DIY Underwater Tripod

A major problem with underwater video is camera movement. Keeping still enough to prevent your audience getting seasick is not easy and for macro it's impossible.

So here's a basic idea for a tripod. Using my existing 8" strobe arms, clamps and a handle post attached to three Sea and Sea ball adaptors from Mr Leung of ebay again.

Here's a video of the first test in 2m vis and 10c temp. Hurry up summer!



To fit the balls to the handle bolts 2 adapter holes were enlarged to 8mm. Another hole was drilled in the tray to attach the third ball.

Nikon D7000 underwater settings

I have finally put together a page of all my settings with brief explanations.

This is for Nikon D7000, Ikelite, Inon Z220 strobes, macro, wide angle, split levels and video.


Ikelite housing with Inon Z220 strobes, one triggered by wire sync cord and the other slaved via fibre optic cord. Manual Aperture, Shutter speed and flash power.

Initial setup

Movie Settings - Manual Movie settings
ON (for manual video exposure) or OFF (for auto exposure)
Custom Setting Menu
a8 - Live view/movie AF - Autofocus mode - AF-S (AF-F does not work well enough)
f6 - Menus and Playback OFF (Control dials change A and S rather than image displays when image review is still on)
f7 - Release button to use dial (Activates sticky buttons. Tap and release a button, like ISO or WB, and then make changes with the control dial)
White Balance - 5260K for stills. Auto or manual WB for movie

Macro
Lens - Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro Nikkor and flat port
Quality - RAW 14bit plus fine jpeg (Often just use the jpegs)
Aperture - f/22 (For max depth of field)
Shutter speed - 1/125th (Fast enough to avoid camera shake in ambient light areas)
ISO - 100 (Plenty of light available from close strobes so use lowest ISO)
Flash Power - Adjust as needed (Usually around -3.0)
Focus - AF-S with Single or Auto 39 AF points (I often pre-focus on something then hold down the AF lock lever then recompose with the most important feature in focus)
MACRO photo gallery

Wide angle

Lens - Tokina 10-17mm DX fisheye with 6" dome port and cut away shade
Quality - RAW 14bit plus fine jpeg (RAW much more useful for wide angle. Captures smoother tonal gradation in background water and sunballs. Also allows colour cast adjustment without loss of tonal smoothness)
Aperture - f/8 (Depth of field is not a problem, especially with fisheye lenses)
Shutter speed - 1/60th then adjust to balance ambient exposure with flash
(Shooting towards the sun will need faster shutter speed and smaller aperture)
ISO - 200 (Or higher for deep ambient light shots)
Flash Power - Adjust as needed
Focus - AF-S with Auto 39 AF points
WIDE ANGLE photo gallery

Split level

Lens - Tokina 10-17mm fisheye with 8" dome port. (The extreme wide angle of view and larger dome port are essential for sharp split levels. Need to spit on the dome and rub around to reduce drips in the top half. Dip under water then shoot as you lift up out of the water)
Quality - RAW 14bit (Allows exposure adjustments in Photoshop without reducing the image quality too much, especially the underwater half)
Aperture - f/16 (Need the depth of field to keep above and below sharp)
Shutter speed - 1/125th (or faster to freeze water movement and avoid overexposing the brighter above water areas, like clouds)
ISO - 400 (To allow f/16 and faster shutter speed)
Focus - AF-S with Auto 39 AF points. (Pre-focus on the underwater subject then hold the AF lock lever)
SPLIT LEVEL photo gallery

Video - Wide angle
Lens - Tokina 10-17mm fisheye with 6" dome port and cut away shade
Quality - 1080 24fps high quality
Aperture - f/5.6 (Have to exit live view to change aperture)
Shutter speed - 1/50th (or as close to 2 times the frame rate as possible)
ISO - Adjust as needed (This is your main exposure control for video)
Light - Diffused UK Light Cannon HID torch. (Proper lights would be better)
Focus - AF-S with Auto 39 AF points.
(Prefocus for each scene. Continuous AF (AF-F) is too slow and lens focus noise is intrusive)
VIDEO gallery

Video - Macro
Best done on a tripod to avoid camera movement.
Lens - Nikon 60mm f/2.8D AF Micro Nikkor and flat port
Quality - 1080 24fps high quality
Aperture - f/22 for greater depth of field
Shutter speed - 1/50th (or as close to 2 times the frame rate as possible)
ISO - Adjust as needed
Light - Diffused UK Light Cannon HID torch. (Proper lights would be better)
Focus - AF-S with single point. Prefocus carefully for each scene.

