GoPro protune profile with red filter

[eLzUb]

Hello there!

I read many useful post about red filter 

 

but I still have doubts.🤭

 

I never used red filter and I will do this week end in the Mediterranean Sea.

 

do you suggest a protune setting to use ?

 

Ev

white balance

ISO max

color

 

 

ps

can i use filter with 2 video lights on or better use only with natural light? If yes I would have a different protone settings?

 

 

Thank you!!!!

 

[Gmsalterego]

Hello, in such cases I'm following the backscatter guidelines for gopro 11 and 12. I should not use video lights and red filter together but I find very interesting this topic about protune settings. 

 

[bghazzal]

21 hours ago, eLzUb said:

Hello there!

I read many useful post about red filter 

 

but I still have doubts.🤭

 

I never used red filter and I will do this week end in the Mediterranean Sea.

 

do you suggest a protune setting to use ?

 

Ev

white balance

ISO max

color

 

 

ps

can i use filter with 2 video lights on or better use only with natural light? If yes I would have a different protone settings?

 

 

Thank you!!!!

 

 

Hi there - I've been shooting with a (good - UR-Pro Cyan) red filter since the GoPro 4, and what works best for me are the following ProTune settings:

 

ev: -0.5

white balance: native

iso max: 1600, or if I can get away with it 800

color: GoPro color

auto ISO (with max set), auto shutter

 

the -0.5 ev helps avoid clipping when shooting up (say a manta passing overhead in the shallows).

On the ISO front, an iso over 1600 is generally too noisy to work with.
800 iso is best, but this might be too dark at depth, especially with a filter, depending on conditions.

As a side note, setting to auto ISO (clocked to a max ISO) and auto shutter is fine.
For shutter speed, in theory you should follow the 180° rule of shutter and set the shutter value to double the frame rate, but in practice on action cams this doesn't really make any difference.

Having tested both, I've found camera struggles more when following the 180° rule of shutter - footage exposure is stable with auto-shutter, and slightly higher shutter speeds will also help with particules, giving GoPro footage that magical viz-cleaning effect, where it looks better than what you'd experienced underwater 😉

 

The most important setting is to set the white balance to native .
Ths is because you can't manually white-balance at depth with action cams, and uw auto white balance is a hit-and-miss, and there will likely be unwanted fluctuations during the shooting.
Setting WB to native, you can then set/adjust the white balance in post which gives results almost as good as having manually white balanced at depth.

 

The other crucial setting is GoPro color, which is basically flat - you can't trust an action cam to magically sort out underwater colorimetry.
Sure, you might get ok results snorkeling or in the shallows, where water's spectrum filtration is limited, but at depth, especially with a filter and wb set to native, not letting the camera try to adjust colors is a must.
And working with other colour modes, trying to adjust in post color info which has been baked-in by the camera is a nightmare..

 

These ProTune setting give you the equivalent of a flat profile, which is perfect for grading Gopro footage.
Yes, you will need to adjust WB in post (which is almost like magic with a filter!), and tweak the colours, but for underwater video this is a must.

 

I've actually developed this idea and shared experience and examples on this specific subject in this thread, if you haven't read it yet:

https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1380-shooting-action-cams-with-a-red-filter-in-flat-profile-and-manually-white-balancing-in-post-production/

Despite what you might read about "gopros no longer needing filters underwater", beyond the shallows, this does not live up to reality - just compare results at depth between footage shot in a flat profile with a (good) filter to see the difference.
You can get much better colour balance by shooting in a flat profile with a good filter than without.
 

- With two video lights, you'll be shooting in an artificial-light dominant scenario, so you shouldn't use the filter (so closeups, night dives and deep dives for instance)

Keep exactly the same ProTune settings, but this time set the white balance to the kelvin value of your lights (5000 to 6500K in general) - this is the only change to make.

 

 

hope this helps!

 

cheers

 

ben

Edited August 14 by bghazzal

[eLzUb]

Hi Ben…

you provided a really good explanation, 

I will start with those settings and check after.

 

actually I would like to play more with the shutter speed but 

not sure if GoPro could act as mirrorless.. 

 

 

really thank you!

 

[eLzUb]

17 hours ago, Gmsalterego said:

Hello, in such cases I'm following the backscatter guidelines for gopro 11 and 12. I should not use video lights and red filter together but I find very interesting this topic about protune settings. 

 

I read the Backscatter guideline but I did not find it  so usefully.

they suggest awb auto and iso max to 6400.

