White balance with and without UR-Pro

Just going through my mountain of Lembeh footage and I thought this Rhinopias gave a very good side by side comparison of a white balances with and without the UR-Pro filter in place. No lights, VX2K camera, white balanced on white tape on fin, same fish, same place.

As you can see the result is much warmer with the filter in place. Too warm in fact, and I'll probably match these 2 bunches of clips somewhere in between the two.

Nick

Thanks Nick.

That's very intersting.

Couple of questions.

What depth were you at?

How do you think the auto white balance would have worked?

Cheers mate.

Thanks Nick.

That's very intersting.

Couple of questions.

What depth were you at?

How do you think the auto white balance would have worked?

Cheers mate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was at 18m and auto white balance wouldn't have stood a chance. It would have been very monochrome blueish-green.

Nick

Nick you have some nice critters over there.

What fstop and shutter with the VX2 were you at with both those shots at 18m? It should have stored it on the tapes data code.

Anyhow they are both nice shots and easily fixed up on the timeline.

You want me to go back through the tapes???

Erm... 1/50th, as usual, and err... f-something. How would I access those from the tapes? I've never seen that data displayed on the camera in VCR mode or in sclive or Vegas or anywhere for that matter but it would be very useful to look back on.

To be honest I don't think my shutter speed has left 1/50th at any time since the day I got the camera. When my lights aren't on (which is most of the time), I almost always shoot auto shutter speed and iris. The way I have customised the Gates housing, adjusting the shutter speed is pretty much mutually exclusive with MWB without a lengthy struggle and a lot of wobbling. As for the iris, the zebras don't show up on the external monitor, my eyesight is not quite what it was and I'm too lazy to risk camera steadiness in order to crane down and see what's going on on the viewfinder, which anyway resembles a super supreme pizza having been fried by the south east Asian sun through the housing's eyepiece on more than one occasion. On the occasions I have tried manual iris while shooting with daylight I more often than not screw it up.

If things get too bright when shallow I use ND filter, not shutter speed, if I remember but it's still fiddly.

Night time is another matter, where I'm on manual iris for pretty much every shot. The shutter stays at 1/50 though and I'm still eyeballing the exposure on the external monitor (and making errors of judgement). My old night dive stuff shot on auto (including most of what you've seen) looks well over-exposed now.

One thing I do notice from my Lembeh stuff is that I've let too much light in on a lot of the sunny shallow stuff, especially where I was running with stacked diopters and no room for the Ur-Pro. The whites are well blown out on too many occasions. Probably already down at F-11 and too dazzled (by the critters and the light) to notice the ND prompts.

Plenty of room for improvement and I'm looking forward to a setup where I can see the zebras properly and where I can adjust things with a little more ease.

I just tried an interesting WB technique filming hammers at 90feet in Cocos. They were very close in (almost touching distance) and I wanted to light them up with my lights...but still capture the school in the background.

Given the amount of plankton and general americas west coast pacific water conditions, wb at depth often produces very red and dark images. In addition, with lights, one can only get contrast and color on the subjects close in. Finally, the CC filter cuts out too much light at depth.

So, on the decent line at 20 feet (w/ cc filter OFF) I WB on the surface. Then down at 95 feet, I flipped on my HID dual light set up. Hammers passing near by were lit up by the lights and b/c of the slight wb the flesh tones jumped nicely at 2-3 meters away. In addition, the school behind them still had a little color and contrast. Once I rip the video, I'll post some screen grabs.

Anyway, wondering if anyone else has tried similar or alternative techniques for shooting wide and using lights.

Shawn

Nick I think you need a new camera, and keep the viewfinder cover on when in the sun with it:) Zebra's thats cheating...with the high res FX LCD screen you just know when it is to hot.

When you play back a tape press the DATA CODE button and it will first tell you the data then after another push it will tell you what the camera settings were at the time of shooting.

Shawn sounds like you are doing some cool diving over there...hammerheads....

Yes mixing lights and WBing to get colour in the background works although you have to make sure the sujects kind of stays the same distance or it will become too pinky/red if it gets to close and you will have to WB again. Like a fine balancing act.

I'm busy encoding clips today hence while I am always on this thing...