sneak peek

[divingpyrate]

I have a lot of editing to do, but here are some stills grabbed from our first day of diving after the Norte in Coz

 

[RedStang]

Very nice! Any lights or just the SRP filter? We're diving in Coz next month and my SRP filter and tray just got shipped today. Really looking forward to testing it out.

 

[divingpyrate]

nothing but ambient light on these videos
I am extremely pleased with the results
shoot 2.7k protune with white balance camraw
I find the protune preset is a little heavy on saturation but that is easily tweaked in cineform
Avoid shooting into the sun, try and shoot with the sun at your back

 

[ronscuba]

Your video stills have nice lighting and color. Glad to hear you are happy with your results. Lighting manufacturers have so many people convinced that lights are a requirement when that is totally not true for open water tropical diving.

Look forward to seeing some of your video.

 

[Interceptor121]

Agree with Ron in those conditions plenty of light and sandy bottom a simple filter does wonders and it shows!

 

[RockyHeap]

Also concur with Ron that his Ronco Red Filters are invaluable.


Yes those are great shots nice and bright.

But don't forget, lighting is also used for fill-in, not pure total illumination of the subject.


For example, with even a single light, would fill in the dark shadow of this divers face and bring out the flesh tones.

 

[divingpyrate]

Understood
Sadly in that situation it would not have helped
She was pretty far away
The 27k frame size and pixel density allowed for a lot of scaling and cropping

Right now I am still new to diving, so lights and true video composition are low on the list
As my diving improves the videos will, then i should be able to hover close enough to take advantage of supplemental lighting


Thanks for all the comments

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

 

[BreezyOhio]

nothing but ambient light on these videos
I am extremely pleased with the results
shoot 2.7k protune with white balance camraw
I find the protune preset is a little heavy on saturation but that is easily tweaked in cineform
Avoid shooting into the sun, try and shoot with the sun at your back

So I'm headed to Cozumel in mid April and have been kicking around the question of lighting too .. I have some footage of my last trip there with a GoPro but no light so everything was very blue, but we were about 60 feet down too. There was no good way I found to fix it in post processing, which I've done with still shots before.

Trying hard to get results like yours without light .. did you set white balance at depth?

BTW, you're aware that what you posted were stills right? Were they taken from videos?

 

[divingpyrate]

what gopro are you shooting with?
had the same problem with the 2
Those are still frames taken from video footage

The keys were
2.7k 30 fps works well in low light
Protune on
White balance on the 3 does not have a custom that you can set to a white surface
use camraw, it does no color balance and just flattens the image

The other key was The Srp red filter for blue water

Marty and Rob posted the information that got me to that config
we were 27-50 feet
Sun in and out

Thosr options make it easy post production to fix things up
in shallow depths high sun, the video was on the warm side due to the filters red tint
but just a little adjustment on the blue and red channels and it came back

Sent from my A500 using Tapatalk 2

 

[BreezyOhio]

Ah, I was shooting with the 2 .. the three wasn't released yet. Thanks for the feedback. I'll go lightless then I think, based on your good results. Did you use the red filter on these shots above?

I am worried that the red filter will slow down the shutter speed too much. It seems like a whole point exposure filter .. maybe more.