3 inch strobe arms

It has recently dawned on me that my strobe arms are way longer than needed, and I have always thought the Ikelite handle posts were too high. It has always been more of a problem getting the strobes in close enough to light close subjects rather than out wide enough.

So with the help of Mr Leung from ebay here is the new strobe arm setup (lower image). Strobe positioning, shooting in tight spaces, carrying, fitting in the wash tub and storage cupboard are all now much easier.

Handle posts are 30mm and anodised red (previously 90mm), arm sections are 3" (previously 8") Apologies for the mixed measurement units.

Here's a shot from the first test dive showing that even with a 10mm fisheye and heaps of muck in the water the strobes could be positioned effectively.

Macro lens mount in use

Next week has arrived and the weather is calm and the water is chilly and clear.

Here's a video of the lens holder being used on a St Leonards Pier photo dive.

Macro lens mount for Ikelite flat port

You can buy a MacroMate for US$599 or you can bodge one together using your own macro lens and plumbing bits.

This creation holds an Inon UCL165mm M67 on an Ikelite macro port. The lens can hinge up out of the way for normal macro.

Bad weather is preventing a field test. Maybe next week.

Nikon D7000 in Ikelite D80 housing revisited

Here's a video showing how the Nikon D7000 fits in an Ike D80 housing.

Shimano Hub Dynamo repair DH-2R35-E

The 2 new black-rimmed front wheels for our Azor Dutch bikes arrived with smashed electrical contacts. Both wheels damaged in exactly the same way.

Rather than go through the hassle and delays of sending them back we decided to repair them. It turned out to be very easy. The new internal assemblies were bought online from bicikli.de in Germany and arrived within 2 weeks.

The info and tech diagrams on the Shimano website gave me the confidence to give it a go.

Here's the video explaining how it's done

GoPro panning time-lapse kitchen timer

GoPro cameras have an excellent built-in time lapse mode.

Ordning kitchen timers ($14.99) from Ikea have a flat top which is perfect for sitting a GoPro camera on.

Put the two together and you have a very cheap and simple panning time-lapse rig.

For a sturdier platform I stuck one of the supplied GoPro sticky clip mounts on the top of the timer and moulded some PVC plastic into a cup shaped tripod mount for the bottom of the timer.

The timer gives me 360º rotation in 60min (obviously) and an alarm to tell me when it's cooked....I mean finished rotating.

These clips were taken at 1 frame every 2 seconds for 15min (pan of 45º) producing 450 frames. The video was encoded using Timelapse Compiler (Donation ware Mac only) at 25fps resulting in 18sec clips

DIY macro lens mount and strobe arm

Just for fun I thought I'd make a macro lens mount for my Lumix LX3 in Coolpix housing rig.

Here's what I came up with to hold the Inon UCL-165 M67 onto the dome port.

The 90x75 PVC pipe connector was close to a perfect fit. I stuck some neoprene tabs in the 90mm end to make it a tight fit over the dome port.

I slipped a ring of PVC in the 75mm end to stop the lens pushing all the way through and bolted on small brackets to hold it in place.

For higher magnification it would be better to use a flat port but this macro lens mount means I can do macro and wide on the same dive. A stronger or stacked macro lens would be better because the closest focus on long zoom only came down to 20cm.

I also wanted to reduce the overall size of the setup so replaced the double Ikelite handles with this simple aluminium tray/arm made from 50mm aluminium flat.

GoPro HD Hero 2

These tiny wearable HD video/still cameras are brilliant and reasonable cheap. Mine was $358  with free delivery from WetRez in Cairns.

It can record 1080 170º video, 11Mpx stills and time-lapse at a selection of frame rates with a fixed focus fisheye lens. It comes supplied with various mounts and a waterproof housing.

As is the GoPro can't focus underwater but a variety of add on lenses and tweaked housing are available for around $120.

Being tiny and light the GoPro can be attached to helmets, wrist and chest straps, kites, RC models...just about anywhere you can imagine.

Here are a couple of my early videos.

The sealed housing seems to fog up in the sun quite easily. Dessicant tissue pads are available to prevent this.

Melbourne Downunder Book

Over the last 18 months I have occasionally been hired by Sheree Marris to shoot for her book Melbourne Downunder.

Its a wonderful square format coffee-table book focusing on marine life in and around Port Phillip. Available for $40ish at Melbourne Downunder.

