bghazzal

As a follow up to this thread on shooting blackwater video, I’ve been experimenting with “bonfire” / light trap style setups here in east-Bali, and can share a little clip compiling the first results of these tests. My "bonfire" (the name is really over-the-top in this case) or "light-trap" lure setup used is very basic and rudimentary, as I’m doing this on my own and have very little lure lights to work with. And yet it’s still been quite interesting, and brought up questions on lighting power, positioning, spotting and focusing, and importantly the relationship between video lighting’s constant light output and the lure lights, which I'll develop below. Overall, the most important thing is that despite the lack of lure light power, it still works, subjects do show up, and my current interrogations are now very video-specific, and don’t necessarily apply with the sub-second strobe lighting used in still shooting, but do overlap in strobe / light positioning... *** When I say my bonfire-dive setup is basic, it really is. It's not really a bonfire, more along the lines of a small campfire barely good enough for heating up a can of tomato soup... 😅 So not really the stuff of dreams, but then there's location, location, location, right? Facing the deep waters of the Lombok Strait (which is also one of Indonesia’s major current throughflows), what I do is simply swim up to a mooring with with roughly 25m depth, where the plateau stops and the deep slope begins... My bonfire crime scene, on the shores of the Lombok Strait Sloping off into the strait, kumbaya, kumbaya... Setting of from the beach into the darkness at around 7:30 pm, I swim out to the mooring (which is on a sloping bottom), and then hang my light rig, facing downwards, at 8/10m depth, and wait for the swarm to form and food-chain action to build up, which takes about 15 minutes or so. Let there be (a little) light - my first lure light rig: a Backscatter MW4300 + 2x Archon dive lights... Now I've broken out the spare dive lights, and I’m basically working with 3x to 4x 1000lm standard dive lights each with a 16° beam, and the Backscatter MW4300, which is a 4000 lumen light. On that note, I still haven’t concluded if the MW4300’s wide or spot mode is more practical. - Wide mode (max 4300 lumen, but I usually put it on second-highest power) has an 85° light beam, which creates a larger cone of light. - Macro mode (1400 lumen) has a 14° light beam The MW4300 in 85° wide-mode with a swarm forming Will I have very little lure lights, this is actually enough to attract stuff, and it's been worth the hassle of going off into the darkness, bringing up some nice subjects, juveniles and larval forms. Nothing fancy like a blanket octopus, but still enough to keep me occupied.... So this limited light power is enough to attract different critters here in east Bali, with regulars and also some more suprising encounters, depending on conditions. Some visitors on the last 3 test dives One thing is very clear through: the closest critters are to the light source, the more active (and the faster) they are. As with an outdoor light on a warm summer’s day, the light sources gets flooded with critters, generating lighting fast feeding action and general frenzy. Mantis shrimp larvae - which are everywhere in these parts - go from slow cruising to backflipping frenzy depending on proximity to the light source, for instance. Action building up right under the lights The swarming has begun, time to break out the marshmallows... One of the things I learned is that for video (and following subjects not lost in the mass of the swarm), it’s best to go a little deeper and on the edges of the light cone It's where you'll find slower subjects (sometimes more interesting than closer to the light), which are not lost in the swarming mass, so easier to follow. So for people looking to organise super-basic bonfire / light-trap dives with limited lure lights, I would strongly recommend finding a way to hand the lights over depth rather than putting them on the sand facing up. Reason is that it’s just easier to hover in open water, and to go deeper rather than shallow-up to be on the edges of the cone of light. Also, there are less chances of stirring up sand when swimming around to film - given the small critter’s feeding behaviour, the dives are quite active compared to standard macro shooting... I also found myself directly under the cone of light a few times, so really, for limited light setups, hanging the lights is the way to go. Lastly, a weird thing is seeing critters letting themselve drop in the water column, which you'll see in the clip, as drop with the critter - this vertical movement, as opposed to horizontal, is quite common in this context for some reason - not sure if they do the opposite on a sand-based bonfire setup... For my "bonfire dives" I use a boat mooring which is anchored to the bottom at 25m, but given how little weight and traction the lights have, a buoy or smb floating on the surface with a few weights to anchor it to the sand would be just fine (though using an existing mooring is more environment friendly, and of course you couldn’t do this near a reef) So all good... If conditions are right, you can have fun in the darkness without a massive amount of light (please note that I am doing this alone, so with a group of divers, well, the equation is probably different). More light is surely better of course, but it's possible - to some extent - to wing it with a very basic setup, without a milion lumen of light... ******* Here's a little clip based on these first three bonfire-dive style experiments: I'll follow-up with some more video-centric observations and interrogations...

Here is the stuff of nightmares: the infamous post check-in carry-on luggage weight checkpoint for all Air Asia flights at Kuala Lumpur's KLIA2 terminal... Snapped this on the sly last week, thinking of this thread.... After check-in and luggage drop, all KLIA2 passengers have to go through this luggage weight check-point to reach immigration's passport control booth and security. They've made it even more systematic now, with a dedicated lane for people with luggage (read, rollers and the like) and those with "none" . Rollers get weighed, but a light-looking backpack usually gets you into the "no luggage" lane. I've resorted to the pocket vest strategy to get my roller under 7kg a few times in the past there, emptying the heavy stuff in the pockets before going through, and then replacing everything back into the roller after the weight check... Scary? They make it easy 😁 That said, the great thing about Air Asia is that it's very easy to add check-in luggage at a reasonable price, which helps.

