One!

 

[David Mutchler]

That's pretty cool. Any chance I can borrow it?