Hero3 Black testing underwater

[Marty Cerven]

Marty - can you post a link to the filters you used on your H3?

For the videos I have been shooting I have been using the URPro 55mm filters modified by SRP that I used on my earlier blurfix setup, I have the full range Cyan, Green Water, Shallow Water Cyan and a Cyan threaded dome. These were all on the new BlurFix3 slip on adapter which takes any 55mm filters and clips on and off very easily. There will also be a 58mm filter version which may allow more standard height filters to be used without the need to grind down the frames at all.

Link to URPro's website giving info on their underwater filters. UR/Pro Underwater Camera Filters

Link to Snake River Prototyping who make the adapter and also modify the filters for lowest possible profile to avoid any vignetting that a regular height filter may have. SRP Home I just checked the site but they dont have info on the new Blurfix3 there yet but have some info on their facebook page and also this thread http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/go...lter-hd3-srp-will-unveil-dema-11-14-12-a.html.

Our waters here are a bit hit and miss and the last video was using both the CY and GR filters as the water was very much in the middle between green and blue but I would have gotten away with just the CY if needed but I also wanted to see how the GR goes in such conditions, The old blurfix was not a wet filter option so I had to just take one filter and use it but now its been interesting to give a few of them a go in varying conditions.

It was surprising how well it did in low vis at 20m with filters and overall my results have been much better at deeper levels using the H3b then the HD2. Many times I have also taken off the filters and no matter what I do in post I cant get close to the filtered footage. Thats using Cineform studio, Premiere Pro/After effects cs6 or Magic bullet colorista 2 and looks. So I have tried most of the best software options and have been using them all for quite a long time but never could get close to the results when using a filter.

The H3b will give much more pleasant results without a filter as shooting with PT on and cam raw wb will help you avoid the sometimes poor awb, but to get more then just blues at deeper levels and even a wider range of colours at shallower levels I have needed to use a filter. The H3b is a big step ahead and cam raw works very well giving pretty much complete wb control in post just requiring you to shoot some white reference points during your dive.

 

[sharkshark]

A filter in post is just the same as any other method of attempting colour correction, the point of a physical filter is to reduce dominant light in water at depth. This efects the actual image that's seen by the lens and filters it at this level, if you use a clear lens then no matter what you do to it you will never get back colours that weren't seen by the camera.

Aye, there's the rub. Forgive the nerding out for those new to such things, but CCDs actually have a very wide colour gamut, meaning they can capture a huge span of colour space (darks/lights). For the final result, or on "auto" modes, a specific range (256 levels per channel, usually) is selected. If you're capturing the RAW feed from the CCD, you can play with that range in post. That's the huge advantage, of course.

I'm simplifying things enormously, but you guys get the point.

Now, at depth, some colours are capturing much more info than others - red is absorbed, meaning the red channel is often, well, crap if seen in isolation, while the blue channel can be way overexposed. If you're locked in with a selected colour space, you can play with stuff to get the colours back (see my video above), by using channel mixing to bring some of the information from the green and blue channels and "rebuild" the red channel.

What a filter does, really, is muck around at the capture stage to try and swing this gamut to a reasonably diverse range. If the CCD can capture RAW, however, we can do pretty much everything that any filter can, provided that the CCD is in fact capturing information.

At depth, it'd be hard for me to see how a filter would allow the CCD to pickup signals that wouldn't show up in RAW. Filtration would work super well when worried about over exposure, but digital underexposure is often the best way to capture (discussion of digital noise notwithstanding).

As such, it'd be a nice experiment to see, with or w/out filters with knowledgeable colour timing done in post. Again, the point-and-shoot advantage of filtration is key, but for those of us that'll muck with it in post, I'd still like to see definitive indication that there's a need for filtration, or if in fact it's actually counterproductive when shooting RAW.

 

[hellhole]

Okay. Now I have stupid question....

I koe that typically you put on the appropriate filter at different depth and surroundings ( overcast, sunny, etc)

Is it possible to use your eye as a gauge? Like if have a white board. And at depth, it turns all blue/green on me. Can I look through the filter with my eye and see what the white will look like. Common sense tell me that i will likely see whatever color my filter is on the white. ... or??

 

[Marty Cerven]

Aye, there's the rub. Forgive the nerding out for those new to such things, but CCDs actually have a very wide colour gamut, meaning they can capture a huge span of colour space (darks/lights). For the final result, or on "auto" modes, a specific range (256 levels per channel, usually) is selected. If you're capturing the RAW feed from the CCD, you can play with that range in post. That's the huge advantage, of course.

I'm simplifying things enormously, but you guys get the point.