To follow up, SUPE’s Raymond Bao has offered me to pay 35USD shipping cost for a replacement (which might be subject to 20%+ import taxation in Indonesia) and a circuit board. I have declined the offer, as I thing I have had too many issues with the SUPE MS-10 to spend more money on it, especially with no real guarantee that the issue won’t repeat itself in the near future... Maybe I was just unlucky, but this is just too many problems for a light model 🤷‍♂️ cheers ben

Rebounding on this thread, would anyone have recommendations for a mostly blackwater/bonfire dive focused trip? I'm leaving Bali in December for Japan, but will have to do a visa-run late February, and the idea of a week in Anilao seems like an interesting winter-option. Having spent 2 years shooting macro in the Tulamben/Amed area, other than mimic/wunderpus encounters the main attraction for me would be bonfire and actual blackwater dives. Reading this great article on blackwater as pioneered by Mike Bartick at Crystal Blue Resort https://indopacificimages.com/getting-into-blackwater-diving-the-anilao-night-shift/ if I understand correctly seems that you get back to land at around 1am - based on people's experience, would you think it possible to do a blackwater/bonfire focused stay, ie diving only at night, or are the blackwater dives, given the logistics - mostly a once-a-week / enough-guests-interested kind of setup? It would be great to try to get 4 or 5 evenings on a week-long stay for instance, but maybe for this it's easier to join whoever is organising blackwater dives than diving with the same resort? cheers ben

overweight baggage, overweight baggage, yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man...

Nice! Roger Munns also worked on Blue Planet II (including the Coral Reefs episode), which is why the footage looks so familiar. Looking forward to seeing this, and reading his blog's new posts and behind-the-scenes photos relating to the individual shoots I worked on once the series airs on November 20th. (but... Barack Obama? 😅) cheers

Looks lovely - the bumphead parrotfish sequence reminds me of what we heard during the spawning dives in Palau, where the males would face off on the bottom (around 30m/40m depth) before the spawning began - you would here the bones clucking eerily. I wonder if it was filmed there - landscape does look like the Ulong area in the extract. And it looks like they went for super-saturation like the Blue Planet team did in some sequences... Probably the same batch of footage? Also, maybe I've been living in a box, but could anyone explain why a former US president is narrating this? 😂😂 Is narration a new retirement side-gig for politicians or something? I just hope Blue Planet III won't be narrated by his successor in the White-House...

I haven't looked into the history of major Japanese camera makers, but you've spiked my curiosity! I know most have been around for a while, probably 1960s or earlier, predating the "Japanese electronics" era. My first film camera was my dad's Canon AE1, which if I remember correctly was a hit in the late 1970s. (edit - yes, it seems most manufacturers were general optical equipment makers, already active pre-WW2, somewhat similar to German optical companies, which probably inspired these ventures) One thing to remember is that "Made in Japan" was generally a synonym of bad quality until the 1980s... You're absolutely right about manufacturing plants - one big electronic export product (before the VCR boom) after WW2 were Japan's cheap radio transistors, which were of notoriously bad quality. The association between Japanese products / exports and cheap quality goes back to the interwar period. After the 1970s, the "bad quality electronics" stigma hopped from "made in Japan" to "made in Hong-Kong" and "made in Taiwan" before ending up on "made in China", where it still is to this day (for Chinese company branded goods anyway...) If I dig into the remaining memories of my Japanese studies, when it comes to electronics, things really changed in Japan after the oil crises. After WW2, Japan had a mixed-economy, with an almost Soviet-style economic planning set out by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI), coupled with fluid cooperation between senior civil servants and business owners including surviving Zaibatsu conglomerates revamped in Keiretsu groupings (eg Mitsui, Yamaha, etc), and the financial sector. Directives were set out by the MITI and the industry would follow (this level of State planning and involvement actually predates WW2 and went quite far - for the anecdote some sovkhoz/kolkhoz type collective production experiments even happened during the Japanese colonisation of Manchuria, (which didn't go too well with the Imperial government's official anti-communist stance...). All this to say that the power of the MITI directives was enormous, and this level of State planning and fluid implementation (senior civil servants and management had gone to the same schools, and had interpersonal relations) coupled with a compliant financial sector, is really something quite unique, and one of the major reasons for Japan's rapid economic success post-WW2... I mention this because up to the oil-crisis, Japan's economy was driven by different plans, including a major coal-production focus in the 1950s along with (cheap) transistors/electronics, but after that the major MITI focus was the petrochemical industry (which is why you have all these "kombinat" plants along the inner sea for instance...) However, after the oil crises, MITI changed directives, moving the country's economy away from its petrochemical focus to the production of high-end, high-tech electronics. R&D budgets were enormous, and everyone jumped on board. This is why by the end of the 1970s early 1980s, Japanese electronics are booming, innovation flourishes and - lo-and-behold - quality also improves at a very fast pace... The Golden Era... This is when we see Mitsui linked-companies develop the Compact Disc - which had actually been invented by Philips in the Netherlands - to make it into a practical commercial product, and also the invasion of Japanese VCRs, and all the rest (tape recorders, compact hi-fi sets, walkman, discman, TVs, laserdiscs, portable laptops, minidiscs, game consoles, MIDI musical instruments, DVDs, DAT, digital audio and video and so much more...) Back to cameras, Japanese camera makers also benefited greatly from this national focus on high-tech R&D and production, and I think it helped fuel the transition to digital imaging... All this came to a grinding halt in 1989, when the economic bubble burst - Japan has been recovering ever since, and lost the way to its former assemblers, mostly based in its former colonies, Korea (which also had zaibatsu/keiretsu-like structures founded during the Japanese colonial period, see chaebol) and Taiwan... Let's not forget that during the colonial period, both Seoul and Taipei had prestigious Imperial Universities where most of Korean and Taiwanese pre and post-WW2 elite had been educated, a fact which, despite obvious political tensions, helped economic cooperation (in accordance with the Japanese "flying geese paradigm", the Gankō keitai-ron) Taiwanese manufacturer ASUS started out as an assembler for Toshiba, for instance... After 1989, the world of Japanese electronics, R&D budgets were slashed, feet were generally freezing-cold, and there was also a tendency to refocus on the domestic market instead (you wouldn't believe the number of innovative Japanese domestic products, good and bad, which never made it out of Japan...), but with no great success. The Koizumi era in the 1990s also saw the introduction of neoliberal economic directives, privatisation and deregulation (inspired by predating Reagan/Thatcher type economic policies) in Japan, all of which didn't really help in this case - Japanese industries missed both the next-generation TV and the smartphone successive boats, along with a few other heavy trends in the process... The post bubble-burst 1990s were the end of the powerful MITI (renamed METI) planning directives, and Japan is still bobbing around in the aftermaths of the radical economic policy changes of the 1990s/2000 to this day... It is in this very special post-boom and post-crisis, conservative environment that Japanese camera makers operate, and nonetheless still dominate the international market. And other than the Samsung camera initiatives mentioned above, there have actually been very few forays into the camera market. Beyond the limited scope of the camera market, I wonder if this might be also be linked to the fact that optical / lens production require precision glass technology that few Asian countries possess, or at least not to the level of Japanese plants. This context also helps understand why Japanese camera makers have been generally conservative, generally offering limited innovations, and with a slower implementation (in stark contrast to what was happening in the late 1970s and 1980s...). cheers ben

