bghazzal

Great thanks for sharing - lovely shot of hunting action there as well, in the right place at the right time 👍 😀

Great thanks- this sounds like a very similar setup to what my wife tells me she did while working a trip from Thailand to Myanmar (not Smiling Seahorse, but Andaman Queen) a few years back Floating buoy, line shining into the buoy for the captain to follow, weighted line down to 25m and lights roughly every 5 meters - she doesn't remember the position of the lights though. She says it was full of squid ink when she entered - divers were already down there and squid probably got spooked But no pictures so didn't happen 😁

- edit - diopter found 🎉

Now that's a fish!!!! 🤩 The section starting 40 minutes in certainly is - seems to work well enough with only the massive lights they have on the main camera + hand held light btw....

Hehehe, yes, that's a pretty good summary of what seems to be rather contradictory statements...😆 I also think camera light power won't be too much of an issue - bumping the iso and also shutter speed a little (the 180° rule of shutter doesn't really affect closeup UW footage, frankly there's no Saving-Private-Ryan-battlescene-effect when shooting critters...), and aiming for a form of lightbox (two weaker lights to the side, almost earmuff style and one light central and angled above and down) should work i think. It's the setup I use primarily for macro now and it's fairly flexible. Using only a +6 diopter (or none?) should give enough range inside the light box. Main issue should be getting /. keepign the critter in the focus / light area and finding the right angles to light it, keep the fluorescence without overexposing, and also.... keeping steady enough, which is going to be hard work and might require using the Aquatilis Laundry Basket© technology or similar... Not having access to 4K 60fps, still haven't made up my mind whether going for 1080p 60fps for slow-mo or 4K 30fps which is what I normally use - I have both dialed in as presets, so I guess I'll see in situation, if I'm struggling to keep critters in focus/lit, I might go for slow-mo mode instead. The other main issue will probably be backscatter and also swarming, based on night dive experience - I think this is where the idea of having powerful lure lights come in handy, to keep the swarm focused on the lure lighting rather than on the camera video lights. The Backscatter MW4300 has a red light function which might come in handy for this, we'll see. But there are lot of particules in the water at the moment, so it will be difficult to avoid backscatter unless it clears up a little, and the surge is going to make things difficult. It's really dark now in the current moon-phase but I think I'll wait a few weeks for the next new moon, hopefully the surge will subside and I can also work on the lure light, see if I can borrow something (very tempting to buy another MW4300 for this purpose, with the added justification of having a wider light box for normal macro, but vade retro spending-demon....) But maybe i'm overthinking this, and a couple of narrow-beam dive lights might work to attract critters, I don't know - based on previous experience wide-angled video lights are really a bug magnet UW. But yep, it's all speculation until you've actually gone in and tried it... Which I'm excited to, enough to overcoming my usual night-diving laziness .... I'll update my findings - if enough critters showup (which I guess it's also linked to cycles and planktonic movement, something Simon Buxton touches on in the Boot talk), I'll probably keep at it a little to experiment, see what seems to work best.

Nice find Davide - true, it's a little odd.... Quite a contrast with the land footage indeed - maybe this came from the idea to balance things out / merge with the drone shots of the whales? Nice looking camera and op otherwise! On parting, here is a touching scene that will resonate in the aching hearts of many camera enthusiasts.... 😍

Nice, thanks - but it's a bayonet system, right? The specs read QRS-2 Bayonet System, which mean that any 52/55/67mm threaded filter would need to be made to work with a bayonet mount first.

