Sony a7s II underwater use -- All parameters

Hello folks. Back from Raja Ampat. Below is a link to my experimental first ever video with the Sony A7R II. Well, we didn't have a single sunny day, cloudy, thunderstorms and heavy rain, but we tried to make the best out of the trip.

 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YCr-T5xtKEg

 

Originally filmed as 4K but had to downsize it as I was also filming on land with GoPro.

 

Settings are: shutter priority at 50/s, Auto ISO, Auto WB, 4K XAVC S, 24p 100M

 

Lenses: Sony 16-35mm f4 + Sony 16mm with Fisheye Converter. I love this fisheye converter!

Most of the time my depth for filming was 11m to 3m. This is where all the fun is actually, plus some bright light.

 

I made another experimental video at 20 meters where I tried all of the cam's WB settings. Will post later.

 

Hope you all had or are having good time in your trips and good filming

 

Hi Ammar:

Thanks for posting! I am still in Indonesia, and am returning tomorrow. Had lots of fun filming with the a7s II. Yes I agree that the lighting underwater makes so much difference. Some days clear, most days murky. Sometimes shooting into sun, sometimes with sun behind you. Some days current, some days less current.

This is what makes things so challenging.

I very much enjoyed your film. The editing and music are great, and I love certain of the underwater shots. I am at a hotel with slow internet, so was only able to see your film in low resolution. So I have yet to really view it! I will view it again when I get back to the US in a couple of days.

Your film tells a great story of the liveaboard. I have never been on one. We were staying at the Misool Ecoresort, which was 5 minutes from Fiabacet Reef. I must say that we had a wonderful time! I got some good videos that I will post.

I also interviewed the owner of Misool Ecoresort -- Andrew Miner -- for 45 minutes. He was quite generous with his time.. I will make a film of that interview.

Thanks so much for sharing your film with us! Let's compare notes a little later, when I return to the US. I learned a few things on this trip, and will summarize my findings for the group, so that they can be analyzed and picked apart.

George

 

Thanks buddy. Totally agree, light is terrible to my taste also, and this is after correcting it in Adobe Premiere. First days, I dove 30 to 20m, totally dark and dead. Nothing but rocks. This is why I started to dive and shoot close to surface. Plus poor light condition, visibility was terrible also. Well, now I learnt from the locals that February is the best time for visibility in Raja Ampat.

Raja Ampat visibility can really vary, unfortunately (or fortunately, as it's mainly due to heavy plankton concentrations that bring in bigger schools of fish). It was mostly 5-10m and green when I went in November last year and in February this year as well. Go figure. Sure makes filming pleasing wide angle footage pretty much impossible though.

Anyway, for the shallow shoots, the ambient light and visibility seem just fine to me, but the colors are.. a bit muted, and the footage is often a bit overexposed. Where you using underwater auto white balance mode, or just the regular auto white balance? And what f-stop where you shooting at? I find that in the 0-10 meter range with good visibility, if you're at 1/50 and iso 100, you need to push your f-top to at least F11, maybe ever F16 or you will overexpose because there's just so much light. Watching the histogram and having zebras at 100+ to help you spot over exposure is a good practice.

It looks like you tried to use lights in a lot of the shallow shots also, but, because the ambient light was still quite strong, their effect isn't so obvious. When you're shooting with strong ambient light, your video lights tend to be outshone by the ambient light and don't really bring back much reds/yellows. Best conditions for video lights are deep (30m+) or dark (overcast, early morning, late in the day) when the sunlight that penetrates isn't so strong. Or night, of course Conversely, for shallow shots with strong ambient light, you can just go with the underwater auto white balance mode (keeping the sun behind you if possible) and get pretty good results without the video lights.

 

Hi Ammar:

 

Thanks for posting! I am still in Indonesia, and am returning tomorrow. Had lots of fun filming with the a7s II. Yes I agree that the lighting underwater makes so much difference. Some days clear, most days murky. Sometimes shooting into sun, sometimes with sun behind you. Some days current, some days less current.

 

This is what makes things so challenging.

 

I very much enjoyed your film. The editing and music are great, and I love certain of the underwater shots. I am at a hotel with slow internet, so was only able to see your film in low resolution. So I have yet to really view it! I will view it again when I get back to the US in a couple of days.

