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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 Guys,
Taking a break here to get wed. Big day is on Thursday here in Japan. Should be back to blowing bubbles in a few days, or maybe not !!!! Nudge nudge wink wink as they say.......

Cheers,
Mark.
 
ginclearfilm said:
http://www.vimeo.com/2072541

Here's Shawn Heinricks interview with John Ellerbrock (GATES) @ DEMA. Has a section on the end with some of the RED Housing. Also looks like they have built a housing for the LCD.
Click to expand...

yes, I believe there was a housing for the LCD on display, attached to the housing.

The actual housing displayed I dont think was (quite) production yet but, just from looking at it, it seems it will handle similiarly to the other large-sized Gates housings (it's a pretty large housing)

I didn't really delve into ports, or other operational stuff as I am more focused on Scarlet (or whatever Scarlet becomes) as this stuff is just too far out of my range.

EDIT: I think the Aquavideo housing will also allow for the LCD as one of the guys over there was discussing that with someone else, and pointed out a specific port on the housing to handle the LCD. The Aquavideo housing looked pretty solid too, but the owner of the RED was sick the day I stopped by so I didn't get to talk to them so much
 
Gates housing is way out of my ballpark but I am sure its the bees knees. I personally like the simplicity of the tube style lower budget housings but I would like the monitor mounted on top, maybe take a Gates RED LCD UW housing like this

http://wetpixel.com/images/includes/dema2008/gates/echeng081022_0172893.html

and mount it to the top of a AquaVideo housing? This UW stuff gets pretty expensive pretty fast, may just end up building my own. :D
 
Haskell said:
... This UW stuff gets pretty expensive pretty fast, may just end up building my own. :D
Click to expand...

hehehe, this is what I have done. It cost me over $150k so far
nutter.gif
 
Haskell,

My experience with the Aquavideo so far is this:

An important benefit of the Aquavideo is to be able to chose different ports. The Aquatica ports Michael has been fitting on the housing are good in the fact that they are easily replaced and you can find spare ports secondhand almost anywhere in the world. The acrylic dome is of a very basic quality optically, and I find it hard to keep it clean from lint and dust due to static, plus the fact that you cannot clean them too vigorously before you start to get visible scratches. The lack of coating is also a problem. Mike is now replacing them with a specially made glass port with coating, so I am looking forward to those.

For other lenses, like zooms, using the flat Aquatica port works well. They are made from uncoated glass and work fine unless pointed directly into the sun. The benefit of these ports is that they are sturdy, the glass is recessed and hence the port can take quite a beating when working in rough seas. I am very cautious about using the acrylic port in swells or when I have to enter or exit a boat. One knock and your housing can flood instantly!

I have been having a hard time choosing what lens to use. I started off with a 12mm Arri T2.1 in the dome, but since the dome didn't really do it justice I have also tried various other options.
On drama productions, I find that the client sometimes wants to use their own PL mount lenses. For this I have successfully used the flat port with extension rings, typically 18 and 25mm Master Primes. However, the rudimentary controls makes it a bit awkward to do quick focus and aperture changes, so for those longer focal lengths I had to rely on people on the surface checking the image for sharpness via HD-SDI cable.

Using the standard controls on the Aquavideo is not ideal with manual Nikon lenses. I have tried focus rings from Red Rock Micro, but they are tricky to use with the twist and turn knob, especially since the aperture ring is so close to the RED mount. The focus ring is also easily dislodged.

What I'd really like to see is a good, working gear system that would enable the use of both manual SLR lenses and PL-mount. I am as excited as everyone about the Birger, but I always come back to the fact that clients (DPs) want to use PL-mount lenses, plus the fact that no-one has a working underwater solution for the Birger yet.

The tubular shape of the Aquavideo has its benefits, namely a low profile which makes for easier access into smaller spaces. On the downside is that the control knobs are placed in the front part of the housing which forces you to change your grip to adjust aperture and focus. Having the monitor at the back makes it tricky to shoot with the camera on the bottom, unless you have enough space behind to hug the sea floor also!

All in all, the Aquavideo is worth it's price. It is a simple and sturdy design that lacks somewhat in specialised control knobs etc, but I also find it easy to modify and fix myself. I have drilled a couple of holes and added Aquatica knobs from an old SLR housing, and added bits and pieces. I am now waiting for the new glass dome from Mike, and still contemplating whether I should stick with the Arri 12mm or try the yet uncomplete Birger solution.

And, oh yes, one last thing: The various Nikon, Canon or Sigma wide angle zooms are great, but they are not very fast. I would say that for underwater use aperture f2.8 is an absolute minimum, which rules out almost all of them.

