Diving Palau, Micronesia with Canon 5D III & ML Raw

Started by TK1979, November 03, 2015, 09:47:39 AM

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TK1979

I've always wanted to try ML and the Canon 5D III underwater and I finally got the chance to do so this September (2015).
My hobby is underwater videography and from my previous experiences I always felt that shooting raw was just as (if not more) beneficial underwater. This is the first time I use raw and the canon camera underwater so there is still much to learn.

The main 2 issues of light loss (full frame advantage on 5dmIII) and the fact that every 10ft (3m) you lose another source/color of light has made this process quite appealing and pleasing for me. I do admit the process in post is time consuming but for me it is worth the extra effort. There is nothing more disappointing than spending so much money on a trip and not getting the full experience on video for others to see.

Im an amateur so this is not pro work but simply what one can achieve given the right tools for a given situation. And I couldn't have done this without ML and the amazing people who made this possible as well as some of the very informative threads on this forum that helped me understand and take note of what is important. Using this knowledge with what I've learned from shooting underwater gave me some good insight before getting in the water . The entire video was shot using only ambient light except for the crab scene.

https://vimeo.com/144209387

More details about the clip are available on my vimeo page.

Workflow:
Canon set to raw ML Module not MLV (needed the speed and not the sound)
Clips checked and marked in/out thru MLV Raw Viewer.
In Lightroom & Capture One for all corrections and enhancements (exported as TIFF 8-Bit)
Compressor to convert to Prores 442
Final Cut for video editing
Motion for text
Compressor to convert to Vimeo recommended settings for upload (30% of actual file size and compression made the IQ suffer banding/loss of sharpness & detail (on heavily edited shots that were not visible before compression) for example: shark clip with title and manta shot at sunset w/ natural light ...

Advice is highly welcomed and my newbie experiences will be calculated for upon next trip when affordable.

Jay429

Really good job there mate, would you mind sharing what under water housing you used?

mothaibaphoto

Upsampling from 8 bit TIFF to 10 bit ProRes may be the main source of that banding even if you didn't do color corrections or noise reductions with 8 bit.
You'd better export to 16 bit TIFF.
I know, that a huge amount of storage, but you can do it incrementally.
I can't promise you for sure much better results, but your great video worth to be reprocessed.

dynalmadman

Breathtaking. Only banding i really noticed was in the blue skies towards the beginning. Otherwise, I hope someday to get results half as good as you show here.

Michael
70D ML B version.

TK1979

@Jay429, Thank you. I was using a Nauticam housing and an 8.5" dome. Even on Macro. Till I can afford the entire macro setup.

@mothaibaphoto, thats a really good idea. I did a few in 16-bit and couldn't tell the difference. But again, things invisible to the naked eye can still rear its ugly head during compression. Ill try to do that for the entire clip and see if its better. Unfortunately the drone and GoPro are still in 8-bit. That's something I won't be able to escape from :-)

@dynalmadman, you're far too kind. Believe me I used to say the same thing and when I read your comment it made my day! I'll be honest with you, all I did before taking it underwater was do trials on land in the worst lighting conditions and mainly tried to recover my work in post as well as tweaking settings when recording. I did it over and over again so that I could be prepared to edit and film in the worst conditions. It helped a lot once submerged. Made it a lot easier to work with and gave me more time to deal with the underwater challenges like colors and filming positions. Thank you for your post. :-)