Shooting Pelagics: WB, Filter, Focus and Lighting Tips needed

OK, can't concentrate on work with this Cocos trip coming up so soon

Finally got around to setting up my twin 24W HID on my Gates HC7 this weekend.

Unfortunately the murky green waters of HK aren't a great way to practice for the Cocos...

Scenario - you're diving in the Cocos and come across a massive school of hammerheads in the distance on a day dive but it appears that you might get a close encounter (within lighting distance) as they approach.

Do you...

Focus: lock focus on infinity or lock at your fins (1m) to infinity?

Filter & WB: I presume for the distant wide angle shots, I would use the red filter and MWB without the lights?

Lights: These are HID's. Turn them on on the chance that a hammerhead might come in close? With the red filter and the MWB set to the filter, will you just get oversaturated reds? Set them as wide as possible to avoid red hotspots? Or if I have time (maybe wishful thinking), flip up the red filter and MWB with the lights. Will this give me nasty greens in the background?

Love to hear what techniques y'all would use in that situation.

Cheers,

I think you'd need more than 24w to light a hammerhead up! Personally I'd go with no flip filter, regular WB on a slate and color correct with the computer when editing. I've never been to Coco's but I hear that the hammers are deep. No point in shooting through a CC filter IMHO.

Focus wise. I normally set from 0.3m to Infinity. Depends on your system and what characteristic your lens has. Check that before setting anything.

Cheers,

Mark.

Thanks Mark. OK, so ditch the filter at depth...

got any spare HMI lights you can donate...

Turn on the HMI and lose the shark. They don't react well to light.

At alcyone or any other hammer site, it's a good 20+m deep. Like Mark says, forget the filter. If you don't have a slate, WB on the sun. Afterall, you'll be after the obligatory hammer with sunball shot (so clean your lens inside and out before hand too)

I'd lock shutter at 1/60 and set the AE to -1. It's easier to bring up the exposure in post than remove gain noise. If the exposure is at f1.X, the DOF is still limited for the small sensor so be very careful on focus. The wider the lens the bigger the DOF.

Turn OFF steady shot as well. Have fun and good luck.

i think you will have an extremely hard time trying to get manual WB to set at 20m plus without a filter.... odds are it won't.

I know neither of mine will... Z and 950

You may have to set it shallower and then just leave it as you move deeper and fix in post

and yea, focus lock somewhere between about .3m and .5m should get you good focus for near and far subjects

When I was over at Cocos last year I could not white balance past 25m with my HC 1, so I white balanced on the way down and just had to do slight colour correction after, I wouldn't use a filter either it will cut out too much light. I had AE down to -1 and focus set 0.3 to infinity.

You will have a blast!!!!! I'm very jealous... it is such a wicked experience.

I wanna go back

Jon

Turn on the HMI and lose the shark. They don't react well to light.

At alcyone or any other hammer site, it's a good 20+m deep. Like Mark says, forget the filter. If you don't have a slate, WB on the sun. Afterall, you'll be after the obligatory hammer with sunball shot (so clean your lens inside and out before hand too)

I'd lock shutter at 1/60 and set the AE to -1. It's easier to bring up the exposure in post than remove gain noise. If the exposure is at f1.X, the DOF is still limited for the small sensor so be very careful on focus. The wider the lens the bigger the DOF.

Turn OFF steady shot as well. Have fun and good luck.

Drew, out of curiousity, why turn off the steady shot?

Hmm - been reading and have a question on the filter usage: Less than 20 feet or so (give or take conditions, etc.) I've had the feeling that you generally won't want to use a CC filter because you have enough light (and you don't want it to correct what doesn't need correcting, so to speak).

Then I thought below that you use the CC to correct for the filtering of light through the water.

But from this thread I'm getting the idea that once you get deep enough, maybe it's better to remove the filter and take the correction loss v. the light loss the filter would cost you? And then you just correct in post?

Pakman

Steady Shot and other image stabilization were designed to recognize movements. The Sony version, if the HC7 uses the optical system, moves the prism on a gyro using accelerometers to compensate for the user vibrations. Underwater, those movements are muted and masked for a while. So sometimes the gyroscope plays over compensate. That's why it's recommended that Steady is turned off for tripod use.

To test, next time you're in the water, do a slow pan while tracking a subject with SS on and off and compare.

Pablo, anytime you can remove one more medium in front of the lens, I'd do it. Plastic filters increase birefringence, and also take out at least 1.5 stops of light. When the light at the particular deep depth is already pretty low(this depends on sunlight and turbidity of the water), putting a filter on will only make the picture darker and force the camera to increase gain to compensate.

To that end, I'd prefer blue looking marine life vs noisy grainy marine life.

Pakman,

On most dives, you are going to drop down to a cleaning station and hide in the rocks waiting for the hammers. When I was at Cocos, I used my UW filter. It is the glass one from Gates. I also left the steadyshot on.

I have the WB slate on the arm that Gates sells, so the first thing I did at the waiting depth was set WB. The next thing was to set the focus to infinity. In auto, the HC7 tends to search and screw up a shot. My old TRV101 was bad about that. My 900 and 950 did much better, but it seems like the HC7 is back to searching. I have used them all out at Cocos over the years.

There are not going to be that many times the hammers or galapagos sharks are going to come in close enough for lights, even if you are really hidden and quit breathing. My suggestion would be to leave the lights on the boat unless you are going to be looking for something besides the big stuff. Less bulk to fight the current and surge with while hanging onto the rocks.

