bghazzal

Hello again Dan - we've already exchanged by FB pm on Okinawa so I won't be much more help as i dive independently, but I think @shokwaav 's been diving with local operators (39ers?) quite a bit if I'm not mistaken! I've just returned for two days diving Ie island, and the coral was really super healthy (but fished out, unfortunately). Ie, then Nakijin have had the best coral coverage on main island so far. cheers ben

Hi Dan and welcome onboard! Ben

Regarding the Saga dual flip, it would be great to confirm if mounted diopters are flush to the port like on the Nauticam flip, or if there is a little gap as some users have reported. Seemed to be linked to the mounting design IIRC

Hi Kristin and thanks for sharing this. I think the graded version is on the right track, but I also see two technical problems in the footage itself: - the white balance on the SOOC camera footage is a little off - basically it is too warm on the artificially-lit part, and this is causing issues in the grading because of the strong contrast with the ambient lit background (which has a major colour cast). The foreground looks better on the graded version because you fixed the white-balance by removing the warm cast - but there shouldn't be a warm cast to begin with. And this de-warming of the foreground in the graded version, by cooling the image, has increased the colour cast in the ambient light lit background... - you're only using one light, meaning the foreground is a little underlit or rather not lit evenly, creating something of a hotspot to the left of the image. A second light would help light it more evenly, and then you could focus on grading to the artificially lit area. The main solutions in my opinion would be to choose to shoot in a full artificial light dominant scenario, but then you need a second light, and importantly to get the correct white-balance on the lights. The other solution, since this seems quite shallow, would actually be to shoot without the light (ideally with a good filter), after locking the white balance (say to 5600K). You could then rebalance the white-balance point of the image in Resolve and would get more even results between foreground and background I think.

I was guiding so these clips are composed of sneaky 10 second shot mostly shot on an old GoPro7 😄 If you can do the bumpheads, definitely go. It's an incredible experience, very moving. Palau's topography/currents turn it into some sort of redlight district for fish, there's a lot of visible courting and spawning going on! ❤️ The bumpheads congregate on an easy shallow and rather protected site (Grassland/Sandy Paradise), and shoot up from about 30/40m depth below right up to the surface, and can range from hundreds to thousands. You go to the site, guides swim out on snorkel to watch the aggregation and how it builds up, and when it starts to happen (the fish change colour and start chasing), everyone gets in the water and follow the fish aggregation, hovering in the shallows. The males are chasing a females up to the surface where they spawn, and completely focused on what they're doing. It's still quite dark and fast so strobe placement is important, and after a bit the water really gets cloudy with the spawning fireworks, but once you understand how it works you can get quite close. So the idea would be to try and capture the firework run to the surface, and some wider shots. It's not easy photography, but the show itself is incredible. Also before the action starts, the males actually compete by bumping their bony humps like buffalo horns, but this is very deep so you just hear the sound. The occasional bullshark or (oceanic) blacktip cruises by, but the bumpheads are not easy preys so you don't really get that much hunting action, unlike with the snapper spawning. cheers b

If this helps, I've worked in Palau and pelagics will be mostly roughly 1.5m grey reef sharks passing by close when you're hooked-in (Blue Corner, Siaes Corner), some barracudas or jacks and turtles on the plateau, and otherwise mantas passing over your head at German Channel (which can be seen at the cleaning stations or feeding in the shallows, which is spectacular, but means swimming against the current). The grey reef sharks are always there and will get close if there's current. I have some clips here which can maybe give you an idea of what to prepare for (the bumphead / snapper spawning are on specific full/new moon related mornings only). Hope this helps! cheers ben

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Thanks for sharing that Eric - I find older footage fascinating, both as a time capsule showing diving areas in a fast evolving context, and also from a technical point of view. You have really great shots there. Beyond the technical restriction on actual image definition, it's still very good, and kudos on the macro (really reaching the limits of that diopter!) and the mandarin fish sequence, which are generally a nightmare to shoot! What were you shooting on at the time? cheers ben

Welcome onboard Doug. I'm also piling up unedited footage, hopefully saving it for those long winter days! Cheers Ben