Now, at depth, some colours are capturing much more info than others - red is absorbed, meaning the red channel is often, well, crap if seen in isolation, while the blue channel can be way overexposed. If you're locked in with a selected colour space, you can play with stuff to get the colours back (see my video above), by using channel mixing to bring some of the information from the green and blue channels and "rebuild" the red channel.

What a filter does, really, is muck around at the capture stage to try and swing this gamut to a reasonably diverse range. If the CCD can capture RAW, however, we can do pretty much everything that any filter can, provided that the CCD is in fact capturing information.

At depth, it'd be hard for me to see how a filter would allow the CCD to pickup signals that wouldn't show up in RAW. Filtration would work super well when worried about over exposure, but digital underexposure is often the best way to capture (discussion of digital noise notwithstanding).

As such, it'd be a nice experiment to see, with or w/out filters with knowledgeable colour timing done in post. Again, the point-and-shoot advantage of filtration is key, but for those of us that'll muck with it in post, I'd still like to see definitive indication that there's a need for filtration, or if in fact it's actually counterproductive when shooting RAW.

I guess when you say CCD your talking the sensor as the GoPro uses a CMOS sensor and not CCD but that really make much of a difference as its just the type of sensor and that would be what your trying to say what the sensor captures but the type itself isn't relevant in this discussion.

Shooting in RAW formats you will still use physical filters as in topside many would use ND or CP filters with video work but topside shooting coloured filters can easily be replicated in post, as the sensor picks up the full range of colours above water so these can easily be adjusted with any filters in post for desired effect.

Its just that underwater the camera like our eyes only sees a limited range of colours due to how water effects light, this is also all the sensor will see on its own and the filter will help balance these colours at the capture level reducing dominant blues allowing more reds to get captured which wouldnt you wouldnt get without a filter.

In my tests it has shown to me the filtered videos have had much more colour info recorded in the file especially in the red channel with lots of room to move in post and those without a filter will be lacking in the red channel so no matter what you do in post you cant amplify data that never got recorded.

None of my raw HD3 footage is as bad as the video you posted with your colour correction in post and what you have done there is fix the very poor awb of that clip not add more colour that wasnt recorded. I assume its also fairly shallow in your video likely around 10m max and the top of the wreck being only 5m or so down and those depths will still have more to work with but most reds are generally gone in the 5-10m range.

 

[ronscuba]

What a filter does, really, is muck around at the capture stage to try and swing this gamut to a reasonably diverse range. If the CCD can capture RAW, however, we can do pretty much everything that any filter can, provided that the CCD is in fact capturing information.

At depth, it'd be hard for me to see how a filter would allow the CCD to pickup signals that wouldn't show up in RAW. Filtration would work super well when worried about over exposure, but digital underexposure is often the best way to capture (discussion of digital noise notwithstanding).

I agree in theory, but RAW video has not yet been defined like it has in photo. Different video formats/codecs, color spaces, video compressions, etc.. RAW is definitely a step in the right direction, but at this point, I have a feeling a filter will still be needed to get the best color. Color correcting video in editing can be a long difficult process. I am still from the old school where I prefer to capture my video footage as close as possible to the color I want. I like to let the filter and camera manual white balance do the hard work and do finishing touches in editing.

We should start to see a lot of GoPro3 UW video shot with RAW and protune soon, so the answer will be just around the corner. I would be very happy to be wrong.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Here is a little video I made up of the dive setup I have been using with the hero and how the new srp blurfix3 works.

[video=youtube;u73BNgs8U6c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u73BNgs8U6c&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/video]

 

[sharkshark]

I guess when you say CCD your talking the sensor as the GoPro uses a CMOS sensor and not CCD but that really make much of a difference as its just the type of sensor and that would be what your trying to say what the sensor captures but the type itself isn't relevant in this discussion.

Brain fart, of course it's a CMOS. Duh.

None of my raw HD3 footage is as bad as the video you posted with your colour correction in post and what you have done there is fix the very poor awb of that clip not add more colour that wasnt recorded. I assume its also fairly shallow in your video likely around 10m max and the top of the wreck being only 5m or so down and those depths will still have more to work with but most reds are generally gone in the 5-10m range.

Welcome to diving in Canada!