She also bought quite a few shots from my collection for the project, including this one of schooling mullet at St Leonards.
Also the seadragon and seal shots featured on her websites.

D7000 camera in D80 housing

OK I was wrong about the D7000 not fitting in the D80 housing. It actually does fit. Must have not cleared one of the controls at my first attempt.

Front and rear control dials, +/- EV, On/Off and focus lock work but there is no access to video switch. Some of the buttons to the left of the screen would be useable with a small reshaping of the rubber push button ends.

It's a tight fit with the camera pushing hard against something at the front so I would strongly advise a test in fresh water before jumping into the sea.

Ozone Paddle Steamer split level

Just 50m offshore from the Indented Head caravan park and in 3m, lies the paddle steamer Ozone.

It's a great spot for a snorkel or shallow dive and a great spot for split level photos. Some days the vis is even better than this.

The Ozone was sunk in 1925 as a breakwater for the little beach nearby.

Triggerfish remote strobe sensor

Continuing on with remote strobe testing.

Triggerfish is a wonderful little slave trigger made by Hedwig Dieraert. Here's a review on Wetpixel

To test how sensitive it is underwater I toddled off to St Leonards for a dip.

Vis was maybe 6m and Triggerfish worked perfectly 10m away where I couldn't even see the strobe anymore.

Just need to design some method of positioning the sensor like a spike, clamp or mini tripod.

Gregarious Giant cuttles

Winter in southern Aus is giant cuttle mating season. These normally secretive relatives of squid and octopus become all outgoing and inquisitive.

They will often follow divers around and even occasionally come in for a hand shake, like in this video.

I was shooting stills at the time then quickly switched to video when the cuttle showed interest. With a bit more time i would have done a manual white balance and used -1.0 ev in Aperture priority for better colour and exposure.

Bounce flash underwater

I don't hesitate to use bounced flash when photographing above water but it had never considered it underwater.

On a recent dive on the ex HMAS Canberra frigate, in less than perfect vis, I tried a few shots with the strobe pointing up at the ceiling of the wheelhouse. The results were a great improvement over direct flash which produced bad backscatter.

Top image is direct flash, single strobe.
Lower image is the bounced flash version.

D7000 split levels

One thing I was busting to try was split levels or under/over shots with the D7000. I had big hopes for the low noise and fast AF.

With my D80 noise is quite obvious in the underwater half at 400iso after some exposure increase adjustment.

The AF on the D7000 is brilliant. In these river splits I was blindly locking focus on something underwater and shooting a few shots while lifting the camera up with great results.

During overcast periods I bumped up to 800iso and although noise is visible in the smooth underwater subjects it can only be seen at 100%.

Here's a shot of Pt Lonsdale on a magic calm sunny day, converted to B&W from a Raw file.

D7000 underwater

First underwater test today so naturally the conditions were poor with silty 3m vis at St Leonards.

First issue was fitting the camera into the housing. The right side triangular neck strap ring tends to flip up and sit on top of the camera and won't fit under the AE lock shaft in the housing. It must be flipped down to fit the mounted camera into the housing. It also flipped up during the dive which meant I couldn't pull the camera out of the housing until it was jiggled down. I may cut it off or stick it down somehow.

Underwater impressions.....the bigger 3" screen is excellent and live view is definitely usable but AF slows down and is more fussy. In normal use the AF is much faster and more accurate than the D80, a delight.

Setting PRE or custom white balance is easy and works well. It's not something I have ever used before but it gave nice results for the timelapse photos using my glove palm as a grey card.

The intervalometer will be a feature I use a lot being addicted to timelapse now, apologies to any future dive buddies. Will have to sort out DOF and AF better next time.

Video worked well, but I don't know which AF mode to use yet. I was using AF-S but will try a continuous mode next time.

Maybe tried too much this dive, actually this will be an issue, this camera can do too much. I can see myself looking for still, video and timelapse subjects on all dives in the future.

D7000 Ikelite housing

I marvel at the ability of housing maunufacturers to make all those tiny camera buttons, levers and and control wheels available in the housing.

The D7000 Ikelite housing gives access to everything except the DOF preview button and dioptre adjustment. There's even a button for popping up and adjusting the internal flash, which doesn't make a lot of sense because the flash can't pop up enough to work.

The movie record button/lever has been moved all the way out to the right side of the housing and is easily operated by thumb without letting go of the handle. This makes movie recording smoother than with the camera itself.

