D90 UW Vid issues...

Hi all!

My first attempts at capturing vid on my D90 were dismal. Severly underlit. Anyone else have this issue? Knowing me...it's probably something I've done settings wise...LOL. Does it matter which Mode you're in...i.e. auto or Man? Thanks in advance!!

Greg

Hi Greg,

You definitely want to be in Manual mode. Some key information to better help you out.

What lens were you using?

Were you using any lighting or just ambient?

Do you know what your ISO settings were?

I look forward to helping. Stop by the store sometime in Irvine and we can chat more.

Hi Greg,

 

You definitely want to be in Manual mode. Some key information to better help you out.

 

What lens were you using?

 

Were you using any lighting or just ambient?

 

Do you know what your ISO settings were?

 

I look forward to helping. Stop by the store sometime in Irvine and we can chat more.

Thanks Mike...

I was using my Tokina 10-17. ISO at 200. I was in Manual, not sure what my aperture was at, but I doubt I adjusted it from around f11. My first attempt was at about 10'.....getting the gang rolling off the boat, and it was extremely dark, pretty much worthless . Just using ambient light those first few attempts. What shop in Irvine are you at, H2O Photo Pro's??? When I was buying my rig I was trying to get ahold of you guys, driving by the...I guess old shop, on PCH.

Thanks!

Greg

ISO 200 and aperture at f11. Aren't those type of settings for bright conditions ?

ISO 200 and aperture at f11. Aren't those type of settings for bright conditions ?

That's what I would think. I know with my old Sea and Sea DX-1g I got great vid, no light issues using ambient, so I'm kind of at a loss.

Hi all!

 

My first attempts at capturing vid on my D90 were dismal. Severly underlit. Anyone else have this issue? Knowing me...it's probably something I've done settings wise...LOL. Does it matter which Mode you're in...i.e. auto or Man? Thanks in advance!!

 

Greg

Greg:

I'm still working on this myself, and please anyone with more experience please chime in. I always shoot in Manual Mode. I'm working without video lights, but trying a FIXLED500 as well. My first vids were way over exposed, washed out. Today I decided to try a few things here on Bonaire to see if I could get this resolved. I tried changing the aperture; it makes no difference. I tried changing the ISO. It makes no difference. Finally I tried changing the exposure compensation. It worked! You can clearly see this in the LED. It's a bit awkward, you have to be looking in the LED, press down on the EV button and rotate the main command dial. I found it best to simply stop, go to Live View, hold the bottom of the housing in one hand and perform the press and rotate until it looked "ok" in the display, then start shooting. It's very hard to do on the fly, unless you plan ahead to edit these few seconds out. You can see what EV setting is by the number on the bottom right of the display. It's plus or minus by the little icon under "Exit."

Just remember when you exit Live View to shoot stills (or even turn the camera off), the EV is still set where you left it.

I've had issues with focusing. The 10-17 seems the best option as there is no autofocus. I've used the 105mm and set it to MF, then dial in or out until I can see something that is the same distance and looks sharp, but it's not reliable. Same for the 60mm. Even on the 10-17, I think it pays to focus while in still mode and then switch on LV. Otherwise hold the shutter at half press until you get a green square. Press carefully, too much and you take a picture and jump out of LV. I don't think this latter is very accurate, based on some trials topside. The AF in still mode seems much more reliable; it's really hard for me to tell if the focus is sharp through the display.

It's a nice extra feature, and the more I play with it the more I like having it. I know it eats battery to be in LV but with a full charge I got three dives on one battery, with about 50 short video clips (10 sec to 1 minute each) and about 60 stills

Though I can't really remember precisely since I tested this more than 1.3 years ago, I believe with the D90's video modes (and all of the Nikon range except maybe the D3s), ISO and Shutter Speed is still automatically shifting even in video manual mode and will override all inputs except when you used AE Lock which holds down some of the. That is why using exposure compensation works sometimes.

So you may think you've got it set at ISO200 but it could be something else, and the shutter speed as well. F11 on a fisheye is pretty redundant since the DOF will have pretty much everything in focus. I'd focus at about 4-5ft away and use f5.6. That should have pretty much anything in the visible range in focus, unless you are shooting CFWA.