Amund
 
Amund! I appreciate your thorough feedback. I do own a Zeiss ZF 25mm 2.8, so this could be an option given the glass is very sharp, its brand new and has a great coating. From what I am hearing in regards to the dome, I should definitely stick with glass...but will glass dome shatter as easy with a bump or a knock? I am sure hard enough it will break just curious in comparison how fragile they are. You scared me with the visual of instant flood! >.<

Anywho, still debating if I should build one or just go for aquavideo..nice to know that I can mod the housing if I need to add some controls. I really prefer to be set on top of housing so I am looking into how I would manage this as well.

cheers.

Haskell
 
Haskell said:
Amund! I appreciate your thorough feedback. I do own a Zeiss ZF 25mm 2.8, so this could be an option given the glass is very sharp, its brand new and has a great coating. From what I am hearing in regards to the dome, I should definitely stick with glass...but will glass dome shatter as easy with a bump or a knock? I am sure hard enough it will break just curious in comparison how fragile they are. You scared me with the visual of instant flood!

Haskell
Click to expand...

I'm working on a thorough discussion of some of the issues raised in Amunds post, however wanted to give quick answer to the question of fragility.

In twenty five years of manufacturing housings for something like 400 different cameras and many thousands of acrylic dome ports, I am not aware of anyone ever actually breaking the dome from banging something underwater. We have had a couple that have cracked under pressure due to (we believe) a hard knock during shipping probably after a long extreme exposure cold on international cargo flights - fortunately only one caused camera damage.

Acrylic has a certain amount of give when struck. Although I am not aware of a substantial problem, I would actually be more concerned about catastrophic failure with glass as it is a) more brittle and b) we have much less experience since it is only in the last few years that there have been many glass domes produced (not just by us but by anyone).

Anytime you use the larger 8" domes - regardless of glass or acrylic - you have to be more careful because 1) there is more area which creates more likelihood of strike and more mechanical leverage/shock when it is struck and 2) it is much harder to make adequate protectors.

Haskell said:
Anywho, still debating if I should build one or just go for aquavideo..nice to know that I can mod the housing if I need to add some controls. I really prefer to be set on top of housing so I am looking into how I would manage this as well.
Haskell
Click to expand...

Haskell, our housing allows handles on either the top or bottom of the handle "wings" and there are two mini "cheese" plates on the top as well as a "cheese plate" type channel on the bottom so it is very flexible in terms of grip mounting, light mounts, external viewfinder mounts, the birger controls, and the eight flats make it pretty easy to add additional controls.

Our base housing ($8599) offers all the necessities - 6" standard dome port, flexible interchangeable port system (macro port and 8" dome, and extension rings to accommodate longer lenses), the necessary controls power, trigger, white balance/user, 2 simple friction iris and focus controls for the most common manual focus lenses (RED 18-50, Arri 8R, Arri 12mm T2.1, Canon 10-22 and many others), slide-in mounting plate for camera, battery, REDDRIVE, and RED LCD at the back so it sits just inside the clear backplate.

Besides the standard options like an external LCD case, the external birger controls and the glass dome frontplate, it is also extremely flexible in terms of add-ons and modifications. The standard frontplate has an additional o-ring seal groove and equidistant tapped holes to allow us or the user to easily implement custom fronts for special ports. If necessary it would be fairly easy to add an extension frontplate for a special lens, and there are actually some very exciting things coming that I am not yet allowed to talk about.

The housing is about as compact as it can be, the cross section (so the frontal area and therefore the drag pushing it through the water) is only 9" diameter or 63 square inches and for example I believe the Gates housing cross section would be about double or more the square inches. All in all the RED in its stripped down configuration is probably the best motion picture camera ever made for configuring in an underwater housing. Putting the battery and drive on top of the camera greatl increases its bulk giving it the same kind of drag we experienced with Varicam, HDcam and 35mm U/W systems. We chose to keep it in its most compact form - much smaller than any previous highend camera.

Note:

The housing on the left has the gears for Ken Corbens arri 8R. The housing on the right has a single control for the arri 12mm t2.1 which controls both iris and focus. The stock housings have two controls which provide iris, focus, and zoom control on the RED 18-50 as well as iris and focus on several other lenses.

As far as the 25mm it really isn't very wide on the RED - you would normally want to get down into the 10 or 12 mm range to get the kind of angle of view we have been accustomed to with video systems in the past 10 years or so.
 