There is enough space around the camera, especially on the right side, to fit my leak alarms.

You do need to retract some controls when inserting the mounted camera to make sure it sits in place.
The view through the viewfinder seems to include more of the frame than my D80 housing, but I'll have to check that underwater, hopefully tomorrow.

D7000 hands on

I ordered the camera from Digital Camera Warehouse for a gold coin under $1300, delivered.

When it arrived the first test was to see what worked in my D80 Ikelite housing. Nothing was the answer, couldn't even close the housing with the D7000 inside. The camera body is just too thick, front to back, to fit at all. I was always going to buy a new housing but in the pursuit of knowledge I had to try. I have since ordered an Ikelite housing from Digital Diver for $1672 delivered. It arrives in a few days.

Why Ikelite? Well, I have all the ports, like the see-through acrylic and extra space for tweaking and I can afford them. Other housings like Nauticam, Subal and Aquatica may be smaller and sleeker but they are also thousands more expensive and wouldn't improve my photos.

One drawback with an Ike housing is that you can't pop the camera flash up and use fibre optic flash sync, but there are stirrings in my little grey cells that may overcome this. A future project.

Initial impressions of the camera.

The larger 3" screen is wonderful. The INFO button which fills the review screen with all the camera settings will be nice underwater for ageing eyes. I'm starting to find the top LCD screen difficult to read.

AF during video will be an issue. SLR lenses make lots of noise while autofocusing and that is all perfectly recorded by the mic, so you either have to ditch the audio track or prevent continuous AF for video. AF-S will be the way to go for me. You start and stop recording with the dedicated video button but you can tap the shutter button at any time to refocus.

I'll be leaving the "sticky buttons" or "Release button to use dial" option (f7 in the control menu) permanently on. That means you tap and release a button, like ISO or WB, and then make changes with the control dial. Much easier in a housing than trying to use both hands.

f6 in the control menu is another must for me. That's the "Menus and Playback OFF" setting, which means you can make A and S changes with the dials while image review is still on. With my D80 I was always trying to make quick exposure changes after a shot but would actually be flipping to the next image, very frustrating.

There are 2 user settings available on the mode dial which are used to save sets of commonly required settings. I have set U1 for intervalometer recording where I want the image size small, and U2 for RAW underwater with WB 5260K. Then I can leave the camera on jpeg fine and Auto WB for normal use.

The intervalometer is a blast. You can choose the shooting interval, say 1 shot every 5 sec, and how many shots up to 999. Using Quicktime 7 Pro you can turn the image sequence into a timelapse movie at frame rates ranging from 10sec/frame to 60frames/sec. Here's one of me painting our front fence. 3hrs in 17sec.

A playback frame rate of 25fps would give a 40sec movie from 999 frames.

AF for stills seems very fast and the shutter action seems lightning fast too. I keep expecting the second clunk of the mirror returning but it has already happened.

That's what has exited me so far. I'll chat about image quality and functionality underwater in the next instalment.

Nikon D7000 SLR

I bought myself one of these recently released beauties as soon as the price dropped in Aus. The D7000 comes highly recommended by some serious underwater photographers and I felt it was a worthwhile upgrade from my D80.

Here are some of the features that attracted me.

Full 1080p video with continuous autofocus. Don't know how effective that AF will be, I suspect it will be far from perfect and I'll be using it as single AF rather than continuous.

Live view, looking forward to trying it underwater.

Very fast AF for still shots (not live view), I'm expecting this to be great underwater.

14bit RAW which apparently means much smoother sunburst rendition.

Startlingly low noise at higher ISOs, which will be good for my split levels at 400ISO.

Intervalometer for time-lapse recording. This will be fun underwater and above.

2 SD card slots, for backup or overflow or separating jpegs and RAWs

3" screen and 100% viewfinder, both bigger than the D80.

More on how it all works in real life in the next post.

Sync cord end clip

Here's a little refinement after the initial test dive.

This clip allows the raw end of the sync cord to be fitted and removed underwater. This will allow much easier rolling out of the long cord now that the little hooked clip is not permanently attached.

The clip is stuck to the strobe by double sided tape.

I have also made up a short optical sync cord for use with a slaved on-camera strobe. This means I can just use a single electrical sync cord for the main strobe instead of the annoying double electrical cord.

Remote strobe underwater

So here's my first attempt.

