Shooting on the ocean
 

I posted a 720p version of some material I shot for our show at 1080p30.

A couple of guys on personal watercraft (jet skis) are headed out to go trolling on the open ocean.

A little color correction was done to make all the shots consistently warm.

Lots of motion. Lots of quickly changing detail. Anyone interested in knowing how CMOS and a rolling shutter behaves under these circumstances can see for themselves.

http://www.hawaiigoesfishing.com/videos/pwc_test.mov

thanks for sharing. Assuming shutter off?

Seems to cope fine. I have been thinking about using 720/50p for action stuff but might give 1080/25p a go (PAL land).

Still waiting for Schnieder to release the 1.6x extender!

Yep, the shutter was off. I avoided using any fast shutter settings as the "staccato" Private Ryan look is something I wanted to avoid. Although if I were shooting for slo-mo that would be considered.

I hear you there; although 1/60th using 30P would of given you a "standard" video shutter. It also would of helped staying away from the higher f-stops possibly causing some defraction.

I take you were using ND2, correct?

Steven....

You noticed the diffraction problem, too.

The sun was changing the light quickly when I grabbed the wide shot of the jet ski with the barge and the camera was at f16. Bad! Between trying to keep things in frame, compensating for the quickly changing light and making sure I didn't fall overboard I missed a few details regarding camera settings. :-)

I switched to ND2 right after that but missed the shot by then.

Still getting used to this camera. I'm amazed at the overall quality of the image despite the adverse conditions.

I hear you Dean.
We've all been there when you're stuck in the middle in action and trying to squeeze off shots like this.

I'm sure as you settle in with how the EX1 responds, your footage is going to be awesome man!

All of these cameras behave a bit different.


I'm looking forward to more of your shoots.

As you know high f-stops (f16) are to be avoided. Defraction can be nasty. My JVC HD100 looks soft (and noisy) at f16. That camera's sweet spot was around f4.

I have not determined this with the EX1, but man it sure looks good at f1.9 which surprised me. The HD100 went to f1.4, but is a tad soft there.
I think the EX1 is safe from f1.9 through f8.

Nice Dean!

What are you using for a housing?

Thanks, Randy....

I'm using a Kata rain cover. Works great against spray.

But while the clear plastic shell provides excellent protection against rain and spray, it creates a mean "greenhouse" effect in direct sun. The sunlight comes straight through, hits anything that's black, the energy gets re-radiated as heat and makes the interior an oven.

Doesn't help the EX1 generates a significant amount of heat by itself.

But it beats letting the camera get splashed with salt water.

That is for sure.

I am looking at getting a lightweight housing if you hear of any production models that become available. I am not too keen on a custom, as I am not sure I want to be without the camera for the month.

Thanks again, and post more goodies. Love to see that Hawaii footage!

Best,
Randy

questions
 

The footage looks great! Man, it streamed practically in real time. First, If I want to post footage like that, I just select Quicktime conversion, H.264, save it on my site and post a link?

Second question, sorry, but what exactly is defraction--I googled it and it pointed me back to your post. I would assume the problem with using higher F stops is a pinhole camera effect causing everything to be in focus--or are you saying refraction, and since the aperture is so small, the edges of the lens will be farther away causing a fisheye look? Is this it?

And then, the color looks gorgeous, are you telling the white balance to add a few thousand degrees K to warm it up, or doing it in post? If so, how.

Very nice, and I know how hard it is to get that stuff juggling a $10,000 rig in salt air, and a leaping boat, with hundreds of settings to consider. I assume you are just hand holding it...

Yeah.

Dean to keep the camera cool I use an insulation that is bubble wrap with foil on either side. You can buy it cheap at Home Depot and it makes a huge difference inside the Kata Rain cover and is very thin (1/8"). The camera will stay cooler. You can put velcro on the insulation so it hooks right on the cover at the opening. That way when it is easy on easy off.

Looks like I need to be trying the shutter off on similar shots.

Essentially, due to the smaller aperture (f16 in this case) a higher percentage of light is being diffracted away from the image sensor.
Here's a good example of lens diffraction.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...fraction.shtml

Great link Steve.

Steven,
Thanks for the explanation.
-Chip

Chip...

The camera is set for 5500k and I warm it up in post using Apple's Color application. Not very user friendly and it's got more bugs than a run-down lunchwagon in summer :-) Eventually Apple will get it straightened out the way they fixed up Soundtrack Pro. Meanwhile it does a great job if you're willing to get accustomed to a weird UI and work around the limitations.

The camera is on rails attached to a shoulder mount. There's also a monopod below it. So the shoulder mount hooks over my shoulder to help reduce pitch and yaw, and my left hand is holding onto the monopod to reduce roll.

Would be nice to set up a KenLab gyro and see how much it might reduce shake. Or maybe set it up with a well-protected Glidecam arm/sled to isolate the camera from the boat.