 

Your film tells a great story of the liveaboard. I have never been on one. We were staying at the Misool Ecoresort, which was 5 minutes from Fiabacet Reef. I must say that we had a wonderful time! I got some good videos that I will post.

 

I also interviewed the owner of Misool Ecoresort -- Andrew Miner -- for 45 minutes. He was quite generous with his time.. I will make a film of that interview.

 

Thanks so much for sharing your film with us! Let's compare notes a little later, when I return to the US. I learned a few things on this trip, and will summarize my findings for the group, so that they can be analyzed and picked apart.

 

George

Thanks George for your feedback. Yes Misool resort is one of the best and Fiabacet reef is a spectacular one. Looking forward to seeing your videos.

 

Raja Ampat visibility can really vary, unfortunately (or fortunately, as it's mainly due to heavy plankton concentrations that bring in bigger schools of fish). It was mostly 5-10m and green when I went in November last year and in February this year as well. Go figure. Sure makes filming pleasing wide angle footage pretty much impossible though.

 

Anyway, for the shallow shoots, the ambient light and visibility seem just fine to me, but the colors are.. a bit muted, and the footage is often a bit overexposed. Where you using underwater auto white balance mode, or just the regular auto white balance? And what f-stop where you shooting at? I find that in the 0-10 meter range with good visibility, if you're at 1/50 and iso 100, you need to push your f-top to at least F11, maybe ever F16 or you will overexpose because there's just so much light. Watching the histogram and having zebras at 100+ to help you spot over exposure is a good practice.

 

It looks like you tried to use lights in a lot of the shallow shots also, but, because the ambient light was still quite strong, their effect isn't so obvious. When you're shooting with strong ambient light, your video lights tend to be outshone by the ambient light and don't really bring back much reds/yellows. Best conditions for video lights are deep (30m+) or dark (overcast, early morning, late in the day) when the sunlight that penetrates isn't so strong. Or night, of course Conversely, for shallow shots with strong ambient light, you can just go with the underwater auto white balance mode (keeping the sun behind you if possible) and get pretty good results without the video lights.

Thank you buddy for your input and helpful tips. I do need to go back to Indonesia, Komodo my next destination, for anther round of shooting.

I wasn't happy with the UW Auto WB, as it evenly turns subjects kind of yellow. I'm thinking of covering one fin with a mat white sticker and perform custom white balance with depth changes. A bit of a hassle, but worth trying I guess.

I wasn't happy with the UW Auto WB, as it evenly turns subjects kind of yellow. I'm thinking of covering one fin with a mat white sticker and perform custom white balance with depth changes. A bit of a hassle, but worth trying I guess.

FWIW, I bought a set of white fins specifically for white balancing on photo trips. I keep them for just those dives. They are the same brand and model as my regular fins, just white. As it turns out, getting my feet in the right position to WB off them can sometimes be an issue, but it does seem to work pretty well most of the time.

The WB slates are normally a 15% grey... but I think in green water you will go better with this...

://www.amazon.com/Hoya-72mm-FLW-Lens-Filter/dp/B0000AIS20

That FLW filter seems like a rather unusual choice for color correction, TaxiDiver. Have you tried it out? I'm quite curious about the results. What are you using it to achieve underwater?

Regarding custom white balance, to the best of my knowledge, it's a bit of a pain on the A7 series -- you have to be in one of the picture modes (manual, aperture priority, shutter priority) to be able to set it. It's can't be set directly in the movie mode. You can change back to movie mode afterwards and the white balance will be retained, but it makes the procedure quite lengthy. Or you could film in the picture mode, but then you don't have the 16:9 crop until you start filming.

Moreover, just like with the UAWB mode, custom white balance will require a red/magneta filter below 10 meters. The camera's internal white balance range maxes out at 10000 calvins, which isn't sufficient at depth. So you need to filter out some of the blues/greens with a red magenta filter first to allow the camera to produce a more accurate white balance at depth. From my (admittedly limited) experimentation with custom white balance and filters on the A7RII, two issues bother me:

• custom white balance tends to push too red, even when white balancing off my palm or a brown coral. This produces rather muddy, purpleish blue water column
• below 5 meters (10 if the visibility is excellent) it invariably creates a pretty flat, low contrast, low saturation image which I find aesthetically unappealing even if it may be technically correct

I've acquired two new red filters (one auto-magic, on ur/pro) which I hope to experiment with more in a couple of weeks when I get back into the water. I've also gotten some blue gels to use on my lights so that I can hopefully film with the filter + light combination at depth. We'll see how the results turn out.