Similar concerns on ocean temperatures raised in this article, also pointing to links to extreme weather patterns - extract: Astounding’ ocean temperatures in 2023 intensified extreme weather, data shows The oceans absorb 90% of the heat trapped by the carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, making it the clearest indicator of global heating. Record levels of heat were taken up by the oceans in 2023, scientists said, and the data showed that for the past decade the oceans have been hotter every year than the year before. The heat also led to record levels of stratification in the oceans, where warm water ponding on the surface reduces the mixing with deeper waters. This cuts the amount of oxygen in the oceans, threatening marine life, and also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide and heat the seas can take up in the future. Reliable ocean temperature measurements stretch back to 1940 but it is likely the oceans are now at their hottest for 1,000 years and heating faster than at any time in the past 2,000 years. The most common measure of the climate crisis – global average air temperature – was also driven up in 2023, by a huge margin. But air temperatures are more affected by natural climate variations, including the return last year of the warming El Niño phenomenon. (...) The new study, published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, used temperature data collected by a range of instruments across the oceans to determine the heat content of the top 2,000 metres, where most of the heating is absorbed, as well as sea surface temperatures. In 2023, an additional 15 zettajoules of heat was taken up by the oceans, compared with 2022. By comparison, humanity uses about half a zettajoule of energy a year to fuel the entire global economy. In total, the oceans absorbed 287 zettajoules in 2023. These figures are based on data from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A separate dataset from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found a similar increase and identical trend over time. The ocean surface temperatures in 2023 were “off the charts”, the researchers said. The primary cause was another year of record carbon emissions, assisted by El Niño. Over the whole year, the average temperature was 0.1C above 2022, but in the second half of 2023 the temperature was an “astounding” 0.3C higher. The scientists said the record level of stratification and reduced oxygen in the ocean would have “severe consequences” for ocean plant and animal life. Marine heatwaves struck across the oceans in 2023. A separate report, by the consortium Global Water Monitor (GWM), found some of the worst disasters of 2023 were due to unusually strong cyclones bringing extreme rainfall to Mozambique and Malawi, Myanmar, Greece, Libya, New Zealand and Australia. Prof Albert Van Dijk of GWM said: “We saw cyclones behave in unexpected and deadly ways. The longest-lived cyclone ever recorded battered south-eastern Africa for weeks. Warmer sea temperatures fuelled those freak behaviours, and we can expect to see more of these extreme events going forward.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/11/ocean-warming-temperatures-2023-extreme-weather-data

Interesting, but hmm, not quite there yet indeed - specs do mention "custom WB" but I'm guessing this is just setting the kelvins... and no aperture control or zoom (which the TG series does have for instance) Quick browse for UW content brings.... well, nothing more than some pretty bad footage or spec-compare vids. And then.... I stumbled onto the Sony Malaysia promotional (?) video which is rather hilarious: Not super convincing, but hey, sexy-shrimp shot at some point, interesting - they're pretty small how did they do that with this lens only... And then looking into the comments, turns out the video is mixed footage shot with a RX0ii and.... the RX100 V.... They even had to edit the title.... Oh my.... Talk about shooting yourself in the foot there.... 😅🤣🤭

I just have a bit of time on my hands, and a tendency to go untethered online 😁 There definitely seems to be a steep learning curve, especially for video - after watching these, what i'm planning fits in the "bonfire-dive" category, which requires much less logistical planning (and no boat...) Only variation is that I plan on placing the light on a mooring light in mid-water rather than on the sand, which brings it closer to blackwater, but with only 10 meters of water under my fins.... Main issue I see at the moment is getting a powerful lure light with decent autonomy - apparently it's better to set it up, then wait for 30 minutes for the food-chain to build up around the light...