Don’t  like let GoPro choose for me 🙂

[Gmsalterego]

Backscatter also explains underwater settings useful for video post production, it's not my matter at the moment. Ciao

[Davide DB]

3 hours ago, eLzUb said:

actually I would like to play more with the shutter speed but 

not sure if GoPro could act as mirrorless

 

Don't mess with the shutter speed on Gopros 

[Davide DB]

4 hours ago, Davide DB said:

 

Don't mess with the shutter speed on Gopros 

 

I'll try to elaborate a bit.

The parameters that adjust a photographic (and video) image are aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

The Gopro, like all action cameras has a fixed aperture. The one on the Gopro is F2.8. If we also lock the shutter (hoping to use the 180° rule), to expose the image correctly, the camera will only be able to vary the ISO which is the least flexible parameter. In full light conditions the images would be totally overexposed (F2.8 1/50 ISO 100). In low light, at ISO 800 the games are over already.

 

But then why did they put this option in the menus?

Marketing certainly and then an option that can be useful in special situations with controlled and constant light. At that point you can intervene with ND filters. Or to 100% eliminate flickering from artificial light.

 

 

[Gmsalterego]

Hello, I beg pardon in case of similar post but ... i would like any suggestion too choose  a good and possibile easy to use software for white balancing and color grading in post production. Thank you to anyone could help me to move around the supermarket of video editing tools. Bye

[eLzUb]

I use da Vinci resolve,

it looks complicated at first, but you can find many tutorials online.

 

[bghazzal]

I would definitely recommend DaVinci Resolve as well. It's really the most complete for colour grading, and accessible as the entry-level version is free IIRC.

 

I use Final Cut Pro X, which is great, and allows me to do what I want, as it's more integrated than DaVinci on a mac - being nomadic at the moment I edit on an old macbook air, and can run FCPX on an external SSD hard-drive, with enough power/speed to edit 4K clips (using proxies for certain codecs).

Unfortunately I can't get fluid playback on DaVinci, having tried everything including proxies, the CPU/RAM integration doesn't work on my underpowered system, so sticking to FinalCut for now.

 

I can export a finished clip for grading in DaVinci, but it's too much work and I'm happy with what I can do with FinalCut.
But in the future, I will switch to DaVinci when I get the chance.

 

So DaVinci Resolve would be my first recommendation, for performance, flexibility and pricing, but if you're on mac OS, software like iMovie are limited but very accessible, and also a good introduction to FinalCut once you've outgrown limitations.

FinalCut is also more user friendly than DaVinici, and really good as well, but for really advanced grading DaVinci is the way forward.

 

The other major contender is Adobe Premiere, but I really don't like Adobe product workflows and subscription-based pricing systems, so wouldn't recommended it.

Edited August 16 by bghazzal

[Davide DB]

Davinci Resolve is OK except one caveat:

Resolve free on Windows doesn't support 10 bit h.265. So the latest Gopro files.

You have to transcode the files before import. Someone was able to read them via a 1$ HEVC codex on the Windows store, someone not.

 

Moreover in the free version you cannot export 10 bit files.

 

 

 

 

[eLzUb]

After a week end diving with GoPro and filter…

i can say in some situation it helps a lot:

with good visibility and full sunny weather.between 8-15 -20 mt

 

in other situation  I’ve noticed loss in definition  for sure due how GoPro manage the iso and lack of light:

 

with cloudy weather or between 25-45 mt.

 

at the end I think filter works fine with ambient light, a thing that we miss in many place where i use to dive.(Mediterranean Sea)

I thing the best place for use filter is tropical water

 

Those are my first brief  thoughts about it, I still have to play with my shots. 😉

[bghazzal]

Yes, it's ambient light with a filter works best in places / depth where you have enough ambient light to work with.

 

Even in the tropics, 20/25m is generally the limit, so testing beyond 25m in the Med was very ambitious 😅 
Beyond 25m, it's probably best to use no filter to try to scrounge as much remaining ambient light as you can and just make do with a colour cast or, more classically for wrecks and deep shots go for artificial lighting in the 25-50m+ zone....

Generally with good ambient light (and also remembering to shoot with the sun to your back, which is very important for ambient) and favourable conditions, you get nice, workeable results  between 5-20m, the sweet spot usually being 10-15m zone.
 

In my experience, in this depth range the results you can get with a flat profile + filter combination in terms of colour balance far outweigh the -1.5 stop of light you'll lose with the filter...

