Underwater Bubble Blowers User Group Thread NEW

[Tom Hamilton]

Certainly a difficult thing Johnny.

Your NG Migrations footage of the Palau jellyfish is possibly some of the most spectacular stuff I have ever seen, an audience riveted to their seats is a rare thing. As you know, I was with KC at the Jackson Hole event, where your Migrations stuff was screened for the very first time. Feck me Johnny, that was genius, Emmy well deserved, big congrats there.

But I still can't help thinking, how much of this is driven by the execs, and how much creativity/truth we lose by being controlled by their often suspect agendas.

[Johnny Friday]

Certainly a difficult thing Johnny.

Your NG Migrations footage of the Palau jellyfish is possibly some of the most spectacular stuff I have ever seen, an audience riveted to their seats is a rare thing. As you know, I was with KC at the Jackson Hole event, where your Migrations stuff was screened for the very first time. Feck me Johnny, that was genius, Emmy well deserved, big congrats there.

But I still can't help thinking, how much of this is driven by the execs, and how much creativity/truth we lose by being controlled by their often suspect agendas.

....Creative control. I'll suspect the first paid camera operator thought the same thing as his boss was changing developing formulas.....
Thanks for the compliments....i was merely a cog in a GIANT wheel though....but do appreciate your comments sir.

[paulherrin]

Tom, there's a few interesting things to think about here. First and foremost, when you're underwater long enough, your eyes naturally begin to adjust to the available light. Just like moving between light and dark areas, we also adjust to fluctuations in color. Same thing happens if you walk onto a green/bluescreen stage or wear stereo-anaglyph glasses. Same thing happens between daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, etc. So when you're underwater, your eyes become more sensitive to red - which is what white-balancing attempts to achieve in cameras. So when you see a yellow fish underwater, it looks yellow and the reef looks a reddish-brown. And then you take a picture and it's all cyan. So that's not really truth, that's the limitations of our technology compared to biology. To further complicate matters, every single person has a slightly different way of seeing, their lens is shaped differently, different amounts of nutrients, and more importantly, different brains, different memories, and different experiences. All these things (and more) affect the way we perceive color and how it makes us feel, which is reciprocal to the seeing. The trouble with scientific devices that capture light is that they're not subjective enough to be truthful...

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

-Picasso

[paulherrin]

:)

-paul

[Pawel Achtel]

Most people shooting with Red cameras care about image quality. They put a lot of effort and research trying to improve how the images look and strive to have sharper, undistorted, natural-looking, colourful, noise-free and simply breath taking images. Those images help to tell the story and make the whole film experience enjoyable and amazing.

Film making is very technical. It is technical because it involves understanding of optics and having a good grasp on physics in general. Underwater film making is even more demanding. It requires a lot of skill, experience but also scientific knowledge and testing.

You can't improve anything unless you can measure it first. It is that simple. It's called engineering, not ignorance.

Like many others, I strive to archive better images underwater. And, I'm not happy with what the industry has to offer: less-than standard definition corner resolution, chromatic aberrations, distorted images making the viewers dizzy - pathetic!

Like Jim Jannard, I believe there is a better way. There is a way for underwater images to catch up with the rest of the 4k revolution. After all, we are using 4k cameras for a reason.

Of course, image quality, whilst important, is only one of the many ingredients of the complex process of film making. First comes the story, then the execution: the action, the camera work, the angles, the location, editing, sound, lighting, the optics, the resolution, distortions, the dynamic range, parallax, convergence, inter-axial distance and the entire post production process. Some of them require scientific knowledge and process and some of them require artistic and other skills.

Tom - it's has nothing to do with the size of your willy....that's a different forum...

[Johnny Friday]

Pawel,
while I'll agree with much of your list here:

Of course, image quality, whilst important, is only one of the many ingredients of the complex process of film making. First comes the story, then the execution: the action, the camera work, the angles, the location, editing, sound, lighting, the optics, the resolution, distortions, the dynamic range, parallax, convergence, inter-axial distance and the entire post production process. Some of them require scientific knowledge and process and some of them require artistic and other skills.

I'll add you left out the most important ingredient of the film making process: and thats funding.....more important than any aforementioned in my opinion...since we see plenty of less than average movies made that left out most of your ingredients, yet they got the dough. But that also is another topic completely since we are focused here on making beautiful imagery...but my point i think is understood in that we can all point out perfect examples of bad...., but also someone had to cut a path for us to criticize and get the ball moving and underwater is that red-headed step child from Paraguay that gets little love...and even smaller amounts of funding thrown at it....hence our tools not keeping up with the topside world---somebody has to pay for it....