On a related note, to follow-up on your comments on grading GP-LOG vs. Go Pro Standard/Natural, I gave one of your clips a spin. I don't use Resolve as my laptop is too old to get fluid playback on it - even with proxy files - but Final Cut Pro X, which integrates better. But results would be the same I think. The discussion was unrelated to the article but I was curious as I will one day upgrade my action cam to a 10-bit camera, and wanted to see how log worked. To cut to the chase, I find Go Pro logr to work better for grading. So, first i imported your GoPro Log clip and non-log clip as is. I then quickly graded the log clip as is: Ok results I think. whereas the standard/natural color clip, ungraded and SOOC was like this, which is quite a different base to work with, obviously.... But since we're dealing with a log profile, normally it has to be converted, so i got the official GoPro12 log conversion lut for that here https://community.gopro.com/s/article/10-Bit-Log-Encoding?language=en_US There's probably a GoPro 13 log conversion lut, but doubt it will make much of a difference. and tried quickly grading again, just to see. The conversion really gave me more workroom, with the footage coming alive. Quickly graded results were as such for the converted log clip (saturation is a little high, to show what we have to work with) vs the following quickly graded results for your standard / natural clip, which still has that odd burned-in contrast issue visible in the SOOC file. In conclusion, if I had to choose, I would definitely work with the converted LOG file, as it has more leg room and less strange issues for grading, and also makes it easier to deal with the slightly overexposed section of your footage. Hope this helps. cheers

can't help with MFO, but as a sidenote I also own an AOI/Fantasea UCL-05LF and a CMC-1 and stack these with no issues for supermacro. Before getting the UCL-05LF I was stacking the CMC-1 (roughly +15) and an Inon UCL-165 (+6) - you roughly get a +20 lens, and it's workeable. The MFO however is a really special lens, so not sure how it will behave since it's really designed for use on flat ports if I understood correctly.

Welcome onboard Hilmar! cheers! ben

Hahaha, small world! 🤣 Thanks, I think this glorious little camera has aged like fine-wine, and still deserves its place, no matter how alluring Canon (or smartphone) siren songs may be. Yes, floats are definitely part of the deal with this brick-like form unfortunately, especially for video... Let's just say compact is in the eye of the beholder! Speaking of which, this is my latest addition for the now-discontinued Inon UWL-100 lens with the now-discontinued dome (works great), a modified 10bar float collar: As someone else put it, the USCSS Nostromo is ready for takeoff!

Welcome Stemi - avid LX10 user here as well, though my kit is now almost the size of a full scale rig, so far from compact... Happy to share LX10 info, but can't help you with your switch to the ̶d̶a̶r̶k̶ phone side (though I'm definitely with you for 4K60fps! the only compact delivering that is the new Canon V1, and battery life, aaaah, battery life), but we do have some smartphone users on here, including Maria, our compact system moderator, who loves shooting iPhones if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure she and others be able to guide you on the golden path to true compact-form shooting. cheers! ben

Yes, I try to rotate them but bought a cheap USB tester today which should - if it works - give me a clearer view of where they all are. I'm also going to power off stabilisation for macro, could give a few extra minutes.

I'm giving up. It's too much of an investement for an old camera. It doesn't power through USB, just charge, and even the dummy battery is problematic because housing space is so restricted: One solution would be to connect a battery bank which could charge the battery when the camera is off, but there's not enough space inside, even if we remove the flash trigger, and the USB port isn't accessible. I guess I'll just have to make the most of my 20/30 minutes of shooting until I can upgrade the camera 🙂

I can vouch for the old AOI/Fantasea +6 UCL05 LF https://simonmustoe.blog/review-of-fantasea-ucl-05lf-6-macro-lens/ The new AOI UCL-05n is virtual the same optically, so really recommend it. https://www.aoi-uw.com/products/wet-lenses/aoi-ucl-05n.html The Kraken +6 also looks great, I would have bought that if I hadn't gone a second-hand AOI. cheers ben

Yenkoranu, a lot - but last visit was in 2017 and things have changed radically, so I really can't vouch for them. All i can say is that it was the first homestay with a somewhat reliable diving operation, with guides that were working on liveaboards (Jason for instance), and excellent, especially around 2015. Started by the Sauyai family, traditional clanic "owners" of Kri / Mansuar Kecil. Spent a lot of time there, "helping out" as well. Now it's really grown into something else, so you would need to look into recent reviews. I really don't know who's working there anymore, most of the guides I still know are working on boats on the Komodo-Raja routes. At one point they had some individuals then foreign couples run the dive operation, really not sure how it is nowadays as it's a complicated working environment 😅 I'm sure you have already, but do check https://www.stayrajaampat.com Yenkoranu homestay on an early 2015 morning - the treeline to the right started being cut with the 2016 homestay boom. Max Ammer's Papua Diving / Kri Eco Resort is further down on the left.

