Phenom & white balance again

Hi all,

I just returned from an excellent dive trip to Komodo on the Archipelago Adventurer II. Full trip report will folow short(ish)ly. But I have a question about white balance.

I normally dive with big lights. On this trip I had no lights and ran in some white balance issues.

I used the method that Wags posted a couple of months ago.

1. Manual white balance

2. Iris, shutter speed and gain set to automatic

3. Point to the sun for white balance

This worked to around 10 meters. Deeper failed most of the time.

The weird thing was, when WB failed (blinking icon), I sometimes lost control of iris, shutter speed and gain. I could press the buttons but nothing happened. They stayed on automatic. I tried switching the camera off underwater, but that didn't help. Even when WB worked again by moving upwards in the watercolumn, the problem remained.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

Thanks,

Peter

Peter

On a couple of occasions I found the vary wheels had not returned fully to their off position causing some strange things to happen. If it happens again try making sure your vary zoom or focus wheels are not slightly on still. Like give them a rock back and fourth.

It spun me out abit the first time it happened.

WB at the sun without the filter at around 8 meters then flip the fliter in down deeper seems to work good as well. I hope one day the Canadians put an access to the WB presets in the new top housings so we can go from lights to natural light operation without having to re WB each time.

Peter

On a couple of occasions I found the vary wheels had not returned fully to their off position causing some strange things to happen. If it happens again try making sure your vary zoom or focus wheels are not slightly on still. Like give them a rock back and fourth.

 

It spun me out abit the first time it happened.

 

WB at the sun without the filter at around 8 meters then flip the fliter in down deeper seems to work good as well. I hope one day the Canadians put an access to the WB presets in the new top housings so we can go from lights to natural light operation without having to re WB each time.

Paul,

what was the deepest that you managed to WB with the red filter. I only managed around 13 meters and Mike V. had similar results.

I'll experiment a bit with the vary wheels. I've also asked Amphibico, but haven't heard back from them yet. I only asked yesterday.

Access to the WB presets would be great. While we are at it, let's include a couple of assign buttons as well.

PC

Hey Pete,

I was shocked at how different my FX1s behaved compared to my old (and still highly reliable) PDX10s when manual white balancing at "depth"....

PDX10s - 25m no problem... colours..... on a cloudy day? great......

FX1s - achieving MWB at 15m depth is VERY lucky..... colours at 30m on a cloudy day? really rather grey.....

no matter what a manufacturer states about minimum Lux levels etc... the FX1 is still cramming a hell of a lot more pixels into a CCD than with SD cams.... these pixels are smaller than older SD pixels and hence the cam is actually far less sensitive to light. It, therefore, has (what I would claim to be) serious issues with white-balancing off fairly healthy natural light levels.....

I don't know if you are using the Electronic MWB option on the right control grip or whether you opted for the Wags class Mechanical MWB add-on....

I use the "Wagsy" MWB option - this also led to issues at depth (passed 20 or so metres) as the pressure forced the MWB button (the old ND filter knob) into the housing: activating the MWB.... as long as the ND filter MWB knob was depressed, all functionality (manual iris etc..) was lost from the cam whilst it was seeking correct WB....

The fix for this was to cut a couple of mm off a half inch PVC pipe and create a "C-clip" out of it. The clip is then tied onto a little piece of elastic and that is, in turn, tied off onto the base of the grip.... It sits between the housing and the ND filter knob and stops it from being pushed in by the pressure - when I want to use the MWB I simply unclip the clip, use the function and then snap it back into place...

I'm not sure if this post will help you too much, I hope it does - half of me thinks that it just boils down to the FX1s inferior ability to impress me (in SOME ways!) as much as certain older SD cams did......

good luck

The reason the FX1 and Z1 struggles is because it can only go to 10,000 kelvin,

All other SONY HDV cameras since those can go to 20,000 kelvin (warmer colour) hence they can WB at deeper depths.

However if you use the Electronic button on the Phenom it will WB at 20+ depth but the water will be abit GREENISH.

Never fear if you have EDIUS it's a simple to fix and no one will ever know.

