Nauticam NA-LX7, WetMate dome & 67mm red filter?

[ronscuba]

..
In reality, a red filter does absorb light, and generally the Manual WB achieves a very similar result in colour rendition, but the saturation you achieve with a manually balanced image filtered through a red lens is better imho. It's more vivid. ....

This is my experience as well with traditional video camcorders I have used.

However, the same may not hold true for DSLR's and the newer compact cameras. They have better low light capability and MWB correction range. I have see amazing UW video from DSLR's shot without a filter. I will get my LX7 underwater in a month so it will be interesting to see how it does without a filter.

 

[comodino]

Same here. We shall see!

 

[Mike]

I've been shooting for a week now, some struggling, some excellent results. I'm getting more and more impressed with the MWB. A few days ago I could easily tell when reviewing footage which had lights on and which were just MWB to ambient light, maybe I'm getting a bit better with my MWB methods, but some of the video I was reviewing in the last few days I was having trouble telling the difference between footage with lights and footage with just ambient and MWB. Getting more and more impressed with the potential of the LX7 for video quality. There were a few examples where I was reluctant even to try to shoot the scenes I was seeing figuring they wouldn't translate well being so distant, however when reveiwing the footage, the video was sharper, clearer and more defined than what I witnessed with our eyes! Both my wife and I were like "Holy crap" that's better than what we saw!

 

[comodino]

excellent....I got camera & housing today, hopefully I'll give it a go in a couple of weeks. I decided to try without filter, if I am not 100% satisfied I'll try with the filter too, luckily I'll have plenty of time.

 

[ronscuba]

This is my experience as well with traditional video camcorders I have used.

However, the same may not hold true for DSLR's and the newer compact cameras. They have better low light capability and MWB correction range. I have see amazing UW video from DSLR's shot without a filter. I will get my LX7 underwater in a month so it will be interesting to see how it does without a filter.

UPDATE:

I'm kicking myself for not bringing the filter on my trip. Colors are off without the filter. Even when using MWB. Color correction in editing is possible, but I prefer to do minimal correction in editing. I'll post a short clip this evening.

On the plus side, the low light range is very good, Nauticam housing is awesome. I'll be adding a 2nd strobe and will have to figure out how best to mount my video lights.

 

[Interceptor121]

Colours off? Did you use your special grey card or what else?

 

[ronscuba]

Colours off? Did you use your special grey card or what else?

I tried sand, reef, tank. All things that worked in the past doing MWB with the filter. It reminded me a lot of my experiences with my camcorders. MWB with the filter always came out better. W/O the filter, coloring is similar with LX7 and camcorders.

A quick color correction in editing, but colors still off my tastes.
[vimeo]69924743[/vimeo]


Do you dive with strobes and video lights together ?

 

[Interceptor121]

I think you should dial down the exposure compensation as it looks like it is a bit too high.
For the colours I don't have issues once you do your manual white balance you can still adjust the tint to your liking to make it look like a filter
A few units of magenta or/and amber correction is the same as having a filter if you like it to be deeper blue
I don't dive with strobe and lights together I find it is better to separate a photo dive from a video dive. You can in theory use triple clamps and take both but mentally photo and video are different so I do only one thing at time

 

[ronscuba]

I'll have to look into the exposure compensation setting. I never touched it so it is at factory setting. I was shooting shutter priority 60. I should experiment shooting full manual or for that matter, full auto just to see how the camera behaves.

 

[Interceptor121]

The LX7 tends to give an extremely bright picture. Personally I do not like that too much I like it to be as my eye sees it which I have worked out myself to be around -2/3 and -1 Ev.
So if you set shutter 1/125 (you are shooting double frame rate I guess) and exposure -2/3 or -1 (it is the same shutter button) you should get a nice crisp image
I also disable the intelligent dynamic or set it to low to remove highlight clipping.
If when you half press the shutter the measured exposure is red as too bright then insert the ND filter.