The sync cord worked flawlessly, but it's so awkward dealing with 10m of coiled cable attached to strobe and camera.
It gets hooked and tangled on everything, not as bad as a reel and line but still frustrating.

Conditions were not great with 5m vis green cruddy water and heaps of dive classes in the vicinity.

Fibre optic sync cord from audio cable

Fibre optic sync cords are a great option for underwater strobes but they are expensive and delicate. A 0.5m coiled sync cord costs around A$70. Digital audio cable, which is basically the same thing, costs maybe A$2.00 a meter.

Here's how I adapted a 10m toslink audio cable ($20 on ebay) to work with my Inon strobes. I'm intending to use the long sync cord to setup some remote strobe lighting in sites like wrecks, under ledges and behind pier piles.

First to make the slave strobe end I cut through one of the Toslink plugs leaving a lip which would sit inside an Inon sensor cover.

I carefully shaped the lip diameter and depth to hold the cable in the sensor cover and allow the sensor cover to be screwed over the sensor.

To make sure the cable didn't pull out of the lip I used plumber's PVC pipe glue.

That seemed to work very well but I also used heat shrink tube and cable ties to secure it even more.

The sensor cover can still rotate freely.








Finally to fit the master strobe end of the sync cord.
I cut the plug off leaving a raw end and made a PVC bracket to hold it in front of the master strobe.

The bracket fits around the sensor and the PVC material is thin enough, about 1mm, to allow the sensor cover to screw down securely, holding the bracket in place.






Here's the whole setup, now all I need is some decent vis!

Inon strobe on Gorillapod

Here's how I mounted the strobe onto the tripod.

A piece of aluminium flat was shaped to fit the gorillapod mount with a cutout slot to accommodate the locking lug.

The strobe and gorillapod combination is negatively buoyant but I added a 0.3kg ankle weight for a bit more stability.

Off-camera underwater strobe

I have started mucking around with a remotely triggered strobe underwater.

The aim of this is to create more interesting lighting. Using an off camera strobe to add rim lighting or even back lighting can add depth and drama to an image.

The tricky bit is actually getting the remote flash to fire. Water absorbs light much more than air so the in-built Inon slave sensor is only effective over about 1.5m. Any further back and the main strobe will not trigger the remote strobe, at least in our murky sub-temperate water. 

There are a couple of solutions.

1. Use a really long sync cord, either fibre optic or electrical.

2. Use a more sensitive electronic remote sensor. These are available for Ikelite strobes but not my Inons, although one should be available very soon. 

I have ordered 10m of fibre optic audio cable to try a long sync cord. One end will sit in front of my main strobe and the other will connect to the remote strobe. This means the cable will be visible in the shot of course.

Stay tuned for new developments.

AndrewNewtonPhotographer.com

Just purchased this new domain name with unlimited webspace from JustHost.

AndrewNewtonPhotographer.com

The aim is to showcase some of my better images and maybe promote some sales, who knows.

I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE 2013: I have let this site lapse due to a 300% increase in hosting charges. You're joking JustHost!

Above and Below with Tokina 10-17 FE

Aha! This is the lens to use for split level shots.

I'm now getting consistently better shots using this technique with the wider fisheye lens and 8" dome.

Results are better on a sunny day but this shot was taken under cloud.

Above and below shots

Also called half and half, under over, and split shots.

These are among the most challenging underwater images to capture.

On this snorkel I set out just to shoot under overs and this is the only decent one from 80 or so.

This is what I learned....

Need glassy calm, shallow, clear water

Must have a big dome port (8" Ike)

Use the widest lens you have (Sigma 15mm, but wider would have been better. I actually came home and ordered a Tokina 10-17mm soon after)

f/9 is not enough for sharp above and below, need more like f/16

Shoot manual exposure just making sure not to blow out above water highlights. RAW helps a great deal and the graduated filter in CS5 Camera Raw works wonders.

Focus on the underwater detail and lock focus it for the shot.

To reduce water drops in the image, spit on the dome and rub the saliva around the top half.
Start with the dome fully submerged then take the shot within seconds of lifting it up and framing.

Sigma 17-70 with 6" dome

One issue with this lens is that you need to use the 8" dome port for full zoom range.

I much prefer the smaller 6" domes which allow you to get closer to the subject and to the sand. They are also much more manageable on crowded dive boats.

So I tried it with the 6" dome (for the Nikon 18-55mm) and it works very well BUT you can't zoom longer than 50mm where the lens hits the inside of the dome.