Hmm, are you talking about imode enabled phones for Japan? These certainly predated the iphone and smartphones by a few years, but also didn't really compare to smartphones and apps from what I remember... It was basic email + browsing (and a manga / book reading app) and not much else. No real app store (or apps...) to download. Which was certainly ahead of its time (a bit like the French Minitel network vs. home internet, ever heard of it?), but very limited and quite a different environment. imode was also introduced in France just a couple of years before the smartphone explosion, by Bouygues Telecom if I remember correctly. It was slooooooow, but sometimes you could check email and (sometimes) load a webpage... I remember when I started going to Japan, Japanese phones were more advanced, with colour cameras, then video when we had the first still still cameras... Very cool. And then... smartphones happened in Europe. And all of a sudden my cheap smartphone became and object of interest in Japan, 2009 maybe, I don't really remember - as the imode operating clamshell phones and carrier protectionism meant smartphones were introduced later, much later in Japan.... People were asking to see my phone, and really impressed as these kind of phones were not available on the Japanese market. Not sold, but also not useable on Japanese carrier networks - SIM cards, for instance, are a recent introduction in Japan (which was a deliberate move to secure the domestic market) It was a little bit sad, to see Japan lagging behind so much after being such a symbol of advanced technology... Really felt like the end of an era... Another thing I remember is that in the early days, after Android / Apple smartphones were finally introduced, it that Japanese users had to pay to dowload/use even basic apps. I would show all these apps to my sister-in-law before realising that the Android "playstore" or whatever what they were accessing through their carrier was called required payment to download, and for most apps (including youtube, gmail...) a monthly payment IIRC... This lasted a bit before it was normalised like elsewhere. People were shocked we didn't have to pay to download apps and or to use them for the most part, just data quotas.... 😅 Another fun fact about Japan is that carriers actually rebranded Korean (Samsung) phones for the Japanese market at first - so Samsung Galaxy phones were rebranded as "Docomo phones", with no Samsung brand or model name, and sold directly by carriers on the domestic market - so as not to underline how behind Japan now was... This was a little weird as well... Bu things have changed - my current Japanese smartphone is a Chinese Oppo, which I got free bundled with a Docomo-linked subsidiary carrier subscription (OCN) - however, as i just found out, the Oppo models sold in Japan are not sold in SE Asia, so my efforts to change get the battery changed (which is very easy to do in Kuala Lumpur) all failed... So there's still a bit of protectionism there I guess. And nowadays, other than home-based monthly internet subscriptions, internet access is still ridiculously expensive in Japan compared to Europe or S.E. Asia, and with low data quotas... Just to give an example, my Japanese phone has one of the cheapest plans, which is 500 Mb of data per month, for around 8 euros per month...

