Hello Folks,

Welcome to Dave’s blog. Here is something static for something that captures very fast things:

Yup its the Phantom Flex!

Vision Research is into high speed capture for cinematographers

No shortage of I/O and control even Genlock!

Here is a link more on the how and why the Phantom Flex exists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfogNfGkWo4

Here are some of the cool features:

- Up to 2,570 fps at 1920×1080 in Standard Mode

- 12-bit pixel depth

- ISO 1200

- HQ Mode provides ultimate in image stability under changing shooting  conditions

- Phantom CineMag compatible, CineMag interface has field-replaceable pin array

- 2 x 4:2:2 HD-SDI video ports, can be configured as dual-link 4:4:4 video

- Global, electronic shutter to 1 μs

- Multi-cine capable via segmented memory

- Internal mechanical shutter for hands-free and remote

- On-camera controls for camera modes, settings, playback, edit & save

- Frame synchronization to external signal, allows multiple cameras to be synchronized – essential for stereo 3D recording

- Three 12VDC, 1.5A auxiliary power outputs for powering external devices (one is on the Viewfinder port), 4A maximum load

- External trigger signal on camera connector panel and both 12VDC power ports

- Genlock for synchronizing video playback – essential for 3D video workflows

This is a real kick-ass system for high speed HD video and yes a housing is being custom built for this baby! Once it is up and running I will go for a test dive. Watch this space.

Scubacam’s collection of cutting edge digital cinema equipment and cine lenses.   I will reveal a fully working underwater housing and control systems soon in a future blog. All equipment and camera operator is available for hire for top side and underwater shoots.

The Phantom Flex housing? It will have full control and follow focus!

Cheers

David

Well that was another year over. Thank you all for coming over to Scubacam’s booth. It was great to meet so many familiar faces and also new ones. We could not have done it without your support.

Scubacam booth

We had on display quite a few new products and brands. The booth was also show casing some fantastic photography by friends and customers.

The Booth have a gallery wall and a LED HD TV for UW videos

For this year’s ADEX,  Scubacam decided on a mascot…..We model it on the Komodo Dragon (since its water Dragon Year (Chinese)) and also to show case our own Sea-gadget Brand of control arms and clamps. These were versatile enough to be the parts for the mascot sculpture…

Making his first appearance in ADEx Komodo Dragon "Ah-boy"

He was created in a hurry so not yet steady on his legs when he had to carry lights

At one point Ah-boy could not take the strain & attention from many customers

A perplexed customer....Ah-boy was intimidating at times

Soon the booth started to get very very busy!

I decided to demo some new toys... not least the RED Epic camera

The new XIT 404 remote switch for L&M sola lights

Soon friends from Wetpixel start filing in. Drew forget to buy Sanah's coffee

Shawn "Iron Man" Heinrich drop in after his talk.

Jason (Scubazoo) appeared with Mr Peter Mooney...looking fresh as a daisy after partying the night before

Simon C and Simon E of Scubazoo turned up too

Dan Baldacci of Light & Motion having a wee chat with Tony Wu (Tony Whale photos could be seen on the wall)

Yvonne and Sanah posing with Seacam housings

Hafiz was grinning all day when he was selected to pose with the Scuba girls

Marcel Hagendijk receiving the prize for Scubacam ADEx best macro photo contest

Well that is about all folks. What can I say but to thank you all again for participating in ADEX 2012 and lets do it again next year.

Watch out for Wetpixel’s ADEX report soon….hold on to your mouse button…Here is the link: http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/adex-singapore-2012-report/

Ciao

Dave

Asia’s most significant Dive Expo (ADEX) is almost here, in fact in a few days – 13th to 15th April to be exact. Scubacam will of course be there.

Visit us at Booth 12-14. You will be blown away with the gadgets we have on offer this year. Also take a look at our professional end stuff for 3D videography with hands on display and 47″ 3D HD monitor. If that is not enough we have the Cinema Camera such as the Red Epic and Gates Deep Epic housing also on display. Fully rigged up and yours truly will be demonstrating the future of 4K (+) High Definition videography for topside and underwater.

Scubacam's little gems

On Display are brands such as Gates:

Gates Deep Epic

Light and Motion,

Nauticam,

Patima,

Ikelite,

Aquatica,

Inon,

Fix (Fisheye),

SubSee,

Ultralight,

Seacam (we are right next to Harald’s booth)

Subal (We are a few metres away from Rolf’s booth)

Bersub,

BS Kinetics (We are a few meters away from their booth)

Zen Domes,

Backscatter’s GoPro Hero 2 housings,

XIT 404

and Many More….

All the latest lights

Sea-gadget’s tray, arms and lights bundle…..

That is not all, Scubacam will be exhibiting some works of great talent from friends and customers.