Very interesting that based on your respective experiences, both of you seem to concur that image quality improvements hasn't been mindblowing with each generational updates - overall, it's more about new features, some being good for UW use (stabilisation, and didn't know about GoPro Labs and QR codes, interesting!), other more detrimental (reliance on wireless, touch screen, voice activation and other non-UW compatible ̶b̶e̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶s̶t̶l̶e̶s̶ features. What's been very clear to me is that GoPro's product development has been focused on "be-a-hero" POV action-sports-lifestyle clips to be shared on p̶h̶o̶n̶e̶s̶ social media and also now live-blogging. The fact that many users have started using their products for different, sometimes more "cinematic" purposes or for scuba UW vids (as opposed to more common surface in-water applications) hasn't had much of an impact, as it has less much weight than viral-compatible footage, and is somewhat less sexy than young-at-heart-dudes-and-dudettes-being heroes, and over the years there hasn't been much done for this marginal (old-fart? cine-nerd?) section of their user market.... This is why I was interested in moving away from GoPros at some point as well, and looked for more "rounded" action-camera type products, but this is difficult. The DJI Osmo cams looked good, but honestly, I've yet to see a proper diving video shot with one. WePix user Aquatic Images posted a GoPro / Osmo comparison YouTube vid a while back, but again no, actual UW footage (I don't think he ever got the cam) - there's just nothing out there, other than those (slightly-cringe) "GoPro killer" / specs comparison vids. And yet the fact that brands like AOI and Inon are picking up and expanding on well-designed scuba UW accessory lines is good, (first to do so were Snake River Prototyping / SRP and Backscatter, but SRP no longer exists and Backscatter's line hasn't really been extended over the years), and this is also probably a good reason to return to the GoPro line after all. One of the main issue for us housing-dependent GoPro users is that any major design update carries the risk of making all accessories unuseable (cam/battery format change = housing size change = accessories no longer compatible)... Cue in sad-trombone jingle and a frantic online quest for the odd Chinese company making plastic bits and pieces which might or might not somehow make your beloved accessories work with the new line... It's funny that you mentioned modification of Yi cameras, i just remembered that i had actually changed the lens on my unloved GoPro 6, idea was to have a wider field of view without the ugly fov distortion. Lens i got was a 3.37mm lens from MAPIR Peau Productions, but hardly used it as the cam was left in Japan for luggage trimming reasons. Company's still around btw, and sell interesting products, see: https://www.peauproductions.com/ If I was to bring out the pipe, puff a little and dream on, ideally, someone out there should work on a more "mature" go pro - no longer really an "action cam", but a rugged, practical waterproof video cam. A video-centric cross between an action cam, a TG and a compact! [puff-puff ] Ladies and Gents, i give you the rugged GoPro Cine line, with its dedicated underwater accessory pack: - waterproof to 10m (that way no real need for a vaccum system) - bigger sensor (1" or more), 10bit, 4K 60fps, overheating kept in check, good stabilisation - full automatic point and shoot mode, but manual controls knobs for 1. ISO 2. shutterspeed - dedicated manual white balance button for UW shooting, and a WB preset bank (gasp!) - a reasonable (non-fisheye) set zoom lens, and an aperture ring (re-gasp! - maybe rename it the "blurry background ring" or the "bokeh-buddy ring"?), and a basic zoom knob. - a slightly bigger screen, and/or a practical option to mount one to use UW, and re-re-gasp focus peaking display so you can see the focus point - a polycarbonate double o-ring dive housing, with a flat port with a reinforced threaded mount and space for extended battery pack - third-party makers will be delighted to handle the pricey aluminium housing market, notably with cutting-edge products like the Inon GoCnThX 04-22W and the AOI CineGP WaL2.01b 😉) - waterproof extended battery solutions - ok, some sort of ND filter and XLR (?) mic-in option for on-land shooting, and an optional manual focus gear knob-button - gotta give the land-based market something for cinematic-vlogs and all.... *** In a way, the TG line is already close, but it's really not that great for video... Compacts are also very close, but not waterproof, stabilisation is not great and UW screen / battery pack options inexistant (logical, since they're not designed for uw use and still have to please the dominant still-shooter market, as always....), and they are on the verge of extinction anyway... ff (image source: StableDiffusion 😇) [/puff-puff] cheers b

Here is are some blackwater diving video shooting tips from DPG: from the original article available here: https://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-special-features/article/quick-tips-black-water-video-macro Otherwise here is a Q&A with Simon Buxton with some video-focused tips in there: Finally here is a little playlist I compiled of some actual blackwater / "Bonfire" videos available on Youtube:

I'm jappy to see Inon is giving us filter mounting options again (even if it's intended for their lenses), as it's not really in the zeitgeist. There's no reason stepping to a 67mm filter won't work. Stepping down is more risky because of vignetting risks, but the go pro lens is small. Original SRP UR-Pro filters were 55mm, but the glass 52mm UR-Pro I have doesn't vignette as well, so no issues stepping up to 67mm. edit - The sidestep-slide on yearly GoPro cam upgrades and image quality is now in a seperate thread cheers b