We got some nice light multipocket vests at a store selling outdoor working clothes in Japan (workman), and usually wear those under a standard hoodie and/or rainjacket depending on how strong the airconditioning is in the airport. Otherwise look into military-ish "tactical" gear (after all, body-carrying gear to survive a carry-on luggage check is a tactic...) I you're worried about looks, what works fine as well isjust transfer everything back to the roller after check-in (if you're not expecting a weigh-in at the gate or elsewhere, that is). The main control point is usually the check-in (though airports like KLIA2 will has an set filtering gate after checking with staff and scales, which you have to go through to access immigration and security), and some low-cost carriers (Jetstar for instance) can do visual based weight checks at the gate. cheers

I recently sold my Macromate+15 - the original idea was for it to be used in narrow mode - then as GoPros were updated, you were supposed to zoom in, which caused problems as the zoom was touch-screen controlled and would reset. That said, you can use it in linear and get ok results. It's just very fiddly, because it's difficult to nail the correct focusing distance. The Inon accessory focus brackets seen here would certainly help: as would the new focus peaking functions which have been introduced. I didn't get conclusive results when I played around with cropping in, but there was no 5.3K at the time. The newer AOI / Inon lenses are probably easier to use than the Macromate, with less corner distortion. For Tulamben, you'll have a lot of nudis which are both a little boring on film but also not super difficult to shoot - a tripod would be preferable. More mobile subjects like ghostpipe fish or active frogfish might be a little trickier in terms of focus, but with peaking, who knows. Just look into it and play around with focusing before the shoot - you'll find tons of still pictures of Tulamben subjects here, for video there a few of mine here , but these are on a compact (I mostly dive in Amed now, as it's more flexible for me). I actually sold my MacroMate to Fresh Fins diving in Amed, and the owner is mostly shooting on a a GoPro with the Macromate in Amed and Tulamben, so take a look at his footage here: https://www.instagram.com/freshfinsdiving/ Let us know how it goes, macro on the GoPro has always been tricky, but the newly introduced focus peaking function might be what we were waiting for... cheers ben

😱 "I see... Canon colours..."

Yes - but we’re also considering computational functionalities replacing traditionnal optics, right? In the same way that a smartphone’s tiny lens always you to do away with glass and get good results. Same goes for lighting, as strobes / lights will no longer be necessary thanks to computing power. So future dedicated devices (cameras) will no doubt be greatly miniaturised as well, which has great implications for underwater imaging. If we take it even further, screens will probably be replaced by lens integration, like the budding vision-pro technology. But this far ahead, we might not even be talking about devices per se - like cameras, smartphones will also be long gone 😄 ah the joys of anticipation... Timeline noted, and time will tell - I believe dedicated cameras that are not smartphones will survice in some form or another, and that we might actually be reaching peak smartphone multifunctionality. Saying this I'm aware that the odds look very small, but I've said it and look forward to being proved wrong if I have enough time to see it through. As stated, I’m really discussing here is current smartphone use, which, to simplify, is using a non-dedicated (= not designed from the ground up for imaging purposes) generalist (=which does many other things other than imaging) device with a great photo functionalities, but also one not specifically designed for the purpose. However, if I'm not mistaken, using a non-dedicated device for imaging is also a first (ie cameras, no matter how portable or throw-away they might have been, were cameras only). The sheer practicality if it has swept compact cameras away, we definitely agree - and it's only logical, after all carrying cameras in bags or pockets was always a nuisance for people who didn't really make a hobby out of it, so replacing them with a device people will carry with them all day long was a no-brainer. Yet again, that said I do have doubts that his trend will mean hobbyist photographer’s primary tool will be non-dedicated generalist (ie- that does everything and more) Swiss-army knife smartphones - and even more so for underwater imaging... But who knows, maybe the future is formless. But at the moment, despite the odds, I still believe that dedicated imaging tool (let's just call them "cameras" if this is clearer) will prevail. In a different form, yes, integrating technology which was designed to overcome smartphone photography limitations, yes. But as I was writing above, I don't think hobbyists (not just prosumers, just people with an interest in taking pictures and video) will be shooting on smartphones in the future. Again, time will tell, and I'm curious. And underwater after all, Angrybirds isgreat for long deco stops, so why not stream movies, read the news or chat with friends? Don't get me started on dive live streaming 😄 This is what I meant by dedicated vs. generalist tool - a tool built for imaging purposes. It’s not really us and them, it’s more along the lines of do you want your frying pan to be your health monitor? Is it practical or does it also get in the way? Do you need, or want the million non-imaging related functionalities in your primary underwater camera? It might be a generational thing as well (read: old-fartism), but a lot of people around me are downsizing their multimedia multifunctional tool base, going back to more monofunctional relationships to objects, for a variety of reasons. But again, this is probably generational, and a backlash to perceived current noise/signal ratios. Back to smartphones instead of cameras, I totally see the appeal for impromptu shoots holiday snaps and all the rest, but would a hobbyist, with a passion for taking pictures or video underwater really want to bring their bank account, phone contacts, play Angrybirds, email with them to shoot underwater - even if it's perfectly safe to do so? All the wonderful stuff that a phone does is also largely unnecessary for imaging purposes, and in a way limits the development of the tool (ergonomics for instance). This is partly why I stubbornly believe non-generalist, dedicated imaging tools ("cameras" ) will survive the smartphone revolution in some form or another. The computer is a good example of a generalist tool, which evolved out of dedicated calculation devices filling basements to using this calculation / processing power to run a variety different programs, thus allowing it to do different things. The "office suit" was born (cue in memories of my the first Apple 2 in my dad's office...). Does that mean you want the Adobe CS sofware suit in an airplane cockpit? not really. However, and this is where it gets even more exciting, computer-based functionalities have then been integrated into dedicated tools - and this is pretty much how we arrived at digital photography cameras. Similarly, I’m convinced functionalities designed to overcome limitations of camera phones will be integrated into future dedicated imaging tools (cameras), but that the smartphone won't kill dedicated imaging tools (cameras). *** Regarding art, I'm probably not the right person to discuss this with 😅 My broad view on the subject is that Art with a capital A is a concept which evolved in a specific cultural and philosophical context, based on what were practical, functional practices, then “elevated” to a theoretically superior, transcendental plane. But in many ways it is also a matter of perspective. For music, as a social-anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, I also still see music as primarily functional activity (music in culture, music as culture). Instruments, music production (and consumption) have all evolved radically in the past 50 years, since music production is now basically software/computer/sample based since the digital revolution changed everything. However, some forms have undergone a deep freeze, thwarting their evolution, as they became set classical forms, instrumentation. They still evolve of course, but at a much slower pace. Western classical music, for instance, also evolved out of functional practices (ceremonial, religious, entertainment…), which gradually settled in form and function. Classical western music instruments as well, evolving into the form we know until the late 19th early 20th century. And while it can certainly be appreciated as a pure Art form, it is nonetheless still deeply linked to social functions and practices (very interesting to work on the ethnography of the classical music concert or of the opera, for instance...) Jazz is another example of a living cultural practice (again, deeply functional to begin with) settling into a classical form taught in conservatories. And nowadays, same goes for electronic music for instance, etc... My point here is not so much to correlate gear and artistry - I think you can do Art with a smartphone, DSLR camera, paintbrush or a pair of tweezers - and that the medium - any medium - will fall on a spectrum as to its relationship to the ideals of pure Artistic creation... When it comes to underwater imaging, I'm actually more interested in naturalist documentation (with a bit of aesthetics sprinkled on to top for good measure of course), than in the artistic rendering of reality by a photographer's eye. Which is why, as much as I love an impactful picture, I still miss motion and favour moving pictures as my partial re-rendering of reality. But that's another story 😅

