Polar Pro Red Filter vs UR/PRO Analysis

[Marty Cerven]

Toozler I am a trained engineer I think I have said this before somewhere

Care to give the field and who you are actually working for, I would never hire an engineer that makes up so many things and obviously knows little about what he is talking about.

This from your profile here

• Instructor, Scuba
• Solo Diver
• Photographer
• Master Scuba Diver Trainer

I see you also changed the pictures on your blog, could you possibly have taken worse pictures then that? seriously lol this from a claimed engineer in his scientific testing.

Lol thats how I would take a filter comparison shot too, in a poorly lit room with a monitor in the background and too close for the camera to focus on anything. Your credibility is getting much better now

Re srp
So as we agree that the water does not do good we are already in a good place
Now how good or how bad is not that important in a wide angle lens leaving those few mm means around 8% loss on focal length (I should say gain as it makes the lens longer)
I would think that if in terms of optical distortion that is something under 10% for colour it will be similar with more pronounced effect as you go at depth
I think this is not that interesting to be frank the key question is why bother with a dome shape when the gopro lens is not rectilinear so can't be corrected by a dome?? Surely that puts the price up a notch in addition to decreasing the performance of the filter itself
As an engineer you may agree that the design effort was not actually needed

Where are those figures coming from? care to show your testing or are you just making up figures to make your results sound scientific. We both know you dnt have a dome filter and have never used one underwater. I wonder how you came to your conclusion it appears completely made up with more made up figures. You didnt answer when I asked if you had the filter and obviously if you did you would have used it in your testing, which to be frank you havent actually done any anyway so even if you had one it would make little difference.

I believe srp have worked it out themselves as they have abandoned the dome concept
To give you an idea the dome is not even sold in UK just the blurfix standard

Really, care to explain this. I think I have already corrected you no this BS statement at least 3 times and even in your own blog you have this.

If we take out the Polarizer and consider the SRP dome for Hero3 at $77 the difference is still $47.

So you obviously know that statement is complete BS so why do you keep repeating it?

I can't acknowledge that I am wrong if I am right

LOL ok, how many times have I shown you are wrong. Your blog is a waste of time with so much incorrect information, all your conclusions are based on a couple of pictures and you comment on design issues on something you dont even have even giving percentages plucked from thin air for what purpose I have no clue. Show your testing show how you came to those conclusions and if you dont have any of this what is your actual point.

Anyway this is pointless as in this thread there is footage with the polarpro and looks nothing worse than the footage with the UR/PRO in the main thread in the same diving location actually a bit better as the magenta hue is more pleasing than the orange in my opinion

You have filters do some damn testing and show your results, you have no basis for any of your claims whatsoever. If you ever were an engineer I see why you became a dive instructor, if your engineering is anything like your so called scientific testing you'd surely struggle as an engineer.

You have proven you dont have a clue what your talking about so maybe just give up and stick to things you know and stop pretending to be something your not as its pretty obvious even a blind man could see this.

 

[Interceptor121]

Oops you lost you temper I see
Maybe you should get a camomile instead of spending time writing long posts here!!

 

[Marty Cerven]

No loss of temper, but do you care to answer the questions or you have no answers to any of it. I really dont see the purpose of your supposed blog post, maybe your just trying to get page views I have no idea but your surely not giving any useful information in it. You made big claims but have fallen well short of delivering anything of substance.

Your engineering claims are stretched pretty thin as are most of your claims, no actual testing showing how you have come to your conclusions. I dont care which filters you prefer if any but simply show how you came to your conclusions, being an "engineer" supposedly you'd understand that you need to actually do some real world testing before making claims on anything.

You hyped up your blog before writing it promising to expose why something is better then something else and I see nothing but untested theories in there, this could easily be written by anyone. You were going to show proof to explain your claims but there is none there, and its very badly put together so I wonder what your actual agenda is. You obviously have one, do you sell any of these products by any chance?

You claim to be an expert above everyone else here in anything to do with filters or shooting underwater video, I dont see you as any more qualified then any other regular person and you haven't shown anything to give your opinion much credit. If anything your constant fabrications make your opinion one I would value much lower then anyone else I have come across on this forum so far.

 

[RockyHeap]

Toozler I am a trained engineer I think I have said this before somewhere
?

Interwhiner000, you give the rest of us degree'd engineers a really bad representation with your elementry school girl playground pout fests.


Geezus I want my 15-20 minutes of life back after reading all 8 pages of this childish "I know you are but what am I, and can piss farther than you, can not can too can not can too " sad sad cheap shot slap fest.

 

[Interceptor121]

Another one chipping in I see!
Marty I am sorry you can't understand what I write and I add no value to you. You made some interesting claims too such as this filter is much noiser than the other and so around a product you don't actually have
I took the time to measure how many f-stops do those filters take and what they do to the picture when you put them on. Once you see the behavior on the histogram curve you know what to expect out of a piece of plastic between the lens and the environment. In this specific there were a few claims around the polarpro being too red or having this and the other feature that are not true. The filter is different from others but is not more red and not more noisy it has a tint and that may or not prove useful.
I did not promise to demonstrate that one is definitely better than the other as in fact this cannot be demonstrated those filters are different and may or not suit the conditions you dive into. One may work better in one location on a day and the other may in another place on another day.
Once you see what the filter does to the exposure curve you don't need to go in the water with 2-3 rigs and try to demonstrate which one is best or not as you did, those videos are entertaining but frankly do not stipulate anything else that on the day you went for a dive you had better result with one item instead of another.
You can't speak about noise without measuring exposure in any way just by looking at footage at depth taken with a cheap piece of equipment not designed to do that job and under sever stress, this is fairly subjective. As it is that video from Polarpro which demonstrates only that on those conditions their filter did an ok job, and just says orange filters don't do very well in water that is very green, by the way I think this was a known fact that needed no demonstration?