Finally got a short video up showing off the D90 now that I see how it works. Tokina 10-17 set at 10mm, ev at -1.0, Magic Filter in 25-30 fsw in the shallows at Red Slave, Bonaire.

Scads of Scads at Red Slave

Cool!

Finally got a short video up showing off the D90 now that I see how it works. Tokina 10-17 set at 10mm, ev at -1.0, Magic Filter in 25-30 fsw in the shallows at Red Slave, Bonaire.

 

Scads of Scads at Red Slave

Finally got a short video up showing off the D90 now that I see how it works. Tokina 10-17 set at 10mm, ev at -1.0, Magic Filter in 25-30 fsw in the shallows at Red Slave, Bonaire.

 

Scads of Scads at Red Slave

What were your settings. I tried to shoot a video in manual mode, and it was really overexposed... bad really bad.

What were your settings. I tried to shoot a video in manual mode, and it was really overexposed... bad really bad.

As I wrote above, you just need to adjust the exposure compensation. Shutter speed and aperture set for stills don't seem to make any difference. I did use Magic Filter here too because I knew the ball was not deep. Don't think it would help if deeper than 50 feet.

Nice Job!

D90 (and D300s) is Auto Everything (well amost, not focus) in Video Mode. Auto f-stop, Auto shutter speed, Auto ISO, Auto White Balance.

You can correct for over exposure induced cyan casting with EV compensation. Unfortuanately, the exposure will still jump around based on lighting conditions changing, and because the iris isn't step-less the exposure changes are jerky (I saw the changes at :21, :34, and :40 in your video). The best way to get around this is to set exposure compensation to -1 or so, then lock exposure with AE-L while recording a clip to keep it from jumping around.

Nice Job!

 

D90 (and D300s) is Auto Everything (well amost, not focus) in Video Mode. Auto f-stop, Auto shutter speed, Auto ISO, Auto White Balance.

 

You can correct for over exposure induced cyan casting with EV compensation. Unfortuanately, the exposure will still jump around based on lighting conditions changing, and because the iris isn't step-less the exposure changes are jerky (I saw the changes at :21, :34, and :40 in your video). The best way to get around this is to set exposure compensation to -1 or so, then lock exposure with AE-L while recording a clip to keep it from jumping around.

Thanks Ryan, I got all the other pieces figured out (except adding music) and so I'm just one right thumb button away from taking great video! LOL. OK, good video.

Sorry for the slow response guys...12 days into the Thailand trip now I'm heading to the Similans tomorrow night, I'll experiment with the EV comp for sure. I did shoot some more shots at about 15m, Man, and f5.6 and had decent results. Thanks for all the great advice!!!!!

Greg

D90 (and D300s) is Auto Everything (well amost, not focus) in Video Mode. Auto f-stop, Auto shutter speed, Auto ISO, Auto White Balance.

Ryan, this is not true!

Well, I don't know much about the D90, but the D300s is _not_ Auto Everything in Video Mode.

+ If you are in Aperture priority mode prior to going to Live View, then the selected Aperture (in A mode) will be the aperture used in the video recording (it's described in the manual).

+ The White Balance set in camera will be used in the video recording. You can even directly see the result of altering the white balance in Live View mode.

+ The AutoFocus works while recording. Yes it's slow, but it's very precise.

Well Segerdahl, he's more right than wrong. I think you took him too literally. I think when he means auto everything, he means the camera still has some auto function when you've set many settings with modes, EC etc. I believe all Nikon cameras have auto shutter and ISO modes, so in effect it's still "auto everything". Which means it's useless for anyone who wants full control of the camera.

Well Segerdahl, he's more right than wrong. I think you took him too literally. I think when he means auto everything, he means the camera still has some auto function when you've set many settings with modes, EC etc. I believe all Nikon cameras have auto shutter and ISO modes, so in effect it's still "auto everything". Which means it's useless for anyone who wants full control of the camera.

