Black Magic RAW underwater

[mufazalov 0]

Happy new year, everybody.

I am interested in a small RAW video capable setup for deep clear water+ambient light. My options are thus limited to BM with the original Poclet and a new Pocket 4K.

Before jumping onto the bandwagon I would love to take a look/have a play with the original CDNG/BRAW footage from the cameras mentioned above.

Are there any users on the forum who would be super kind to supply me with such footage, please?

Ideally from waters deeper than 25m and ambient light...

[Interceptor121 659]

What are your expectations?
Maybe you get a bright day on a sandy bottom and some residual colour but under 25 meters you are beyond range for ambient light colour correction for most


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[Lionfi2s 74]

What Interceptor said, deep & no lights it doesn't matter if you use RAW or any other format or codec. The information (color) is not there anyway.

[mufazalov 0]

Thanks for the interest. 
Just some background for you, guys: all filming to be done in freediving (spearfishing to be exact). Ambient light only. All scenes to be filmed as a pursuit (3-4m from the subject) from the surface to the bottom, to the surface. Dive times 2-3min, depths down to 40m.

My expectations are all about flexibility with colour in post. And I am not much interested in JUST pulling the reds back. I found Sony footage to be quite weak when it comes to colour depth (ah, those WB issues too). If my memory doesn't fail me then I think there was much more colour info retained in the Gopro Protune footage (I could look up the waveform grabs from Resolve if you are interested).

But in both scenarios, if you are a bit too aggressive with the grade then the footage just starts to fall apart (yummy colour blocking).

So its a 8bit 420 vs 12bit. Which are miiiiles apart.

[Interceptor121 659]

Thanks for the interest. 
Just some background for you, guys: all filming to be done in freediving (spearfishing to be exact). Ambient light only. All scenes to be filmed as a pursuit (3-4m from the subject) from the surface to the bottom, to the surface. Dive times 2-3min, depths down to 40m.

My expectations are all about flexibility with colour in post. And I am not much interested in JUST pulling the reds back. I found Sony footage to be quite weak when it comes to colour depth (ah, those WB issues too). If my memory doesn't fail me then I think there was much more colour info retained in the Gopro Protune footage (I could look up the waveform grabs from Resolve if you are interested).

But in both scenarios, if you are a bit too aggressive with the grade then the footage just starts to fall apart (yummy colour blocking).

So its a 8bit 420 vs 12bit. Which are miiiiles apart.

Definitely not the right approach
Get a gopro on a tray and two sola lights on the ball mount


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[mufazalov 0]

I understand the artificial light suggestion, of course I considered (and used) it before, but not my cup of tea (more components into the system + 'artificialness' of the final image in terms of lighting and colours)

Why is it not? 
What could you push further 8bit or 10bit or 12bit?
 

[Interceptor121 659]

12 minutes ago, mufazalov said:

I understand the artificial light suggestion, of course I considered (and used) it before, but not my cup of tea (more components into the system + 'artificialness' of the final image in terms of lighting and colours)

Why is it not? 
What could you push further 8bit or 10bit or 12bit?
 

The idea of white balance is to correct it every 3 meters or so. The white balance of RAW only works if you already had some light in the frame it does not work if all is dim.

As you have a clip of 2-3 minutes with changing depth and colour temperature it will be a lot of work to segment it and correct it and at the end due to the point above (lack of light) it will produce awkward results and the colors will not be matched

The most effective solution is to introduce artificial lights to ensure the color temperature is almost constant

Furthermore in free diving you want to minimise drag and an action cam will be a much better fit than a big box like the blackmagic

There is an example freediving video with the blackmagic somewhere you can see that it looks dire because of the reasons above

RAW does not defeat physics