Yes i hear all this, and agree it's definitely the trend, and I think everyone pretty much agrees with that. Industry leaders, media, and pretty much everyone in the room here 😄 And the weight argument is certainly a good one - but this doesn't mean that cameras, miniaturisation, computational functions etc will not bring UW kits back to smaller, more manageable proportions. What I do have my doubts about and am discussing here, is the replacement and eradication of dedicated imaging equipment by generalist, non-dedicated tools, especially of the smartphone-type. But let's see - the technology is out there, and phone cameras are getting better by the month (week?), housings are available and pressure resistant phones are maybe already tested and out (if there's really a market for it, that is) Which means that the smartphone underwater explosion should happen in the next, what, 3/4 years most? Maybe less? It's fun to imagine the revolution for underwater imagery. The younger generation will shoot on smartphones because this is what they know, what they do and also like (it's in their DNA, to use a tired corpo-trope, which stands for Digital NAtive, right?). Tired veterans will make the switch, more or less reluctantly, because big rigs are cumbersome and heavy, airline luggage policies too restrictive, and anyway if they can do the same or better with their phones, so why even bother? Software will make up for all those heavy, unnecessary, physical elements (such as optics and lights) anyway. Remaining camera makers, holding on to their brand-names, will be trying to sell add-ons for phones or already filing for bankruptcy - housing manufacturers will only sell phone housings and lights (while this is still needed, since low-light functions will soon be fully handled by software making Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" indoor shots look amateurish...). Underwater imaging equipment will be reduced to a few online outlets, selling whatever specialised pieces of equipment are still (barely) needed and underwater drones for people who can't be bothered getting wet. Professional applications will be upheld by action cam makers, non-banned equivalents of DJI, but even in this field it will all be almost all software (and light-field cameras 😁😁😁) Sharing, social media (an old world word, since all media is now fundamentally social) will be showcasing a mixed bag of reality based content, and reality-derived content of all shapes and sizes, some with interactive functions enabled, others not. BBC Blue Planet 10 will allow you be at the center of a baitball or see it through the eyes of a predator (but also offering a "visual only" version for artistic respectability, and pleasing the old farts still watching rather than interacting with the content) And who knows, we might even be spending time in a metaverse that finally looks better than the one of Godzilla-attacked-Wendy's fame, and drone-based cars will be flying, at last. 😅 I'm well aware that since the iPhone was launched in 2007 and we got pictures of all the material products it could and has replaced - this has become the doxa, the accepted obvious direction, a crossroad that only blinded fools like that photographer arguing that slides would never be replaced by digital pixels could misread. the future is now And we already have further ventures into generalistic, broad-sweeping interfaces aiming to further integrate what phones currently do into "augmented reality" (here's another word that smells fishily obsolete already...), think google glass or apple vision pro, but on steroids, where you can "do everything", including typing out your Minority Report, just by looking and pointing into thin air (life). And implants, or less icky devices offering similar integration capacities, are probably not that far around the corner either, for always more integration, immersion, less is more. So why would anyone want to hold an imaging-dedicated object like a camera in their hands? Who would bother, and why? Underwater, won't the logical trend be to integrate cameras into dive masks and live-stream your dives? It's not like camera integration hasn't been tried already, from go-pro mounts to integrated mask cams, to video "flashlights" like the Paralenz... Less to carry, less to do, less to worry about = more pure, unadulterated fun, right? less to do, more to live (© patent pending) And I'm sure members of your daughter's generation cohort, her friends or maybe her kids, will use such devices at least a couple of times (if they can still fly somewhere on holidays, that is...). Yet my point in all this is that I'm not totally convinced that all of this stampede-forward will rid us of dedicated physical imaging devices (ie "cameras") altogether. Especially for hobbyists ("photographers") and professionals. Something about form and function, practicality, a little on the same lines as to how Kodak mini-instamatics or Polaroids didn't kill the camera market, as some people thought they would at the time. They served a slightly different purpose. I see smartphones (and their all-purpose, further integrated offsprings) and cameras (dedicated imaging devices) going along the same way - crossovers for sure, but not necessarily mutually exclusive. Maybe. Same line of thinking goes for musical instruments perhaps? Were synthesizers, midi-instrument, ProTools and (argh) DJs, and even digital audio in general (from recording to Napsterized digital output) were revolutionary, but somehow also not the first nails in the coffin? ProTools, recording studio killer The Cartier-Bresson example is also an interesting one in that painting is a more physical activity than photography, a return to form but also to a more hands-on visual creation medium than clicking a shutter and developing prints will ever be (a beautiful irony is that photography was once anticipated to kill-off painting completely as a medium...) And beyond the physical object, in a world soon completley saturated both by quality point-and-shoot an partially to fully computer-generated content, will there not be some sort of longing for a return of the physical, if not in the medium itself, at least in the tools used? With iphones and other smartphones capable of taking award-winning pictures and shooting professional video, with action cams killing it like never before - why are interchangeable lens camera sales going up in Japan in 2023? Is it just a glitch in the Matrix, a last dying hiccup of aging photographic-Mohicans before the curtain falls for good? Or is there something else going on there? Also, for some odd-reason, I'm not sure sharing images on "social media", Instagram or other is actually the endgame for imaging. It certainly seems this way now, (after all, what else is there, print?) but I think there are also hints that things might evolve a little differently in the future. I would just say: don't underestimate the backlash to the major, mainstream trends we see now. Especially when it comes to hobbies, personal time and more professional application. But this is most likely the Butlerian-jihadist luddite in me speaking, of course 😄 "Nikonos-users of the world, unite!" So I've done it - it's 2024 and I'm putting these crackpot ideas out there for you folks - or whoever might be accessing archives by then - to laugh at in 10 or 20 years, laughing at how wrong I was in doubting the smartphone and its multifunction integrated offsprings as the ultimate camera killer, in what will likely be a time where people will just be creating imaging content without actual subjects being shot, since they will just be choosing and working from captures from their 360° archived life-feed (and making smashing composites on their first try, no doubt 😅) A world where dedicated cameras/imaging device are no longer made or sold, and Cartier-Bresson would likely shun painting for prompt-based generative-art... crappy open-source AI generated image of a boy with a smartphone.