The reason the FX1 and Z1 struggles is because it can only go to 10,000 kelvin,

All other SONY HDV cameras since those can go to 20,000 kelvin (warmer colour) hence they can WB at deeper depths.

 

However if you use the Electronic button on the Phenom it will WB at 20+ depth but the water will be abit GREENISH.

 

Never fear if you have EDIUS it's a simple to fix and no one will ever know.

So how many K does the PDX10 WB upto?

Hang on! What you still doing here? It's very late..... Go to bed!

Don't know what the PDX10 can go to.

It's only 10pm here.

I use the "Wagsy" MWB option - this also led to issues at depth (passed 20 or so metres) as the pressure forced the MWB button (the old ND filter knob) into the housing: activating the MWB.... as long as the ND filter MWB knob was depressed, all functionality (manual iris etc..) was lost from the cam whilst it was seeking correct WB....

 

The fix for this was to cut a couple of mm off a half inch PVC pipe and create a "C-clip" out of it. The clip is then tied onto a little piece of elastic and that is, in turn, tied off onto the base of the grip.... It sits between the housing and the ND filter knob and stops it from being pushed in by the pressure - when I want to use the MWB I simply unclip the clip, use the function and then snap it back into place...

 

I'm not sure if this post will help you too much, I hope it does - half of me thinks that it just boils down to the FX1s inferior ability to impress me (in SOME ways!) as much as certain older SD cams did......

I was using the Wagsy manual WB method and I will try your fix.

Thanks,

PC

it would be interesting to know each cams official K scale sensitivity....

Surely the ability of a cam to "see" differing luminance in the RGB scale is a hardware issue directly relative to a CCD / CMOS chip's ability to see the light in the first place??

Is it the use of CMOS and others' new technologies that is giving the greater K scale?

Must be something like that as otherwise a simple update to the FX1 / Z1s software / firmware would enable it to WB deeper? Init?

Just throwing my (sometimes bizarre) thought process into the equation....

Chris

I was using the Wagsy manual WB method and I will try your fix.

 

Thanks,

 

PC

Hey Pete - this C-clip only prevented the MWB knob from being activated by external pressure - which therefore, in turn, disabled all other functions whilst the WB was seeking.....

It won't help you WB deeper..... I think that its just an FX1 thing!!!

Interestingly - I have sometimes achieved deeper success by doing the opposite to Wagsy:

switch everything to manual (including focus)

open it all up to over expose and blur out the sea's surface against the (hopefully present) sun.... (not too over exposed but enough to allow a good amount of light in that will still contain enough blue luminance for the cam to spot it....

The result of this is a nice uniform (blue) luminance level for the camera to work off and (at 15m+) it punches in the red as expected..... sometimes!

Good luck with it.....

I was having quite a bit of trouble using the Phenom white balancing with th Z1N, specially when combining sun and artificial light. Something thats working quite well now is adjusting the outdoor white balance level after the first white balancing ( I do it with the Amphibico board ).

The procedure is as fallows.

Set the cameras white balance to outdoor.

Make a white balance the way you usually do it.

Press menu, camera set, wb outdr lvl.

Now you should be able to make your scene more blue or more red, if it does not change, push the left enter button and white balance at the same time and try again moving the white balance outdoor preset.

During this operation the numbers of the WB level remain on yor screen.

Either use a external monitor or build a small black box to see the colors better on the lcd screen acces of the hosing.

Dont change the levels too much.

Helps a lot to get rid of the red of artificial lights when doing Clos Up with day light.

Are you referring to manual WB or electronic BW? If you set the WB to outdoor, manual WB will not work.

Changing the levels is an interesting approach, but it is only available on the Z1 not the FX1.

Are you referring to manual WB or electronic BW? If you set the WB to outdoor, manual WB will not work.

Changing the levels is an interesting approach, but it is only available on the Z1 not the FX1.

I am refering to the electronic white balance, as a matter of fact I found this solution trying to overcome the greenish WB of the Phenom Housing. It can only be done with the Z1 as the FX1 does not have the

outdoor WB level control