Nudibranch of Anilao in 4K - Panasonic LX100

It's my first time shooting with the Panasonic LX100, Nauticam CMC-1, first time to Anilao and second time shooting macro. I'm starting to accept the result especially I only have around 150 dives under my belt. I found that the more dive experience I have, the more comfortable I feel about getting close, slow down to think and adjust my camera setting (not having a big group of divers lining up or selfish dive buddy would help too!

I'm starting to get a hang of the editing portion too, music is always hard! Here is the result:

If you have 1080P display, watch in 1080P setting, then watch again with 4K setting, see if you can see the benefit of 4K. If you have 4K display, then of course watch it in 4K setting.

I output my final video to target of 80Mbps. A 8 minutes video is about 4.6Gb, it took about two hours to upload to Youtube and process. It's really hard for countries that do not have fast internet to provide 4K content. I don't know what's the final bitrate that Youtube produce, but if it's buffering right, the Youtube deliver quality is very close to my 4.6Gb mp4 sitting in my local hard drive.

Make sure you watch the whole thing!

As usual, suggestion, critique, comment are all welcome!

Moses

Good job Moses. The clarity looks very nice. Although I am just watching it on my iPad. Good job.

For things like nudis, I would recommend keeping it shorter. Keep it faster pace, even though they aren't.

Dustin

Very nice Moses!

I can't wait to be back in Sardinia where water is clear and calm and there is a lot of macro stuff to try my LX100 under reasonable conditions.
A 4K Monitor is on the shopping list as they are much more affordable in Italy than in Costa Rica.

But i think that the difference of 4JK and Full HD is clearly visible on a flull HD monitor but i am very excited to see my videos on a 4K monitor.

Chris

Thanks Dustin. Yeah I was puzzling about the length of each clip. I decided to keep the Pikachu nudibranch and the white one long because it show the interesting way of the pikachu crawl and flop (so cute!), and the white glass one eating. I suppose I could have cut the juvenile dragon shorter.

The mating part was tricky, I didn't even know they're doing it until when they split up. While I was shooting them, I just saw a blob of black nudibranch stick together, so focus was hard (dealing with diopter and try not to shake/move camera much). Watching them crawl closer kind of set up the scene, but I agree it's very sloooooowwww....... Do you think 15 seconds max per clip is too long? I'm slowly learning the editing portion, so any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

I have another big master reel in the progress, so I think I will try to keep each clip around 10 seconds.

Also, I saw your Nudi clip, will try snoot light the next time, if I get to do more night dive!

Moses

Hi Chris, yea once you see the result in 4K, it's hard to go back to FHD! I watch the 4K setting on a FHD TV and it's acceptable in term of sharpness since Youtube compress it so much. Also, you have the Nauticam CMC-1 right? The Sheep nudibranch was shot with the CMC-1 with a +7 stack on top of it. I'm not happy with the result since the sheep nudibranch is so small. I'm going to ask Reef Photo and see if the Nauticam multiplier can be used on the CMC-1. I didn't see any Pygmy seahorse on this trip, so I suspect the CMC-1 is going to have challenge as well.

I didn't get the chance to try the iZoom of the LX100. I was too careless and have the photo set to RAW + JPEG. If the photo is set to RAW, the iZoom function get disabled and I couldn't figure it out when I was underwater.

It's my first time shooting with the Panasonic LX100, Nauticam CMC-1, first time to Anilao and second time shooting macro. I'm starting to accept the result especially I only have around 150 dives under my belt. I found that the more dive experience I have, the more comfortable I feel about getting close, slow down to think and adjust my camera setting (not having a big group of divers lining up or selfish dive buddy would help too!

 

If you have 1080P display, watch in 1080P setting, then watch again with 4K setting, see if you can see the benefit of 4K. If you have 4K display, then of course watch it in 4K setting.

 

I output my final video to target of 80Mbps. A 8 minutes video is about 4.6Gb, it took about two hours to upload to Youtube and process. It's really hard for countries that do not have fast internet to provide 4K content. I don't know what's the final bitrate that Youtube produce, but if it's buffering right, the Youtube deliver quality is very close to my 4.6Gb mp4 sitting in my local hard drive.

 

Make sure you watch the whole thing!

 

As usual, suggestion, critique, comment are all welcome!

 

Moses

Hi Moses,

Good job. I enjoyed watching it.

I watched it through (on my iMac 5K) twice, firstly in 1080 then in 2160. I can definitely see a difference. Some of the finer details are more apparent - like the horizontal layers in the antenna.

The only improvement I could suggest would be to take another pass on the exposure and colour correction. A couple of shots could use more contrast while lowering the overall exposure. And a couple would look better with less green in the background - maybe some secondary colour correction to keep the subject as-is.

Regards

Peter

Thanks Dustin. Yeah I was puzzling about the length of each clip. I decided to keep the Pikachu nudibranch and the white one long because it show the interesting way of the pikachu crawl and flop (so cute!), and the white glass one eating. I suppose I could have cut the juvenile dragon shorter.

 

The mating part was tricky, I didn't even know they're doing it until when they split up. While I was shooting them, I just saw a blob of black nudibranch stick together, so focus was hard (dealing with diopter and try not to shake/move camera much). Watching them crawl closer kind of set up the scene, but I agree it's very sloooooowwww....... Do you think 15 seconds max per clip is too long? I'm slowly learning the editing portion, so any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

 

I have another big master reel in the progress, so I think I will try to keep each clip around 10 seconds.

 

Also, I saw your Nudi clip, will try snoot light the next time, if I get to do more night dive!