Definitely for computational photography, but I don't think it will kill the dedicated-camera market. Really interesting times - looking at the Nikkei graph posted in the other thread, illustrating the "penetration rate" of digital camera in Japanese households in 2023 makes it look like armaggedon for digital cameras. But then the article I posted above also shows that the same 2023 was the also the first time in 13 years that the Japanese digital camera market experienced positive growth, with a 7% sales increase compared to the previous year, and this growth concerned interchangeable lens cameras (9% growth) and lenses of all things... Statistics are very useful, but have to be approached with caution, and given context, meaning. While camera functions on phones are great, let's not forget the primary function of smartphones is not photography, but clearly online media access and communication. This is what people use them the most for on a daily basis. I'm confident cameras will become more phone-like in their features (computational features, automation, media sharing etc,), I doubt that phones will fully replace dedicated physical cameras for photographers. Something about the dedicated physical object, form, lenses... Sometimes I wonder if we're not already at peak smartphone, a form of saturation of the non-dedicated device that can do everything but also relies on limiting physical interfaces and ergonomics. Beyond memory snaps and other social, interractive content, will imaging users, especially hoobyists, want more touch-screen / vocal commands, or return to the comfort of physical ergonomcs, handles triggers, balance. Will users want even more automation, even less to do to capture images, or will this kill some of the interest? Phone touchscreens will soon be obsolete as an interface, thing headset mounted integration etc - but will this really "kill the camera" or will the dedicated camera just become (in a way like it already is), something else, another tool, with sligthly different purposes and persepectives? Probably both will evolve in parallel, with smartphones filling, like they already do, the role of a compact, always available, memory snapping (and sharing) device - the new instamatic / polaroid - and likely biting into the action-cam market as well. While dedicated photography / imaging equipement will continue to appeal to hobbyists and professionals. This could be even more marked for specialist applications like underwater imaging. ben