We will try and bring a good selection of new products on display and have some interactivity with customers and friends on all the gadgets on hand. As much as we wanted to we will not be bringing the shop to the booth. So if you want something? No problem. Just pre-order and collect after the show. There is always more time in the shop for better communication and demonstration of your choice products. So come visit us and have a chat……

 PARTY PARTY PARTY PARTY!

Oh one more thing…..all Wetpixel members who could make it to Singapore, friends and customers of Scubacam are invited to come along the Nueva Cuba Bar on FRIDAY the 13th !!!!!! for a drink or two.

Scubacam's weapon of choice....to blow away the competition

See you later….Ciao

Dave

Patima S100 is an aluminium housing with a depth rated of 120m and with full operational control button, it is a great housing to have for your canon S100. More details in our products column!

Welcome to my Blog!

Once again visitors are flocking from afar to see the good people at Scubacam and impart stories of distance travels to far away land and adventure!

Well not exactly as sagacious as that but a lot has happened since my last blog about the Red Epic and this latest update is no less intriguing!

First off is my meeting with John and Karen Ellerbrock of Gates Underwater Products, California , USA. I have not seen them for a while since DEMA 2009 in fact.

However we have been very busy communicating by emails and  particularly with regards to the housing for the much revered Red Epic camera. Since its appearance more than a year ago an awful lot of movies have been shot with this camera and lots more are still in the pipeline and that inlcudes Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. In 3D no less. Here in Singapore ownership of this camera is growing. I am very lucky to be able to use it and learn from the pros who shoot 4k video footage for a living. Just in case you are wondering what 4k is. HD is 1080p  in video resolution and 4K means 4 times that. The Red Epic could shoot up to 5K at 120 frames per second and when drops down to 2K the beast could shoot at 300 fps. Super slowmo at twice the HD resolution. I will show some samples in future blogs about this topic. As the camera shoots RAW a frame grab from 5K is 12 megapixels and at 120 of these frames per second. Imaging 120 slightly different digital still images all in 1 second.

I have been busy since November 2011 with a Gates Deep Epic housing. Mine was the number 4 in the production line. John has sent an earlier prototype for a dive shoot and all that has gone pretty well but there are also lots of questions and feedback regarding the lenses, ports, frame rate and field of view. I am doing some trial shoots with various lenses myself.

Returning back to John and Karen – they where on a dive holiday at Raja Ampat and Ambon. I rendezvous with them at Jakarta for a day so I could have a chat about the housing and other issues over some food and drink. They are looking great as you see from the photos.

 John brought on the trip a coated glass dome which promise to perform even better for some lenses by reducing reflection and better contrast. And not to mention less prone to scratches than Acrylic domes.

During his trip, he took only Nikon mount lenses such as the 12-24mm, 16-85, 60mm Micro and the Tokina 10-17. I was wondering about the 10-17 FE as it was widely praised for close focus and wide angle for digital shooters but only for smaller sensors and not 35mm. As it turns out the Tokina 10-17mm is good for up to 4k resolution, albeit a slight zoom-in is required to eliminate the slight vignette on the video image. The Red Epic uses a super 35 sensor so the image circle has to be large enough and also as a consequence the depth of field at widest aperture is very shallow. Great for land shoot as shallow depth of field provide very pleasing back ground blur. For underwater with critters swimming and camera moving the lack of DOF is a nightmare. Stopping down the aperture will help but that will reduce the amount of light. The Epic has great dynamic range but at hight ISO noise will start to appear. Too wide an aperture blow outs is likely if the lighting level increases suddenly or shooting against bright light. Inside a housing there is no room for a matt  box so no ND filter. These are just some of the issues in using the Epic in a housing. From my short experience using the PL lenses  like the Red 17-50mm T2.9 and Zeiss compact primes the image is good and clear as long as the water is good and clear. Sunlight at shallow water achieves the best results – not surprisingly. The deeper you go the less you could do with the colour temperature and the footage ends up at the blue end of the spectrum. A red filter may help to provide a visual clue on the image quality. White balancing is not essential when shooting RAW fooatge. RAW in 4K also means a lot of the colour correction could be done in post.

I have yet to test some of the wider Canon EF lenses such as the 17-40, 16-35 and 14mm prime. Potentially the 8-15mm FE too. These will be reported as soon as test is done.

In general for UW shoot fisheye lenses will give great image sharpness and close focus and wide field of view. Corner sharpness will depend how well the lens matches the dome port. I have high hopes for the Glass Dome port  and John has tested one in Raja Ampat. He even shoot  60mm macro with it. The result is surprisingly good with just some lost of magnification. So what is next ? The tests and comments on lenses and housing will hopefully be compiled and then a lens and port chart will be drawn so there is a constant matrix of information for those who wish to use it and cut down the time to learn by trial and error. Watch this space.