RETURN FROM RAJA AMPAT

Last night we returned from Raja Ampat, where my fiance Bonnie and I dove for 8 days at Misool EcoResort, which is located in a "no-take" zone in southern Raja. Had a great time. I have about 12 hours of video I will be looking through. Some is good and some bad, and I was studying the results on the trip and analyzing why I was getting certain results with exposure, focus and of course, our favorite topic -WHITE BALANCE. I will post a few sample clips, and then give reflections on what was learned, as so many have done so here on this topic. I used UAWB exclusively, and auto ISO. I also interviewed and filmed the owner of MIsool Eco Resort, Andrew Miner, for 45 minutes, while there. It was a fascinating place. I will be making several films of the journey.

Best GLP

I am looking forward to your output. It's pretty normal that 80% or more of the footage is for the cutting room floor :-)

I heard great things about the Misool Eco Resort, so very much interested in that report a well.

Similan video this weekend...

Uploading to Vimeo... estimated time 8 hours...

At last....

https://vimeo.com/191282918

Just out from camera, NO COLOR CORRECTION IN POSTPRODUCTION....

At last....

 

https://vimeo.com/191282918

Bravo!

You seem to have mastered the camera and the white balance issues. Great! I found it interesting how the reef there differs from Raja. The Misool "no take zone"in southeast Raja Ampat is exploding with coral and fish species. I will post some video soon. Just got back less than 48 hours ago!

At last....

 

https://vimeo.com/191282918

Beautiful video Alfredo. Indeed WB perfection. Can you please share your cam setting for such beautiful video?

Hi guys. As I said many post before keep it easy. If you get 1 or 2 minutes of good footage every dive you are doing well.

1. Shoot at GOLDEN hours, early morning and sunset.

2. Below 10-15m use lights.

AWB A+3,M+3.

3. Above 10m AUWB.

Camera settings: Manual mode, Auto ISO 100-3200, Creative style STANDAR, -0,7 EV (will try -1.0 next time).

Do not think to much underwater. Fix your settings and enjoy your shots.....

Hi guys. As I said many post before keep it easy. If you get 1 or 2 minutes of good footage every dive you are doing well.

 

1. Shoot at GOLDEN hours, early morning and sunset.

 

2. Below 10-15m use lights.

AWB A+3,M+3.

 

3. Above 10m AUWB.

 

Camera settings: Manual mode, Auto ISO 100-3200, Creative style STANDAR, -0,7 EV (will try -1.0 next time).

 

Do not think to much underwater. Fix your settings and enjoy your shots.....

Looks good Alfredo. Definitely with less ambient light in the early morning/late afternoon, the video lights get a chance to shine.

Here are the results of a test I did a while back of the different photo creative styles (in no picture profile mode). This is shot at about 10m depth, underwater auto white balance mode, ambient light:

http://www.andreiv.com/Test-Pictures/n-bN63Dw/

 

Looks good Alfredo. Definitely with less ambient light in the early morning/late afternoon, the video lights get a chance to shine.

 

Here are the results of a test I did a while back of the different photo creative styles (in no picture profile mode). This is shot at about 10m depth, underwater auto white balance mode, ambient light:

 

http://www.andreiv.com/Test-Pictures/n-bN63Dw/

Interesting test. For my taste, the landscape and autumn leaves styles look promising.

To compliment your test, I will post a video of the different WB settings, except custom WB, with ambient light at 20m depth.

Looks good ...

Here is the A7R II different WB modes test video at 20m depth, ambient light.

<iframe width="640" height="390" src="https://youtu.be/--4pRdwSNYQ"frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://youtu.be/--4pRdwSNYQ

Not sure how to embed a YouTube video

I would like to download this test and study it with the vectorscope. At this depth I will go with lights no doubt.

I like the 9900K, but I would touch de BIAS somthing like A5 M4 or A6 M5...

Will try next week at red sea Magic filter is AWB ans UAWB mode to see....