Have you noticed a real improvement in the quality of underwater footage over the upgrades? The thing about action-cam footage and their clockwork yearly upgrades is that there's a lot of talk about how great the new upgrade is, but when it comes to actual footage produced with it, it's difficult to find more than the odd tests - which abound every time a new model is out -but don't really tell us much, especially for UW video.... People working with action cams to shoot and produce finished underwater clips are rare. Most are tests, side by side comparison and the like, and then you have the odd ungraded clip where it's more about what is shown than image quality, etc. It's not really consistent as a sample base, and difficult to measure image quality upgrades for UW shooting. The latest demo clips shot by Kay Burn Lim for AOI are nice for instance, but it's difficult to pinpoint the mind-blowing improvements that the new cam / gear / accessories actually allowed. In my GP user history, the biggest jump was from 4 to 5 - The 4 had no stabilisation, and the colour / light dynamics were poor. However the image was crisp, sharp, really good. And the Medium field of view really pleasing. Skip to the 5, and we get great stabilisation (well, it started getting really good with the 7 and up), cam was waterproof (saved a lot of stress of checking the 40 m or 60m housing), and colours / dynamics were much better, and you had more shooting modes. However, the field of view was really not great, more distortion in the new Linear than in Medium fov, and image quality had dropped somehow. The introduction of the touch-screen zoom mode also made things much more difficult for UW macro shooting (compared to just choosing "narrow" fov, especially since the zoom would reset when the cameras was off for example). Sure, better colours and dynamics on the 5 and up new gens, but also less sharpness/ precision, and more side distortion overall (which i believe is linked to the introduction of stabilisation). The GoPro 6 was not great, buggy and quickly forgotten, as the 7 was much better and stable. I stopped there, because for the 8 and up an whole housing/battery upgrade was required, and filter solutions lacking. To illustrate this experience, here are some clips: this was shot on the GoPro 4, with no stabilisation: GP4 - colours / dynamics are lacking, especially at depth, but i like (and still miss) the image quality this cam had. I hopped straight to the 6, which was clunky - this is one of the rare clips I shot on the GP6, and from there I quickly hopped to the 7, which was solid, and used that a lot: GP7 All of these are shot in flat profiles, with the same UR-Pro Cyan filter, and white balanced / graded in post. You can see the corner distortion and loss of image quality from the 4 to the new gen, but also the improvements in colour captation and low(er)-light handling. Not really using a GoPro at the moment, I'm in no hurry to update, I guess I'll probably hop on to the GoPro14 or 15 at some point when they're out....😆 A thread like this one seems to indicate that some users are not finding a massive difference in the quality of UW footage, but YMMV... In post, I work with Final Cut Pro X - work flow is to first reset the WB point (picking a white balance point in the image, sand, tank, bubbles, white/grey bit of rock) and work from there. I have a preset with color wheels (increase dynamic range, desat the blacks), color board (fine tune WB) then curves.

Yep, totally agree - one of the reasons I didn't upgrade the GoPro7 I was using was primarily the lack of filter adapters for standard housings. I considered switching to the Dji Osmo at one point, but same issue, worse maybe. Despite all the "no-filter required" statements found online, I'm used to and enjoying grading GoPro flat footage, and for that shooting flat with a good filter (I was using UR-Pro Cyans filters, 55mm and 52mm), then adjusting the white balance in post (since there is no way to custom WB underwater) works really well (here's a sample, or a more recent one here, all shot in ambient light + filter, WBed and graded in post) Started doing this on the 4 (which, as an aside, had really good image quality, something was lost in the upgrades to the 5 and up - though of course there were other improvements, colour, low light, stabilisation, waterproofing) and never looked back. There's really 2 approaches to action camera footage: people who will be working on GoPro UW footage in post (in which case a flat profile + filter will get best results in post), and those who are trying to get the best results in camera which, in my opinion, doesn't work as well with GoPros underwater. Shallows will be good enough, but footage will be difficult to adjust in post and colour results not as smooth. The Inon 67mm filter mount is great - I probably would use it with stepdown rings with my filters - I'd like to try the Inon variable red filter, but filter quality is actually important here - I've tried shooting with a Keldan Spectrum Filter on the GoPro and results were bad for instance - I haven't tried Magic Filters on the GoPro, which would be interesting, but the now legacy UR-Pros Cyan I've been using since the GoPro4 to 7 just work well. Would love to see more convincing clips shot with the variable filter, as clips like this are not the most convincing, and I imagine it would be difficult to have an idea of the adjustments made in-situ on a GoPro (well, this is where a bigger screen might come in handy) I will upgrade at some point as I like the idea of simplicity of a GoPro in a BCD pocket, but personally wouldn't spend a lot of money on accessories trying to bulk up and improve what is a great little camera as is. Despite the screen, handles a wide lens (on a camera which is already wide-enough for most applications....), it will still be a GoPro, with no manual WB, no aperture control, etc... Closeup lenses will indeed make closeups possible, but shooting actual macro on a GoPro sounds like a headache more than anything else, as for handles (which I used at one point, I had a tray on the 4 which had no in-camera stabilisation), a two handed grip directly on the sides housing also works really well (maybe better actually, but shh) especially with the fantastic stabilisation introduced on the 5 and up.