Now I see this is getting you and someone else very stressed and I would prefer not to cause any concerns to your health or someone else.
I find it rather amusing that a couple of guys can quite happily talk about this and the other without even having any product or actually using the camera to take video or photos.

The point of the blog post is in essence that the polarpro is not better than urpro and that video of theirs is a set of circumstances that is not representative as no in water comparative test really is. That item though is priced well and for the majority of users the additional money spent on better equipment won't make a substantial difference

Now if you can cool down a bit and relax it would be better!

 

[Marty Cerven]

Well my view on the Polar pro was going from your original images and all videos I have seen with it in use that show a pronounced red tint when in use. You have changed the photos on your blog to some that show pretty much nothing and I dont see why you would shoot those and think they are any better then what you had before.

You had made claims and I have quoted them all above, and none of those claims have in any way been demonstrated with any evidence to back them up. You keep talking about design flaws in the dome making up theories and even percentage of colour loss yet you dont even have the filter, so I was asking how you came to those conclusions but you have never answered that. You keep repeating that SRP have given up on the dome which is a false statement yet you have said it so many times in this and other threads. I have corrected you a few times yet you keep on repeating this fictional story of yours, same as the design flaws which you promised to show with physics but have shown nothing.

I am far from stressed more entertained at someone that claims to know so much can produce such a poor quality analysis when they made such huge claims. It doesnt matter what your tests are on they dont show anything beyond your own personal opinion. This is backed by nothing I just find it funny thats all and would rather people see your post for what it is not what its claimed to be.

Since when has using filters been ideal to shoot directly into a light source such as your monitor at a distance so close that nearly everything in frame is inside the camera's minimum focus area. Also in a poorly lit indoor environment I really find it hard to see what your trying to show there. You also rate yourself a photographer along with filter expert and engineer, your analysis doesn't show any expertise in any of those areas yet those are the claims your making.

By replying here I am giving your thread more credit then it actually deserves as a complete beginner with no engineering or photography background would struggle to do a less useful analysis of anything. If someone is stressed it may be you when people expose the issues in your post which you think is of some high standard when sadly a grade 2 science teacher would likely give it a fail IMHO.

Why not answer what sort of engineering background you have and who you work for, also how you came to your conclusion on the dome filter with figures to boot yet you dont even have one so its obviously all completely made up. Whats the point of just making things up to try and justify your claims, if you dont show how you come to any conclusions anything you say is rather pointless I think no.

 

[Interceptor121]

The photos are shot against the light so that the tint shows otherwise it might not. This is done on purpose to illustrate what tint they give
Those shots can't be taken with a camera with auto white balance as that will correct the tint instead of making it apparent
So they need to be shot with a white point set against the light this is why I use a camera that can fix the white balance instead of the gopro for that purpose
The histograms if you know how to read them can help you seeing what the filter does
If for example take blu in the picture without filter and then look at the histograms with the filters you will notice that the blue moves from center to left, this is the result of the filter
You also can see that red doesn't really change a lot as the filter is actually removing the other colors but not increasing red
By looking at the histogram you can see how the shape changes from the original picture
The URPRO has an harmonic effect of smoothing the curve to the left for the blue and green colours you can see how balanced that is because the filter is orange so has a warming effect
The polarpro has similar behaviour overall but some spikes on green and blue
Spikes occur when the filter tries to operate some selective effect in this case on green what happens is that you get ripples
Those ripples when you approach depths where there are no other color left produce worse performance than more harmonic one like the URPRO
I am not sure if this makes sense to you by this is the reason you test a filter with another device if you were to do the test with the gopro the auto white balance would kick in and you would end up testing how that works not the filter itself

Moving on to the srp dome this product is not on sale in UK so I can't perform a test which would need the same material on the same camera in water with a fixed white balance ideally

I do happen to have lenses with domes for photography. Domes are used to rectify pincushion distortion of rectilinear (flat) ports and they restore the field of view on land when you are in water
The gopro does not have a rectilinear lens as a start and has plenty of barrel distortion because of the wide field of view the same lens gives focus issue in water hence the need for an housing for a flat port so that the lens can focus
It is not clear what the need to reinstate a dome is maybe just something simple like not introducing vignetting definitely srp is not advertising any specific optical or geometric qualities
Now this shape creates a gap where more water can come in the effect is not massive it will be there is it possible to quantify it exactly? Only by putting this piece of equipment on a camera with fixed white point and comparing with the filter touching the port
Will this be substantial? No
Will it stop the filter to work? No
Will it make it better than a filter that touches the port? No
Will it make it more expensive to manufacture? Yes
Will it give any other optical properties to improve the image no?

So the flaw is not stopping the product to work but over engineering it to a point it is not affordable

I think ronscuba demonstrated that filter are not rocket science and you can get results with few dollars

Not sure if this makes it better or worse for you but here you go

 

[yarik83]

I took the liberty of ordering 2 red lens filters from polar pro. My next vacation is in march but I might be diving in blue waters before that. If and when I get the filters I plan to make an unbiased review of this filter after having thoroughly videotaped the heck out of it on vacation.

 

[Interceptor121]

I think this thread has already caused a level of tension that is not justified for a cheap piece of equipment which is what a filter is
I am sure the polarpro will do as well as a piece of gel in the housing or the SRP as long as the conditions of use are within reasonable limits

 

[onderwaterfoto]

And now? No new replies? Finally a thread with some fire in it...

So many people, so many opinions...