Blowing against the wind, and maybe totally mistaken, but do have my doubts as to whereas phones will really leave their mark on the underwater photography/video world. Sure, smartphones killed compact cameras (which are also making a comeback of sorts at the moment, but this could just another retro-trend) yet there's a major difference, in that people usually have their phones with them during everyday life activities. For diving, yes, people will bring their phones on a boat, but it's quite a step-up to build an UW imaging kit around a smartphone intended as your primary imaging device. Yes, I know it works fine, and that people are doing it, that it would save having an extra device etc... I've seen recent phone housings even with filter attachements (Divevolk and others), and even if you counter this with an amazing dive video filmed on an iphone,I do have serious doubts as to whether this will really catch on. At the moment there still is something of novelty to it, and it seems we're in a phase were gadgety products are one the rise in the underwater imaging world - so given phone sales, it seems natural that phone housings seem like the next big thing, and that phones (and AI capactities!) will sweep the UW imaging world like a tidal wave. But again, something feels off, and it the anticipated explosion of demand doesn't really seem to be happening either... So let's see in a few years, if we can point the finger at my lack of foresight in this domain or not. Why? Well I see the form factor as a drawback, also the fact that phones are not dedicated devices, plus maybe psychological reluctance to bring a phone underwater for diving, and having to deal with a proper housing etc... There's also the fact that action cams exists and are easier to use in such a context, and also that people looking for more complex products / applications will probably be willing to invest time and momey in building a practical UW kit around a more specialist product than a phone, regardless of the phone's technical bells and whistles. Same goes for underwater tablets and UW wireless data transmission... beyond professional applications, retailers and technology geeks, will people really bother? At the moment it reminds me more of those soft "surf" vinyl housing intented for using DSLRS at the beach. Works, some people bought them, but didn't really catch on for a number of reasons... So I'll bookmark this and see if I was totally off-mark, and housing manufacturers will mostly be seeling phone (or whatever Swiss-army knife devices phones have evolved into) in a few years cheers

As an unexpected follow-up to this adventure, the SUPE MS-10 replacement received above is now unuseable... I would advise potential SUPE customers to be very careful, as there is clearly something wrong with at least some of the products in their range... So here's the deal: As explained above, the replacement SUPE MS-10 light arrived after 5 months, on January 5th. During the 5 months interval (!) waiting for its replacement I had bought a Backscatter MW4300 Macro-wide video light to fill the void, and it became my primary light (no problems with it, so I am not cursed 😝) Meaning that the SUPE MS-10 went into storage, after checking that it worked on land. However, I have recently been doing bonfire-style night dives, which gave the SUPE MS-10 a new purpose as a narrow pointer, especially since I was using the MW4300 as a lure light. So the brand-new replacement SUPE MS-10 went diving with me, 4 times. Yes, that's 4 dives at around 10 meters... No flooding no nothing but... Long story short the electronics are giving-in, and the SUPE MS-10 light turns on when it wants to... On land you can unscrew the battery compartement and try again. Underwater this is not an option of course. So I contacted SUPE again, explaining the situation, with pictures and a video of the problem. I got a (swift) reply from SUPE, asking for a video - I had already sent one, but sent it again, along with other test videos. I was then told to try to wipe the contact area with alcohol. Fair enough - the red circles were added by SUPE on my footage to highlight which areas to clean. To be frank, I couldn't see any oxidation on this light which had been only 4 times in the water, but hey, I had some IPA / Isopropanol, so wiped everything and hoped for the best. Alas, the problem remains - as suspected, it is most likely due to the light's electronics / control circuit. I told SUPE, and sent further test videos showing the light turning on and working and, in other cases, not turning on or working (with the same batteries...) I then got this reply: To which I answered that a light which sometimes turns on and sometimes doesn't cannot be used for diving. I'm am not taking a light on night dives that might or might not work (I generally avoid this with any piece of equipment if I can....) Having waited 5+ months for a replacement last time, I also explained that I did not feel like losing more time with this and especially not with their suppliers in Indonesia. I don't know if this applies to all SUPE products, this specific MS-10 model or if I've just been very unlucky, but the light I have is unuseable and will now end up in the garbage. I hope this misadventure will help other people make more informed decisions when considering buying products from this manufacturer, SUPE, also known as Scubalamp / SUPE / Fotocore and maybe others names. So big caveat emptor, unfortunately - I for one will stay away from this brand (which should maybe spend more time on product design and quality-testing than on social-media promotion...), once is bad luck, twice might be a coincidence, but I'm not in a hurry to confirm any patterns the third time... cheers ben

Wow - good to know thanks - how far out is the boat ride in the strait? The Lombok Strait major Indonesian throughflow so I've always wondered what the current must be like there. Must be quite a drift! I've only been out on junkungs, about a mile or so out to the FADS / rumpon. At the moment I'm doing bonfire dives in the shallows, but deep backwater would be interesting. cheers

Interesting - Paralenz's depth sensor was used to adjust auto-WB based on pressure / depth for instance.