Welcome Tim - as a conservation photographer, there's a thread that might interest you in this corner of the forums: cheers b

Looks fantastic - doesn't seem to exist as an e-book, unfortunately for those of us in slightly more remote places and with luggage restrictions 🙂

Thanks - 18K is a lot of power! i imagine the lights were positionned downwards?

Welcome Ann! Very nice place to be, and easy to hop over to Palau too for a change of scenery 😀

Yes, very interested in logistical details as well - what kind of lights were used for the lures on the line, and how were they positionned? And was anyone shooting video on those dives? How did this work out with photgraphers? From what I read so far on basic black-water dive logistics, critters are attracted to the lure lights on the line then photographers focus on them and shoot away, eventually moving away from the line to some extent. But for video's constant lighting, I guess this would leave the option of either staying away from the lure lights with lights off, and turning on the lights when required or using one's one lighting as a lure light (which seems to be what is going on with Aquatilis), but this would probably be more of a solo option. Given the amount of critters we have even in shallow water here, my plan for "shallow black-water" tests is simply to tie a lure light to a deeper mooring rope at 10m and hang in the area, see what shows up (hopefully not just lionfish...) Current is usually mild enough to hang around, so if conditions are ok it would just be a question of following the critter a little, then returning to the line. I know some ops in Tulamben organise proper black-water from boats (not sure how far out they go), but I'd rather practice shooting video in similar conditions first, to try to figure out what works. I shot this tiny little critter yesterday at midday (lost it before I was setup for hand-held shooting, so no useable footage, unfortunately...) - no clue what this is, but if oddities like this can be spotted during the day, there's reason to hope l̶u̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ hanging around in the dark (with DIY readers, hood and leggings - laundry basked optional 😁) might bring about some interesting encounters....

Guilty for the (neoprene) hood - knifeless calves, but nicely wrapped in black leggings under the shorts, my standard underwater guise when not wearing a wetsuit ... Wait, is this what they call oversharing? 😅

Indeed... not even sure that kind of thing is entirely legal in these parts 🤣🤣🤣

Wow - amazing footage indeed!! I'll be going for a deep dive in the Aquatilis project, thanks so much for this. Amazing critters as well, really fascinating. The simplicity of the stabilisation device is mind-blowing - I can totally see the logic, bulkier means more damping of handling movements. He's also not really using that many floats, but I think this is due to the large dome port, which must be quite posistive. Light positionning seems pretty straightforward, just angled-in a little for closeups - overall a really simple kit but seems to work great. To rebound on depth required, I totally agree - when I was on Hachijo Island in Japan, planktonic / larval were really special (I remember spending time try to shoot a larval mahi-mahi, which was pretty great), even though we were in a shallow harbour. Granted, it was quite deep and exposed to the Kuroshio current just a couple of miles out, but there was a lot going on in the shallows. Same thing in east-Bali - there is some depth closeby (the fishermen setup their fish-aggregating devices in a spot about 1500m deep...) and really powerful Indonesian through-flow current pumping through the Lombok straight, and there's a lot going on even in the shallows... I've become really lazy with night diving logistics, but seeing footage like this is really motivating and reminds me of what I'm missing out on....

Nice find! Allows the use of the Digipower extended battery kit down to 250m apparently

Sounds tricky - all Inon products are made for the GoPro dive housing. If the wide lens only come with custom SD mounts, one way to approach it would be to find some kind of adapter to get the wide lens to fit to a regular threaded mount, then use step-up/down rings You could maybe use something like this with the Digipower frame, since it mounts on the bare camera's lens protector, but this would need to be tested given the Digipower frame's added bulk Otherwise Puluz makes an adapter that fits directly on the bare cam's lens like so: Then it's just a question of making the wide lens of your choice work with a 52mm thread.