Well to me it's a major difference to Auto Everything and Semi Automatic where you can set Aperture, White Balance and use Auto-Focus (while filming). I'm pretty sure many "readers" didn't get that. But, sure, if you absolutely need to control every single parameter, then that is not possible (and both annoying and totally strange! shame on you Nikon!). Again it is semi automatic, and the most important parameters are there and on top of that you can lock the exposure and even exposure compensate. I have used it on land (for video) very successfully but have yet to bring it under water (the new D300s uw-housing will arrive today!).

I should clarify, as I was in one case totally wrong, and in another partly.

White balance settings do work, including preset white balance, in video modes.

They day I received my d300s I did a quick test to determine whether or not the information on p. 58 was correct, and I didn't notice the f/16 note. I set the f-stop to f22, pressed dof preview, noted the size of the physical aperture, then pressed live view, and noted that it was bigger, so I assumed incorrectly that the information in the manual was wrong. Lesson learned.

Mostly automatic would be more appropriate term.

I should clarify, as I was in one case totally wrong, and in another partly.

 

White balance settings do work, including preset white balance, in video modes.

 

They day I received my d300s I did a quick test to determine whether or not the information on p. 58 was correct, and I didn't notice the f/16 note. I set the f-stop to f22, pressed dof preview, noted the size of the physical aperture, then pressed live view, and noted that it was bigger, so I assumed incorrectly that the information in the manual was wrong. Lesson learned.

 

Mostly automatic would be more appropriate term.

Glad that you confirmed that it is possible to manually set aperture in video mode. Not sure why you did such a complicated test though. A simpler and very straight forward test would be (perhaps others would like to test) to in Aperture mode (before you press LiveView) select the largest aperture. Then go into LiveMode and press record. Notice the short depth of field. Then exit LiveView mode and select the smallest aperture, go to LiveView mode and start recording. Now you will easily see the large depth of field.

Being able to manually setting the aperture to control the depth of field is very useful when recording video. Both on land and under water.

Being able to manually set the white balance is really good, especially when you are recording underwater in natural/ambient light (i.e. no light sources other than the sun).

This in combination with exposure compensation and exposure lock makes it possible to get in control of the video recording.

Don't forget that you can also control things like contrast, colors etc by altering the color setting modes in the camera (the same settings that are used for jpg-recording).

FPS is fix to 24 fps, so if you are OK with that, that's fine.

Being able to use the autofocus while recording is nice.

So, even though you can't control ISO and speed, I'd call it mostly manual ;-).

Don't get me wrong, I would have very much appreciated the control of speed and ISO, but I think we should concentrate on what we really can control and how to optimize the controls with the D90 and D300s. People with Canon D-SLRs seems to do tons of uw-video and upload really nice looking uw-videos all over the net. The D90 uw-video above is the first one I've seen! Don't forget that the D90 was released before any Canon D-SLRs could do video.

Recording video is not super easy even with an expensive Canon 5D Mark II. They have many of the "problems" that we with D90 and D300s have. But, they have found ways to overcome the problems. Special settings (go for a large DOF), special lenses (rectinal wide angles), special video techniques (sloooow movements etc), setting the focus prior to recording, planning your video shot, manually white balancing every 5th meter etc etc etc. Most of those tricks are possible for D90 and D300s owers too.

This thread started out as a "how to" record video on the D90 and I have no intention of changing it into an "who's wrong and who's right" thread. So, please people keep posting your tips and trix on how to optimize our uw-videos with D90 and D300s D-SLRs. I started with a bounch above, please add as many as all of you can think of and finally please post some more uw-videos taken with a D90 and D300s (I will hopefully make my first try next week in the dark waters of the Swedish west coast). Why not try both macro and wide angle. I'm sure it's possible.

Finally, as with all uw-photography "if it was easy, it wouldn't be any fun". ;-)

The D90 uw-video above is the first one I've seen!

Now "New and Improved!" I took a number of shots and built a little iMovieHD of the baitball, added royalty free music. iMovieHD is really easy.

I am going to try some of your suggestions next dive, see what is adjustable on the D90. Thanks.

HD Video of Scads of Scads