Well by now you either has fallen asleep or wonder wide eyed what am I talking about. Here is some of my pool shoots of Roger and Simon of  Scubazoo:

The lens used were the Red 17-50mm T2.9 zoom and  Zeiss CP 18mm.

First some equipment indulgent shots….

Ext. ring for the PL mount Red 17-50mm. The Gates gearing system is a stroke of genus as it meshes the three gear rings of the PL lens with ease and  making zoom, aperture and focus totally adjustable.

The Red LCD touch screen monitor….touch screen not very functional when it is house but a joy to use on land.

To control the settings on the Epic in a housing a “redmote” has to be used and I am not particularly enamored by its fiddly user interface and the flaky bluetooth signal. Gates has made a magnetic craddle that snaps onto the back of the housing…very ingenuous.

To the pool and one of the volunteer talents for the test shoot

Roger is posing with the housing.

Simon trying the rig for speed.

And finally here is yours truly… just like a duck to water…..

Till next time.  Ciao!

The first two Lytro light field cameras in Singapore

Just a few days before the Chinese NY festival Scubacam had a surprise visitor by the name of Eric Cheng, DP at Lytro and Founder of Wetpixel.  Eric was on route to PNG/ Eastern Fields dive trip to get on board the MV Golden Dawn to meet up with Craig De Wit (the Captain) and Tony Wu.

Eric with Red (16 GB) & Blue (8GB) Lytros

Well he brought with him a couple of Lytro cameras. These are “light field” cameras which allow you to refocus your picture after you have taken them. Yes you heard right….it could be refocused and on any part of the picture after. I believe this is the first two Lytros  in SE Asia which makes this a historic moment. This camera uses a very sophisticated light capturing technology which is a wee bit long and difficult for me to explain correctly. In essence it captures all the light beams (photons with vector information) from the environment and records that information and then uses computational processing (software) to reconstruct the image on the screen. Huhh? I told you it was complicated. It needs a lot of micro-processor power and memory. Lets just say a few years ago a camera like this would be the size of a small room. Lytro is tiny and has all that built in plus the software to make it work. Since it is processed by software who knows what this technology will lead? A holographic picture one could interact with it in the future maybe – exciting times indeed.

'Beam me up Scotty" Dave getting carried away....

It’s only available at the USA at the moment but I am sure it will be launched to the rest of the world soon. More info on the camera and how it all works could be found here https://www.lytro.com/camera

We at Scubacam will definitely be trying out this amazing camera and possibly with a housing. No more out-of-focus fishy photos.

Sanah’s just realized the Lytro is perfect at parties.

The Lytro camera come in a variety of colours – even colour coordinated with Sanah and Eric’s clothes.

Too Hot To Handle

Apart from the 3 day social visit in Singapore, Eric also brought along his L&M Bluefin housing for his Canon HF G10. I had a custom flip macro and an +8 achromatic dioptre (internal) made for Eric to test with his camcorder setup. These were not available from L&M and I get many request to make them so I thought Eric should test them for good measure. What he  also really wanted was a top hung carry handle for the housing. I had a day to think about it and decided to make one. The difficulty is the two screw mounts on top of the housing and these are blocked by the housing float which sits over them.  So like a trained surgeon I fashioned a handle out of a scrap of aluminum and cut a few holes in the foam. I even managed to add a ball adapter for a small LED light or a GoPro Hero.

Well I was rather please with my handy work and judging fromEric’s reaction he was rather pleased too.

As usual Eric visit is always fun and it was great to catch up with him on stories of his travels and work. More on Wetpixel could be found here http://wetpixel.com/

Ciao

Oh Gong Xi Fay Choy  BTW…..

Patima has released a housing for the Iphones. Yes, IPHONE. Must we say anything more about this AWESOME product? Available in our store around February 2012. Call/Email us for iNTRODUCTORY PROMO OFFER!

Introducing the brand new housing by Fantasea for  Nikon Coolpix P7100. Specially designed for the Coolpix P7100,the housing meets the highest professional standards of function, style and durability. It is depth rated to 60 meters/200 feet, ergonomically designed, fully functional and features easy-to-use, clearly labeled controls.

Hello there !

Happy 2012 to you all.

The new year kicks off with an exciting addition to  Scubacam’s equipment rental family.

We now shoot with the RED EPIC and Gates DEEP EPIC housing plus a few Cine lenses. More detail on “what’s New” later. Now I am itching to go diving and have a play with this baby. Shooting 5K video footage is not without problems. Everything to do with the computer needs upgrading in particular memory storage…..RED just sucks the memory like a hungry gas -guzzler hot rod. Enough of my babbling here are just couple of teasers.

Gates Deep Epic & RED Epic M with PL mount

David & Bert with eyes closed and prayed to RED that it all fits and working

Stay tuned for full test report soon.    Wishing all a great year to come.  See you at the shop. Ciao!