4K Video at reasonable cost with the Panasonic LX100?

[danvolker]

Rouge Underwater Video Housing for RED Scarlet X and Epic cinema cameras | Amphibico Professional

Shoots 444 and 6k

 

[ronscuba]

Dan, I believe you are a local diver in the Boynton, Jupiter area ?

Living in NYC, I'm mainly a warm water vacation diver. If I lived in Florida, one thing I really would like to do is use off camera lighting using 1 or more dive buddies. I think this can be really dramatic on wreck dives. The ability to create and control silhouettes, shadows, etc..

For deep or night dives, I would add in spotlighting too. Plenty of cave divers with narrow beam lights for that.

Sorry to go off topic. Just some creative thoughts bouncing around in my head.

 

[danvolker]

Am not sure. Even to your eyes that scene looked green and blue. Usually my video contain more tones than my eyes saw during the dive and this is because of filters and lights

When I have been on my most exciting deeper dives...whether a wreck like the HydroAtlantic at 165, the Hole in the Wall at 145, the RB Johnson/Cory'n Chris at 285 or some deep wall drop offs...the most exciting visual was the structure and the large life...there was no thought about missed colors...there was more sensory overload from all the experiences you are getting at a depth where few people have ever been, and where if you record that to a camera, there would be the desire to capture this biomass and this structure, and to convey the enormity and the scale.....again, it does not need all the reds and yellows when it shows so much "never-seen-before" life and structure. Things like the RB johnson where a wall 80 feet thick of solid amberjacks, blanket the area just above the mast of the RB at around 200 feet deep--like a dense layer of clouds.....and then on falling through this Amberjack layer, you can see the entire length of the two ships, on top of each other, and the full vertical expanse to the bottom , covered with different layers of predator and prey...schools of each, all the way down to the bottom at 285 feet. Capturing the ambience is not about color, it is about scope and perspective. Color would never be possible underwater, for the lengths of view that are so fantastic....
As Ron said, I can get some buddies to light up areas I can shoot within 10 or 20 feet, or less, and together with my lighting, I could create some wildly cool "color" shots at this depth...and that can be edited in with the huge expansive shots--that are mostly shades of blue--and where you really are enjoying this a great deal, even without the reds and yellows, etc.

 

[Interceptor121]

Black and white seems appropriate and 4K with a camera with good noise performance would also be indicated. Possibly a larger sensor as well to help with dynamic range and noise

 

[ronscuba]

Black and white seems appropriate and 4K with a camera with good noise performance would also be indicated. Possibly a larger sensor as well to help with dynamic range and noise

Big wreck dive, black and white. BUT, old low resolution standard definition camcorder. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

[vimeo]768245[/vimeo]

 

[Interceptor121]

Big wreck dive, black and white. BUT, old low resolution standard definition camcorder. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Nice clip Ron I think with a good ISO performance this should work well with the LX100

Are you hanging on to the LX7?

 

[ronscuba]

Nice clip Ron I think with a good ISO performance this should work well with the LX100

Are you hanging on to the LX7?

Thanks. This is a pretty old video shot with a standard definition Sony TRV900 around 10 yrs ago.

Shooting this today, I would lock in the manual settings to keep video noise down and maintain exposure for the silhouette shots. Some might be tempted to blast the scenes with wide angle video lights, but then you would lose the dark, mysterious vibe of a big wreck dive.

I'm keeping my LX7. I don't see any huge improvements in video quality to warrant a change. Been doing this long enough that for me, it's more about my abilities to edit, tell a story and capturing my subjects with the right composition and lighting.

 

[Zer0Zer0]

I am voting for more color depth instead of higher resolution or better packing. Of course, 4:4:4 (at 8 bits) is better than 4:2:0 at 8 bits. But there is a much bigger difference with 14...16bit "RAW" color information per channel.

The problem with 8 bit video in poorly lit ambient light scenes is that the video information occupies a relatively small range of bit values. In post, there is the temptation to enhance the otherwise dull scene with some color grading. But this soon causes the "color steps" to become visible and this ruins the attempt. The eye is extremely sensitive to unevenness in color grades because this is the primary method of how the eye/brain detect the shape and texture of things. The normally accepted 3x8 bit color space is just on the border of being sufficient for topside purposes.

I am very tempted to try out Magic Lantern on my Canon 5DIII, but, I haven't yet dared to. Plus there is the problem of very high media costs and severely Limited shoot times.

Here are samples of videos shot with higher color depth and how much you could post process the video. These samples were shot relativelt shallow. But still I would expect almost similar enhancement (with much less reds) deeper too.

[video=vimeo;47351101]http://vimeo.com/47351101[/video]

The following video explains color grading underwater footage and how you can make dull scenery beautiful in post:

[video=vimeo;32137186]http://vimeo.com/32137186[/video]

I am relatively new to scuba and want to be able to take good videos.
The comparison videos are stunning. What a difference.

What tools are needed to do post processing of videos to give it more color?
Any pointers and tips would be grateful.

 

[danvolker]

I am relatively new to scuba and want to be able to take good videos.
The comparison videos are stunning. What a difference.

What tools are needed to do post processing of videos to give it more color?
Any pointers and tips would be grateful.

One good solution, would be signing up for Adobe creative cloud.....and then using Premiere and After effects, and Speedgrade....This would also mean spending quite a bit of time on tutorials in Lynda.com

Among the things you will be doing, is using the cineform codec Adobe has now embraced, with the 4-2-2 or 444 color space, whichever you desire.
Also know that as you move to the bigger color space, the PC you use is going to work better with 7200 rpm hard drives, and better still with 10,000 rpm hard drives....and huge amounts of ram...I use 32 gigs of ram in mine, and I almost wish I had chosen a different motherboard, so that I could have gone to much more ram if I wanted , in the future.

You also need a high end Video card, an Nvidea, that is supported by Premiere and Aftereffects and Speed grade....The Nvidea 760 is sort of the minimum for this, with 2 gigs of gpu ram....there are much more expensive ones, that can work even better--what they do, is off-load much of the processing that your pc's CPU would do, to the video card's GPU, allowing your computer to process everything some times 10 or 20 times faster...or even much more.

Macs still don't utilize the high end video cards for processing, so a PC can run circles around a mac today....a year from now or so, I am sure the mac world will have gotten it's act together, and fixed this issue.

 

[Interceptor121]

There are sure difference between a flat profile ungraded and graded footage however for consumer use at low bitrate and to shoot a normal clip getting right in camera is far easier and actually achieves better results. Unless you have a semipro set up your outcomes are going to be worst than someone doing it right at the outset. If you are not ready to commit to a substantial investment in equipment don't think the software alone will put it right