huggie11

My housing is a shallow water aluminium one custom built by SPL in the USA about 10 years ago. It was originally for a Red Epic but I altered it to barely fit my BM 12k and it took many trips to the machine shop. I can change the ISO and shutter speed but leave the aperture fixed at f11 for the DOF. I have a Shraeger (bicycle) valve installed in the top of the housing and I slightly pressurise it with a bicycle pump to make sure it is sealed before jumping in the water. I can turn on/off the BM screen as well but find that the screen overlay info partly obscures the ISO info which sucks. If I shoot long takes (like 60 seconds following turtles) I find that the housing overpressures a bit from hot air. I was using a WD black p50 SSD but it got really hot so I changed to a Sandisk Extreme pro which is smaller and does not seem to get as hot. Since I use it in the surf, It's not a problem to release air through the valve. It's a bit funky looking and was certainly a hassle to adapt the housing from one camera to another, but the results are pretty impressive on my 8k TV which I use as a monitor. Here's some 12k footage, 60fps and uploaded to YouTube at 8k.

Hey Russ, I think the 12k BlackMagic is not considered a 'pro' camera and is not widely used. Perhaps the reason for it's recent price drop. And, 12k seems to most people to be more than what is needed, currently. I remember when people said that 1080 res was 'too much'. Like you, I shoot stock footage and I always want to future proof my work so that's why I changed my housing over from a RED Dragon to a BM 12k. I still use two Red Dragons for topside jobs but underwater only 12k. One advantage, the BM has over the RED, besides higher framerate at 4k is that the BM sensor does not crop like the RED. When switching from 5k to 2k on the RED, you get a serious crop factor which, IMO, softens the image and the 2k resolution is pretty useless to me. For long lens work, the extra 'crop' is useful but I would rather use my Sigma 300-800 lens with a 1.4x and be able to shoot in higher res than crop with my RED at 2k. The biggest hassle for me with shooting 12k is the file sizes..single shots that are 150gb (12k at 75fps). Storage is a problem and render times are slow. I'm using a maxed out 2020 M1 Macbook with 16gb and 2tb and it handles editing in Resolve 17 pretty well but to actually be able to play my footage (say 500gb from a shoot) I have to 'generate optomised media' and wait an hour or more. Then I can play my entire timeline with no stuttering. Also, I needed to use a very fast SSD with a Thunderbolt 4 cable to handle the data transfer rates from the camera. For a monitor, I'm using an 8k LG 65" tv connected to my Macbook with a HDMI 2.1 cable and it looks almost identical to my laptop screen. Looks pretty cool even though I know it's upscaling my 2.5k Macbook screen rather than playing in higher res.

After many months of messing about, I've finally managed to stuff my BM 12k into an existing housing I have that was built for a Red Epic. Shot this footage at 75 fps in 12k and then 'expanded it' to fit 16x9. Lens is fixed at 8mm, f 11, focus at 22", ISO 1000. Looks pretty good on my 8k TV. Uploaded to YouTube which degrades it pretty heavily but here it it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJwu25svDOA

Does anyone know of someone who has already built a shallow water/splash housing from aluminum or fiberglass for a BlackMagic Ursa Mini Pro camera? I just received the new BM 12k camera and need to get a housing with 4" dome port made. thanks

Hello, My name is Greg Huglin, I live in Noosa, Australia and I shoot a fair bit of video in and underwater with a RED Epic in an SPL housing and now I'm adding a BM 12k camera to my gear.