The HC7 can drive you crazy when it has been several minutes and you push record to get the sharks coming in, there can be several seconds (2-5) of delay before it actually starts recording. I got some great tail shots because of that. :glare:

Beware of the urchins. They have learned to crawl under divers waiting in the rocks. Last month there were a lot of jellies by the surface, so if you have a light hood you can save some stings.

I would actually leave the steady shot on as it's a small housing....wobble ..wobble...

Get to about 14 meters, WB at the sun/whatever so it looks abit reddish and go to your deeper depth as it will have a hard time WBing down there thats for sure.

Locking the shutter is good as these small setups seem to crank up the shutter instead of closing the iris down abit when on auto. So much so that I can remember the auto gain boost (db) kicking in while the shutter is on 100+ when left on full auto?

60 speed (NTSC) is no good though if you suddenly go for a silhouette shot as the fstop may hit F11 max when pointing it up at the sun and therefore too much light for the camera and as the shutter cannot spin up to compensate for the extra light...the image may go soft. Also if shooting up into the sun you may want to overexpose (make hot) the back ground to see the subject better.

I believe the HC7 has no internal auto ND Filter.

Just one reason why to have quick easy control of shutter speed on a housing and the more you get into it the more you will want control;.

Good Luck.

For W/B you can always leave to default Daylight setting. that way with no corrective filter you're gonna have the benefit of immediate readiness for filming without the whole WB issue. Remember this is without any filter in place! Edit in post for color.

Just a thought.

Mark.

I have flimed hammers at Cocos using a combination of all of the above. Perhaps I have been lucky, but i was able to light up the hammers on at least 4 dives with my HID lights. Alcyon cleaning stations worked particularly well.

Based on all kinds of settings, here is what I found.

Manual focus always- .3 meters with my lens (NOT infinity)

WB - manual WB but not at 25 meters (WB at 15 meters on the way down)

CC Filter- depends on the look you want. No CC filter and much less contrast. CC filter and you loose Fstop but much better contrast

Gain - Lock it at +6 if you can. At 30 meters you will need some boost.

Stabilization - Off (avoid weird vignetting when sensor gets confused)

Iris - Auto as light will change when hammers move into sun

Shutter - 60 or auto depending on your preference.

I also used an intersting hybrid approach. I WB at 12 meters (no red filter). This boosted the red for hammers and contrast in the distance. Then I flipped on my lights and lit up the close hammers. In post, I pulled down the red for the hammers hit by the lights. This provided sharp and high contrast hammers in the forground with hammers with contrast in the background.

I agree with Drew about droping exposure. You will get better source contrast. At the same time, you can also experiment with CC fliter and accomplish a similar drop in exposure while increasing contrast.

Bottom line, first apply the technique you trust the most. If you are fortunate enough to get multiple dives with big schools, try some variations. Beware though, shooting with and without CC flters will create clips that will be very difficult to match when puting together in a sequence.

-shawn

Ah, someone sticky this... Great advice... The Wetpixel video braintrust at its best! All I need now is Dean to talk about shooting pikes in green UK pondwater...

Shawn, it was your Cocos video that got me thinking whether I will need lights for close encounters... lucky bugger... Mind me asking what lights you were using for that trip?

Minidive- thanks for the HC7 specific advice. And yeah that startup time is a killer when the camera goes to sleep... Which port were you using with your Gates HC7?

OK so the concensus is to MWB around 15-20m. Which sounds about right for the HC7. I remember I had a bugger of a time getting a decent WB lock at 25m on my first clear water dive with that camera.

Now to spend the next couple weeks practicing quickly switching through the Exposure, Shutter, & Focus settings with that single control dial on the HC7!!!

if you keep an eye on the screen you can wake up the camera from sleep mode as soon as the stdby icon goes away...

keep on top of it and you shouldn't miss any action

For W/B you can always leave to default Daylight setting. that way with no corrective filter you're gonna have the benefit of immediate readiness for filming without the whole WB issue. Remember this is without any filter in place! Edit in post for color.

 

Just a thought.

Mark.

Mark, give it up... we're in the minority on this one, not everyone likes post. LOL

Pakman, I think your best choice is to try all these things on the checkout dive. A lot of this stuff is subjective, trying to be objective. Some like the lit subject and blue background look, some don't. Many people use rebreathers to get REAL close to the hammers, most don't. Ultimately the look of your shot and aesthetic quality is entirely up to you. Advice can only give you choices... sometimes too many choices.

A camera such as yours would hit max WB range by around 12m. So WB at 10m. If contrast is lacking a bit, try the cinetones or whatever Sony calls it. The gamma curves in there do increase contrast and crush blacks. Just watch out for the dark portion of the video. If there isn't enough light... it will get ugly grainy.

As for steady shot, it's not always going to go crazy but there's a likelihood. Some people don't notice it when it does while others really hate it.

That's why I suggest you try techniques until you get the image to look the way you want it to. There is no one setting for all conditions. Anyone who tells you there is... well... Just practice so the camera and housing will be 2nd nature...by then you are going to upgrade to the next one again anyhow. Then you can come back here and do it all over again.

Shawn, it was your Cocos video that got me thinking whether I will need lights for close encounters... lucky bugger... Mind me asking what lights you were using for that trip?

I am using the L&M Sunray Pro HID lights.

Mark, give it up... we're in the minority on this one, not everyone likes post. LOL

Yeah, I'm bored!

Cheers,

Mark.

by then you are going to upgrade to the next one again anyhow. Then you can come back here and do it all over again.

You laugh cos you know it's true.

Pakman, I suggest you do the intro to rebreather course during the crossing if you're not inclined to sea sickness. Try one day with the rebreather, then you'll see the difference and never go back to open scuba again.