Thanks Chris, I'd forgotten about this thread, and sorry for derailing this one - in my case the LX10 cannot be charged by USB, it's data-transfer only, so dummy battery / DC coupler is the only way. I don't think there really any vaccum-safe practical option with my camera + M14 bulkhead housing combo, though this thread had given me hope!

The issue I'm having is that battery life is very limited. I shoot 1 minute clips tops, to edit, and turn off the camera to save battery as recommended by Panasonic, but still don't have enough for one dive. I did a two hour dive this morning, and the battery died out on me. I haven't opened the camera yet, but I probably have around 20 minutes of footage. I've never tried filming continuously, but based on the footage length I'm getting I think I have enough juice for about 20 to 30 minutes of filming or so before the battery is empty, and this is being very very careful with battery life, fully charged, new batteries. Charging is not an option unfortunately. I desperately need more runtime underwater. It would completely change my life if I could have say one full hour of shooting or even a little more. The point of the dummy battery is to power the camera from it, either from DC or a battery pack.

Wow - this is amazing. An external battery pack would really, really change my life. Since we're derailling the thread (maybe these posts can be moved to the DIY forum), I'd love to have your opinion - My NALX10 housing has a single M14 port, which I use for vaccum.so really not sure what can be done. I seem to remember that there was some option to have dual output bulkhead (vaccum + one cable) but can't seem to find that. A dummy battery does exist for the cameras - battery requires 8.4 V . main issues for me would be solving the bulkhead issue, best battery for UW use and cannister... I'd given up but your post is giving me hope! thanks ben

Wow - I'm really looking forward to seeing how you make it work - it's something that is really bugging me on my Lumix LX10 compact. I love this integrated solution can't see how this would fit on my NALX10 housing, which has a tiny flash trigger. I also shoot video only, and battery life is really an issue. One thing I've looked into would be an external battery connected to a dummy battery, routed through one of the double-ports I think you can get for a single vaccum port (need to check) - but I gave up as I have no idea how to make a pressure resistant external battery pack. Meaning I'm very interested in your custom 18650 battery enclosure I have on the outside of the housing ! b

Thanks, glad you found the approach interesting. I tried to summarise the whole shooting process in the article below, which might be a little clearer: https://waterpixels.net/articles/articles_technique/afterhours-magic-ambient-light-video-workflow-for-action-cameras-r161/ cheers b

Yes, I definitely second the 512GB SSD hard drive if you can. I'm on a refurbished 2017 macbook air bought in Thailand in 2020, and it's still fine, but will definitely need to update at some point. I can edit 4K 8bit video files by running FCPX on an external Samsung SSD which helps, but the chipset is too old to read recent codecs like HEVC (example GoPro 4k files), so I edit those with proxy files. And I can't edit in Resolve because the chipset is too old for optimised playback (FCPX integration is doing an amazing jo)... If you drop below 20/30 GB of free space on the internal hard drive it slows down performance, so get the space if you can.

I see, thanks - by hectic (typo) I mean that with bonfires you're reconstructing the food chain, and there's a lot of fast pace hunting/feeding going on, a lot of swarming in general. I find the subject of shallow planktonic dives vs. deep water dives very interesting. The vertical migration in the water column often evoked seems to be a little more complex than it looks at first glance. I'm in contact with someone doing bonfires in Anilao for a while now, and he's getting roughly 80% the same creatures as on drifting black water dives over deep water, including blanket octopus, argonauts, etc... This is something you also see in that Lembeh interview I'd posted in the dedicated thread, where a lot of footage was actually from bonfires more than deep blackwater, and it's similar if I compare what I saw on bonfires in east Bali compared to deep water dives off Tulamben, similar subjects mostly, with the odd critter only seen over deep water (larval phase crustaceans, etc) It's very interesting to see what people like Ryo Minemizu are seeing both in bonfire-type stationary setups and actually drift dives over drift waters. You also have very interesting encounters Gil Koplovitz is getting snorkeling (!) at sunrise off the beach in the west Mediterranean. More than actual life / subjects, the major difference seems to be the nature of the encounters. In blackwater you're drifting along, and because of that you're not building up the food chain. Encounters are more relaxed, and there's generally more paced-out activity unless you run into swarming critters. Which makes it more accessible for imaging, despite the logistical constraints.