[Dave Blackham]

I haven't found any posts on this so hope some one can point me to them if this has been raised before. Re 3D, There are issues with flat ports as we all know and issues of IA if Epic or Scarlet is used Side by Side. Domes can't be used for obvious reasons with both cameras sharing one dome.

Dome ports or specialist optics/lenses are still really needed.

Has any one considered a wet mirror box ? possibly filled with distilled or clear particle free water. It may turn out to be huge but would offer adjustable IA, with a dome though may be impractical due to size of the mirror needed. but with specialist lenses may be possible to get the camera much closer to the mirror to offer a smaller mirror but would likely still be quite a large rig.

Im just hypothesising here....

[Tom Hamilton]

Tom - it's has nothing to do with the size of your willy....that's a different forum...

Yes, quite right Pawel, post vaporized. You'll have to admit, though, at a certain stage of development somewhere on the long journey from youthful enthusiasm to professional competence, egos occasionally tend to rage out of control in this business. They are the ones who haven't yet failed miserably, me thinks.

[Pawel Achtel]

I haven't found any posts on this so hope some one can point me to them if this has been raised before. Re 3D, There are issues with flat ports as we all know and issues of IA if Epic or Scarlet is used Side by Side. Domes can't be used for obvious reasons with both cameras sharing one dome.

Dome ports or specialist optics/lenses are still really needed.

Has any one considered a wet mirror box ? possibly filled with distilled or clear particle free water. It may turn out to be huge but would offer adjustable IA, with a dome though may be impractical due to size of the mirror needed. but with specialist lenses may be possible to get the camera much closer to the mirror to offer a smaller mirror but would likely still be quite a large rig.

Im just hypothesising here....

Domes, while much better than flat ports, are also not the answer as with large sensor size, they would need to grow to gigantic proportions to keep the field curvature down to acceptable levels. Traditional 8" dome fails to resolve standard definition in the corners of a 90 degree field of view. And, it gets worse as the angle of view increases - much worse: expotntially worse.

Yes, we are in the process of designing wet mirror for twin DeepX setup. Considering the DeepX weighs 10kg with the camera and ready to shoot, we are expecting the entire beam splitter rig with two DeepX to weigh less than 30kg (70 lb). I wouldn't call it a large rig even for land applications.

When we are at the size of 3D rigs, I'm pleased to report the final empty weight of 3Deep housing: 15kg (33 lb) - I love Titanium :)

As you can see, the optical performance of underwater rigs does not have to be crippled by distortions and fuzzy edges and the rigs do not have to require a crane to lift them off the ground: they can be just the same size and weight as land based setups and produce pictures that are just as sharp and just as good, if not better. Finally!

I'm sure other manufacturers will follow soon...now they have no choice, but to innovate, which is a good thing for the industry.

[Pawel Achtel]

Yes, quite right Pawel, post vaporized. You'll have to admit, though, at a certain stage of development somewhere on the long journey from youthful enthusiasm to professional competence, egos occasionally tend to rage out of control in this business. They are the ones who haven't yet failed miserably, me thinks.

Thanks, Tom. I agree with you.

We are the first manufacturer who introduced an underwater housing able to resolve more than standard definition edge-to-edge. In fact it out-resolves the 5k Epic sensor without any field or geometric distortions. Naturally, there is a lot of resistance among the manufacturers and their loyal customes to change, especially after they have invested in equipment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this is why we need objective, transparent and meaningful discussion.

It remids me the days when RED was under attack from all sorts of industry "experts" with their own agendas. There have been numerous tests and measurements undertaken and published by Graeme Nattress showing zone charts, MTF, measuring dynamic range and comparing to the "established industry standards" that showed resistance to change. Look at it now: every company has a 4k camera.

Now, that my company introduced the first 4k underwater housing, I'm sure competitors are trying to implement some strategies: spread uncertainty, fear and doubt and working on their own solutions. What I think was great about Pedro's test (and which I did not convey well) is that his test can be easily interpreted by a lay person. Pedro made a range of very simple, yet meanigful "sanity check" tests and, even after a cursory look at the results, it is difficult to accept the state of the art in the underwater cinematography.

Well, I'm proud to have started the underwater 4k challange. "Waterproof" is not enough these days.