It does look good - not mind blowing revolutionary-good to the point that I would feel the need to buy it, but certainly a worthy, solid contender. Wonder what the UW footage would look like with a filter and manual white-balance in post, as always... Out of the 3 main acion cam brands, I'm partial to DJI. I've been thinking about switching to their action cams in the future since the Action3, seems a little less gadgety - for lack of a better word - and maybe a little better thought-out than GoPro and the Insta360 (but of course their is some serious confirmation bias at play here 😉), and in softer price range than GoPros. But as shocking a denial of the GAS syndrome as it may sound, I haven't felt a radical urge to upgrade my GoPro 7 blacks yet (although the swelling batteries are really starting to drive me nuts...). Last action cam purchase was my already obsolete AOI wide lens a few months back. When the GP7 are finally put to rest (and they are getting there after years of use), big chance I will become a DJI user

Davide was working on a shallow cold-water (river) project with a digipower case giving 3 hours or so of filming IIRC the waterproof battery pack is this one here, digipower refuel https://digipower.com/collections/re-fuel/products/9hr-actionpack-extended-battery-module-for-hero9-ip68-waterproof-dust-proof-all-weather it was used with new wide lenses, see here: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/616-inon-and-aoi-wide-angle-wet-lenses-for-gopros/page/2/#comment-3616

As a side question, does Matahari organize boat-based black-water over deep water in the strait or shallow, bonfire-type dives? cheers!

Wetpixel seems to be back up now.... 🧟‍♂️

Looking forward to some lake action then! 😄 If we take a look into other filters in the Lee range and compare curves, the LEE 008 Dark Salmon actually comes out as really close to the UR-PRO Cyan (if the spectrum reconstruction is correct, which it seems to be empirical tests). Both filter material's colour is also nearly identical To address the exposure issue, here is the Dark Salmon and a few other (lighter) potential contenders, superimposed on the UR-Pro spectrum/transmission reconstruction data posted a few posts above: delete me please Main transmission differences are highlighted in red: violet blue cyan green yellow orange red 400 nm UR PRO = 25% LDS = 17% 410 nm UR PRO = 27% LDS = 17% 450nm UR PRO = 12% LDS = 13% 470nm UR PRO = 8% LDS = 8% 500nm UR PRO = 4% LDS = 6% 520nm UR PRO = 7% LDS = 8% 550nm UR PRO = 18% LDS = 21% 570nm UR PRO = 50% LDS = 36% 580nm UR PRO = 65% LDS = 48% 600nm UR PRO = 87% LDS = 75% 700nm UR PRO = 90% LDS = 88% Assuming the UR-Pro filter reconstruction data is correct, to summarise: • UR-Pro lets more violet/deep blue than the Lee Dark Salmon, 27% vs 17% at 410nm - the UR-Pro curve goes up at this point a sort camel hump in violet/deep blues. • UR-Pro lets more green through, 50% vs LDS 36% at 570nm, and also more yellow 60% vs LDS 48% at 580nm and orange 87% vs LDS 75% at 600nm, so a steeper steeper curve from green to orange. These transmission differences likely explain exposure differences between the UR-Pro and LDS, especially the 570nm to 600nm points. The rest of the two filters' transmission is actually almost identical, only a few % difference, which is rather impressive and explains why the results are so similar.... This is going to be hard to beat I think... **** For lighter alternatives, quick and dirty colour/exposure test on land (placing gels on the gopro lens, sorry for the fingertips 😅) gives the following results: It seems "107 light rose" is the most solid contender for a similar but lighter filter, though I'm a little concerned that the curve from green to orange is much flatter in this case... cheers

As yet another follow-up to this fascinating quest for the filter-grail, I tested the Lee 008 Dark Salmon filter in water (depths ranging from 8 to 20m on a tropical morning, slightly overcast day in east Bali) and the results are in... As anticipated (drum roll?), the filter works really well, with a very similar profile to the UR-Pro Cyan (or Cyan SW?), however with one major caveat: it is stronger / darker (and a bit warmer) than the UR-Pro - meaning a little more loss of light / ev, and also a slightly deeper tint in the reds - this is visible when looking at the camera's ISO sensor data, with a higher ISO on the LDS. Yet what this also means is that, as expected, the Lee gel actually works better than the UR-Pro when going deeper, but this is a give and take, as it means a greater loss of light - could be fine in the tropics, less so elsewhere. So, the quest is not completely over just yet. However we can add with confidence that the Lee 008 Dark Salmon is a truly worthy replacement for the UR-Pro cyan, and readily available for very cheap in gel rolls... 😄 But a tad stronger, then... *** Since the proof usually is in the pudding, here is some test footage, shot on two GoPro7 Black held side by side (no tray, this is quick and dirty handheld, one GP in each hand...), identical settings (flat profile ie. WB native, GoPro colours, ev -0.5, ISO max 1600, 4K 60fps). If you're fast enough as a click-slinger, you can actually watch both clips at the same time 😉 UR-PRO CYAN FILTER VS. LEE DARK SALMON GEL FILTER, AS SHOT (not white-balanced in post, ungraded) UR-PRO CYAN FILTER VS. LEE DARK SALMON GEL FILTER, WHITE-BALANCED IN POST + QUICKLY GRADED not bad for a commercially available gel, eh?... (please not that grading adjustments are flexible and subjective choices - there is plenty of room for modifications on both cams - this was just a quick and dirty grade, aiming to bring the cams' footage to similar results) cheers! ben