 

Moses

Timing is tricky and there isn't ever a correct answer. When I was first learning, I would keep clips too long. And videos too long. Even now, I am thinking 5 minutes is too long for a full video, but I get dragged into it because I have more footage I want show. Lol. And even now, of course, then you will get people that say the clips aren't long enough. I have found that in general, if someone is very interested in the subject matter, longer clips are fine. But those casual viewers not so much, they need more action and variety. So I suppose it depnds on who you want as your audience. Unless you are nudi freak, you probably won't watch this all the way thru. you are better off making 2 shorter videos.

Having said that, the video is really good, and I am a nudi freak so I watched the whole thing...

As for the mating....I had the same type of nudis in Lembeh, but they were doing a 3 way...pretty funny. They were positioned well so you could definitely tell what they were doing. any black subject looks bad in video or pictures. Really hard to get that stuff to look good.

Dustin

Hi Moses!

I enjoy watching it.

The beginning till about 1:20 I think the back scatter are bit distracting. But from that point not so much. Also I notice some CA and blurry corner, but at the center is sharp! I don't have a 4K monitor, but at fullHD is pretty sharp!

I also notice that this is actually 2 clips? You finish the first at 6:00 and continue with the 2nd clip? If is it me, I'll have 2 separate clips at around 3 minutes with some fancy title at the beginning and end

Anyhow, I plan to shoot macro video in the future, and hopefully can be as good as yours.

Thanks for sharing!

Bona

Hi Bona,

I can see where the "two clip" confusion come from. The first 6 minutes (I was shooting for 5 minutes) are for general public who just enjoy watching nudibranch in "artistic/colorful/interesting movement" way. After the credit, the mating portion is the "bonus" footage. The mating footage are not very good quality (framing was bad, focus is all over the place) so it won't survive on its own clip, but the behaviour is very surprising (flying nudibrach while having sex!). I was going to caption the mating part "The move, the 69, the sticky situation, the Karma Sultra + Crouching tiger hidden dragon but I think it get too much caption. Anyway, I'm going after that feel where when you watch a movie, after the movie credit, there is a short clip of bonus scene, in the sense that I'm rewarding people who watch the whole clip.

As for the CA, yeah it's a very frustrating thing. I have been using the Bluewater +7 diopter as my all around diopter. It was marketed as very sharp etc. but in real life, the CA is quite bad. The +7 is a good strength for all around diopter use as I can shoot wide shot of a 7cm nudi yet get close to the front/head shot. I plan on selling that Bluewater +7, but I'm still looking for a good replacement, I think the Inon UCL-165 could be a good one, I believe the Inon is +6 so I'm still on the fence.

Moses

Peter,

Good catch on the color! I suspect a few of the clips are a bit off in term of color. I was struggling with my monitor, and ended up just purchase a Colormunki to calibrate my monitor. It took me 5 times to calibrate the monitor and I still don't have confident that I have the near perfect calibration.

When shooting white color subject, do you under expose the setting? I learn it the hard way. I shot a wide shot of a big white frogfish, looking at the camera lcd, I saw that the surrounding coral are proper exposed, but when I look back at the computer, the white frogfish just look like a snow ball. For the tight shot of the frogfish, I had the same problem, luckily I had a few clip that's a bit under expose so I can see the pattern on the frogfish face. Do you turn on Zebra? I thought about trying Zebra, but between the focus peaking and zebra, there are too many blinking dot on my lcd and my eye just crossed and don't know where to focus and move the camera accordingly. I could really use more practice for sure!

I was concern about the sharpness, some of the clips has more apparent sharpness because they didn't get compensate by my post stabilization process too much. I'm going to look into Adobe SpeedGrade soon, hopefully it would be a good solution for my occasion grading need.

Dustin,

Thanks again for your input. I'm slowing getting out of that "vacational video" mindset. Just like you, I'm like kid in the candy store. There are so many good clips that I want to use but can't fit into the proper timeline. I guess that's the "downside" of diving at the coral triangle area, so many marine life variety in small area! I'm hoping the get down to 6 minutes for my next clip, if not I may have to split them up...... I just counted, I saw 30 frogfishes in my trip, from white, black to yellow, red and purple, oh my!

Moses

I am using the GH4 as well and I find that assigning the Peaking, Zebras and Histogram to function buttons allows you to switch them on and off at will so that once you have your exposure and focus you can quickly turn them off and concentrate on framing.

Cheers

Steve

Moses,

I stumbled on this on my own on YouTube and I was blown away. The resolution and colors are phenomenal! I loved this, especially the cheeky nudibranch love scene!

What was the ISO range of these shots? I was watching in 4K and the video was very clean.

Great job!

Basil

Hi Basil,

Glad you enjoyed it and can watch it in 4K! The ISO range from 400 to 1600. I was able to get away with above 800 because it's macro shot. I spent 9 days in Anilao, the first 5 days are macro and the rest are wide angle. During my macro day, we would have two morning dive (9am, 11am), then in the afternoon we would have 2 dives (3:30pm, 5:30pm). A lot of time halfway into the 3:30pm dive, it started to get cloudy/less sun, that's why I had to bump the ISO to more than 800 since I don't have my video light during that dive.

There are a few clips I used ISO200 or ISO250 because I'm so close to the subject. For example, the sheep nudibranch, I stack the CMC-1 with the +7 and a +4 (yeah, I tried to stack 3 diopters!), I was literally 5mm away from them, so the light get bright even it was at 800 lumen (the lowest setting I can go for my light).

My laptop went bad before the dive so I didn't get to review my clip while on the trip. One thing I learn is for the LX100, and the GH4 as well, you don't want to push to ISO800 if you're doing wide angle, the blue water will show all the noise. The land video shooters say you can push to ISO1600 but that doesn't apply to us underwater shooter.

I did some color correction and uploaded a new one. I think it makes a big different, thanks to Peter's suggestion!