That was at about 30ft, relatively overcast, and fairly indicative of what we get to see. I know I'm asking for something pretty subtle here, but if we filter at depth, we're actually cutting some of the signal that the Blue and Green channels will record, and pushing some of that gamut into the red channel. This is a good thing visually w/o correction, but the issue is whether or not shooting RAW avoids this, as you can then mix back in colour info from B/G into red, essentially doing selective channel filtration in post. If the gamut of the CMOS is sufficient to capture a wide enough spectrum of B and G signals, without peaking/causing distortion or increase in noise, this might actually make for something even better than shooting with filter. Again, I don't know that this is the case, there's a clear benefit to filtration for uncorrected video, but with the move to be able to shoot in "raw", the question needs to be asked. Plus, hell of a lot easier to "fix it in post" rather than schlepping filters, worrying about bubbles between the glass, etc.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Sharkshark if you search the forums here you will see lots of debate on shooting raw + filters in digital stills, with 2 opposing sides having their own views. The only thing is most on the side saying you shouldnt use a filter with raw shooting have most likely never used a filter. I find in the past shooting gopro and filters was a bit of a bi^& underwater due to wb issues but still not as much of a pain as shooting without a filter where my local conditions produce results very much like you example. Using filters helped out with that issue using the awb to a point simply because the camera would get a broader range of the spectrum to work with allowing it to do a better job in awb where it completely gives up many times in the older gopro's and also many other cameras as soon as they lose red colour data.

This really isnt the main purpose of filters though as they arent there to help with wb but just filter out the dominant colours giving the sensor a more balanced image, Using a filter its very important to be able to set a good wb and surprisingly the gopros awb worked quite well with filters in the past in full auto. I still used to try and adjust wb in post but baked in wb settings are quite a handfull when very wrong and then wb drift also becomes a huge issue. From my tests not only is it more balanced but much more colour data is retained with filters allowing you to get much more out of it without resorting to individual channel painting methods that require a true artist with lots of time on their hands

Next time I dive I will shoot some short clips with filters and no filters at various depths and post the raw camera files for people to have a play around with and see what they can get with both. All my current footage was pretty much shot continuously so Im not going to upload 4GB of raw video footage maybe just a some 5 sec clips will be plenty for others to see.

The big advantage of filter and raw is all you really need to do is set the WB and then just do basic grading as you would with topside footage, the filter has helped balance the colours out for you already so you dont have to go to extremes trying to fight this. If your too shallow for the filter it will be a bit too red which is very easy to fix in post compared to being not red enough, reducing channels is easy but amplifying causes noise in most cases.

 

[sharkshark]

Excellent - again, didn't mean to hijack your thread here, every other conversation I saw ignored the RAW/Filter debate specifically for Gopro, esp. as it's fairly new that we're getting such fun stuff as RAW mode with these bad boys.

Nice setup, nicer that you're a "beta tester" I guess for SRP. Here's another dumb question - is there a way to thread the tray onto the end of a monopod? It may make the thing totally unweidly, but it'd be kind of nice to stick that contraption on the end of a pole cam. I'm still looking for a nice way of getting articulated light holders like you've got to play nice with a gopro at the end of a light monopod (I bought the Slik lightypod which is -fab- with the lightness of the camera).

Thanks for indulging me, your dives look to be pretty spectacular.

 

[Marty Cerven]

Excellent - again, didn't mean to hijack your thread here, every other conversation I saw ignored the RAW/Filter debate specifically for Gopro, esp. as it's fairly new that we're getting such fun stuff as RAW mode with these bad boys.

Nice setup, nicer that you're a "beta tester" I guess for SRP. Here's another dumb question - is there a way to thread the tray onto the end of a monopod? It may make the thing totally unweidly, but it'd be kind of nice to stick that contraption on the end of a pole cam. I'm still looking for a nice way of getting articulated light holders like you've got to play nice with a gopro at the end of a light monopod (I bought the Slik lightypod which is -fab- with the lightness of the camera).

Thanks for indulging me, your dives look to be pretty spectacular.

No Worries about Hijacking the thread lol, I cant see why we cant discuss any things that are related to the h3 black underwater and filter vs no filter is always something people will have varying opinions with. I prefer filters for nearly all natural light dives but I always like to experiment a fair bit to find out what works best and then have an idea of what to use given a similar situation down the track.

You could mount any thing with a 1/4 20 thread onto the tray just not sure how it would all end up, balance and weight wise. The tray itself doesn't weigh much but add lights and a camera it could make it a little awkward possibly. You could also add floats possibly to make the setup neutral in the water so that could be overcome but not likely something I would do.

When I first tried the tray I did try an extra handle in the middle under the camera so it could be used regular 2 handed or single handed like a monopod. It worked ok and is easy enough to do with plenty of mounting holes available on the tray, I just ended up not using the middle handle as much as I thought I may one handed and so didn't try that setup again.

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Here is a video shot during a club night dive, not quite night time due to daylight savings but we jumped in just after 7:30pm and dived just over an hour official sunset was at 8:10pm just before the end of the dive.

No filters used due to the low light just the hero3 black and my 2x Sola 500 lights, shot parts in 1080p30 medium and wide, also 2.7k30p all pt on with some auto but mostly cam raw WB. This is all graded I will post some raw footage at some point later.

[video=youtube;DjiUWNT_oqU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjiUWNT_oqU[/video]