 

Lastly one thing to look out when using filter is actual water colour - the Med. is generally greener, meaning underwater colour balance / filtration of the ambient light spectrum is quite different than in blue water.

Typically, filters designed for greener waters tend to be more magenta than reddish, to help rebalance the spectrum better (whereas typical "red" filters are designed for cyan / blue waters).

This is a subject which hasn't been looked into enough - mostly because strobe-lit underwater photography is leading the underwater imaging game, and ambient light videography in green waters is quite niche - and would need more hands on testing. UR-Pro had more magenta green water filter btw.

I've been looking into filters themselves a bit lately (and plan to do some testing with some gels that a generous soul took the trouble of meticulously wrapping and sending over here 🙏), and based on this my current hunch is that there two ways to approach the ambient light + filter question:

 

- aim for colour accuracy, and try to rebalance the ambient light spectrum at depth to get accurate colours.
This is what Keldan Spectrum filters aim to do for instance - logical, but tricky, as this is both dependent on depth (Keldan is looking at depth range, and basically correcting the spectrum to simulate a shallower depth), and more importantly, conditions and water quality, over which we have no control

 

- aim for aesthetically pleasing results - basically offer a less accurate filter but one which will shift hues in an aesthetically pleasing result.
This is what the legendary UR-Pro Cyan was doing for instance, and why it worked so well in blue water.

Beyond filters, my theory is that this is also what is going with so-called "Canon colours" , ambient light manually white-balanced at depth.
If you look closely at underwater ambient light footage shot on manually white-balanced on Canon cameras, the WB itself isn't necessarily super accurate, generally a little warm and yellow - actually somewhat similar to what the UR-Pro filter is doing - but it's very pleasing to watch. Just lovely.
With the extra advantage is that there is no light / definition loss from extra material in front of the lens.

I suspect that more than actual WB accuracy, Canon ambient light manual white balance at depth (deeper than what the camera can accurately compensate) works best by shifting greens to warmer yellows like a filter. It would be interesting to test this with ungraded footage ambient Canon and a colour checker.

 

(there is a actually a a third way when it comes to filters, which is to not think about too much and just sell any bit of reddish looking material looking like other filters as a "red filter" because it can't do no harm - this more common that you'd think but let's not get into that 😁)
 

Edited August 20 by bghazzal

[eLzUb]

@bghazzal thank you for your comment.

 

I really appreciate dive with filter, 

In many dives last week I left on the boat arms with lights

 

so I was only with ambient light.

i liked also the more narrative shoot when… instead to use video light you just point the subject with your diving torch inside a hole or cave or wall.

the downside is about how GoPro manage the iso. 
hope the 13 will solve it.

 

btw

 

med is not totally green …

Actually I dive only where and when is blue.🙂

 

[Davide DB]

With such a small sensor there is little to do except perhaps act with computational photography algorithms.

I would say that the latest Insta Ace Pro and DJI have much more advanced NR algorithms than the Gopro.

However when you raise the ISO and the noise reduction algorithm comes into play, you lose a lot of detail. People's faces in the tunnel for example. Watch these videos in full screen maybe on a 4k monitor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this video the ISOs have been locked at 500  emulating what the human eye sees:

 

 

 

 

In the channel then there are lots of examples with the latest action cameras.

 

From my experience, in the Mediterranean a red/cyan filter works up to 12 meters, maybe 15 with a mirrorless with a decent sensor. Then it's also a matter of taste of course.

 

Regarding the Mediterranean. Sure, there are greener and bluer areas, but when it comes to green or blue water filters, the Mediterranean is always considered quite green precisely because of the characteristic type of plankton. Perhaps some spots such as the Aeolian or Pelagian islands are exceptions.

For example in the Tuscan archipelago even when you have 30+ meters of visibility, when you do CC you will always find yourself removing a more or less green dominant.

 

Where do you dive?

 

 

[eLzUb]

I got your point, tnx for sharing this YouTube channel.

 

lets wait for the new GoPro 🤞

 

 

btw Now I understand my idea of blue, in the past few summers I dove in aeolian and pelagean islands,😀 

 

I found with my eyes a nice blue also in ustica but later I had to work a lot with CC, due to’ predominant green in some dive site.

 

I dive usually in Tuscany and Liguria,

sometimes I can find green but sometimes I can find blue hue.

For blue or green in the med I think  also it depend on how is the light at that time and the current flow in the last 24hr.

i would like to get more knowledge on this topic.