I must add that I have never cracked any port yet! It just feels less solid with a plastic dome and it therefore makes me much more cautious when handling the housing with the dome on. One idea could be to add a flip-down dome protector to be used when entering or exiting the water. And even if you don't actually break the glass or acrylic dome, a big scratch would render it useless anyway.
And as Mike points out, the lowered drag of the housing itself is an important issue. I find the Aquavideo very fast and easy to handle in the water.

Mike, can you reiterate about the gears you made for Ken Corben?
 
AquaVideoRed206 said:
...and the eight flats make it pretty easy to add additional controls. Our base housing ($8599) offers all the necessities...
Click to expand...

Dear Mike, the simple and flexible design seem to be the right way to go. However, an excellent after sales support is to me as important as the product's technical specifications. Since you didn't mention anything about it in the description, I would like to ask:
1. Are Aquavideo's Red housings covered by a limited warranty? If yes, what are the conditions?
2. What is Aquavideo's refund policy in case a housing is delivered defective or a buyer is not satisfied with the product received?
Thanks, Daniel.
 
Our current warranty was developed by myself and Panasonic's lawyers almost 20 years ago when we began selling housings to Panasonic - made by AquaVideo but with Panasonic branding on it and sold through Panasonic dealers. It is pretty standard, and rather lengthy but here are the basics:

"AquaVideo Productions, Inc. (AquaVideo) will repair its manufactured products with new or rebuilt parts free of charge, in the U.S.A.for one(1) year from the date of original purchase (ninety (90) days for batteries and bulbs) in the event of a defect in materials or workmanship.

blah blah blah...

AquaVideo SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGE TO RECORDINGS AND/OR CAMCORDERS) RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS PRODUCT OR ARISING OUT OF ANY BREACH OF THIS WARRANTY. ALL EXPRESS AND IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE LIMITED TO THE APPLICABLE WARRANTY PERIOD SET FORTH ABOVE.

blah blah blah, more legal jargon..."

As far as refunds, due to the low volume and custom nature of most of the stuff we make, our policy has always been repair/replacement or exchange only, so cash refunds are not usually part of the deal. But we have been pretty liberal in terms of exchanges. We have also been pretty liberal as far as extending the time. It wouldn't be hard to go to a two year warranty or more - since really there isn't much that goes wrong over time that is actually a manufacturing defect - we buy top grade american acrylic, Mic6 and 6061 aluminum, precision ground stainless shafts, etc and anybody that has seen our housings knows the thickness of the acrylic and aluminum or PVC is usually overkill. If there is a warranty issue it is usually something we goofed on right at the start and it shows up right away, like a scratched port or stripped screw or something like that.

After the sale service can be hit or miss as we are very small, but many people have found that I answer the phone at pretty much all hours of the day, weekends, holidays, etc. and try to take care of any issues as quickly as possible.
 
Going loop tha loop there for a while.........back to earth.

Hope all is good.

Haskell, ain't forgot ya. Been kinda busy the last few days........

Cheers,
Mark.
 
Johnny, c'mon......NDA's man? Sheesh.

Cheers,
Mark.
P.S I just ripped out the clutch and gearbox of an old Ford Cortina. The housing is a bit front heavy but such is life.........:)
 
hehehe, Guys I now know some of that strange language you guys were throwing around the other day. Into my CCR training with a vengeance. Never was that good at math in school let alone at 43.

Sorting out bouyancy with my nose, as big as it is. What a hoot.......

So whats all the fuss about L Glass???

Be good now.
Cheers,
Mark.
 
Yikes! Good thing underwater rebreather cinematography is 1% math and 99% o-ring.

C'mon Mark - you need to calculate your O2 consumption/duration based on (200bar x 6liters) - {3L/min x (Duration)} = O2 consumption in liters from which you can calculate the duration of your scrubber based on the liters of O2 consumed and CO2 absorbed for a given delta temp curve.

All the while - recalculating shutter speed to increase DOF which is all math.

In your case, play the odds and replace your o-rings frequently.
 
Mark,
or just do like i do....fill up your scrubber and dive till it turns purple - then change it and dive again; then stop diving when your body is in slight convulsions and you are going a bit blind in your left eye....seems to work in my case.

good luck mate
 
BajaProductions said:
Mark,
or just do like i do....fill up your scrubber and dive till it turns purple - then change it and dive again; then stop diving when your body is in slight convulsions and you are going a bit blind in your left eye....seems to work in my case.

good luck mate
Click to expand...
Dunno what the crap Ken is going on about Johnny (must be toxicity) but I've been taught the exact same way you describe. Sheeeeyyit, we can clearly see who the pro's are around here.......:sarcasm:

Cheers, will be out of email and Skype range for 3 days. Chat when I get back guys........

Best,
Mark.
 
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