- All right. So today we're gonna be talking
about filming under water.
Easiest way to do it is probably with a GoPro.
You know, you spend a couple hundred bucks,
it's already waterproof
and you end up with a decent image, right.
But how about if you wanna step it up a little bit,
maybe I want to take my A7S under there or my Canon C70.
Now back when I was shooting on the cannon T2i,
I did get an underwater housing for it.
It was made by Polaroid, and it was great
because it was waterproof up to like over a hundred feet.
But what I didn't like about it was that
it took up so much space in a suitcase.
So if I was gonna go travel internationally with it,
I never brought it along.
It was too much weight and just took up so much space.
And also it was very specific to the Canon T2i.
All the buttons didn't work with any of the other cameras.
So as soon as I upgraded my camera body,
that case basically became useless to me.
But lately I've been wanting to get back into it,
especially now that I live closer to the water.
So I've been doing a little bit of research
and came across a brand called Outex.
I reached out and lately
I've been talking to the founder JR,
who's going to give me a crash course on filming underwater.
Now what's cool about Outex
is that it seems like it's a hybrid.
You get a nice, solid glass element up front
and also on the back so you can see your display,
but the rest of it is soft, so it's collapsible.
You can store it in a really small bag.
It barely weighs anything, easy to take in the backpack.
It's also modular.
So no matter what kind of camera you're trying to shoot in,
it'll probably fit.
Now, before I jump on a boat and get eaten by a shark,
we're gonna start off
by taking the crash course at JR's pool.
So let me get changed and let's head on over.
Well, first of all, do you think my uniform's okay?
- I think you look good.
You look prepared. - Yeah?
- I couldn't tell which part was muscle
and which part was air.
- It's all muscle. - Oh yeah.
- You'd mentioned that you're an Olympic swimmer.
- So yeah, I competed in the '92 Olympics.
I competed in the 100 freestyle,
the 100 butterfly and the 200 IM.
- We're gonna have to race before the end of the day.
(water splashes)
(relaxing music)
(water splashes)
- Oh my god.
I can't believe how long they hold their breath for.
Should I just do a whole underwater vlog?
- [Guy] Yes.
(muffled voices)
(relaxing music)
- The most popular ones are probably a hard dive case
and also bag, right?
- On one end of the spectrum,
you have what we would call bags.
They're inexpensive, but they're hard to use.
It's a bit like using oven mitts with your camera.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are hard cases,
but the buttons are dedicated. They tend to be heavy.
No product is Nirvana, right?
Every product has its pros and cons.
So if you're strapping oxygen to your back,
if you're really going scuba diving,
you should definitely get scuba gear.
We just tried to come up with something, like I said,
that gets you very comfortably into the space
without breaking the bank
and make it extremely portable.
So between the covers and the ports,
you can literally pack it, you know,
in the bag that you already own.
You don't need a case for your case,
and you have it at all times.
- So here is my personal A7.
Promise you're not gonna drown this.
- I promise.
- Is it an option to leave an ND filter on here?
- You could in theory, put it on the outside.
You could use it on the inside.
And you could also use a dome
that accommodates the filter inside of the dome
and then the dome on the outside.
So normally what I do is I just turn the camera off,
make sure that the batteries on
that the memory card,
everything that you need for the shoot is ready to go.
And normally what I do is I start this way,
so I get it from the back.
Once you've got the cover on,
you would attach to the lens filter,
and you'll notice that the cover also has a built-in O-ring.
You line it up so that it's nice and even.
You can think of this lip as the male,
and then the washer as a female.
You wanna hold the internal Outex component.
And then with the other hand, you're applying the pressure.
If the seal wasn't properly done, or if, for example,
there was a problem,
you would see bubbles coming out,
and that's your indication that there's a problem.
But as you can see,
it's a pretty resilient material.
It's very elastic and you just kind of bring it around.
- All right. So now it's time for the rear glass.
And I see there's a quarter inch right here.
So that's to keep it in place.
- [JR] That's right. That just goes onto your tripod mount.
And now the process is the same.
So you do a couple turns until it catches.
Take it in the water. It floats by the way.
And if I submerge it, what I'm looking for are air bubbles.
If I had a stream of air bubbles coming from anywhere,
I would know that something is not working.
You have several seconds, if not a minute,
between that and any damage actually happening.
- [Gene] I see. - [JR] Right?
So even if you saw bubbles coming out,
you're like, oh, that doesn't look right.
Let me check it again. - [Gene] Right.
- And then when you do the submersion test,
you can see that there's no air coming out,
and that gives you a very good feeling.
- Okay. So that definitely
gives me a little bit more confidence.
So what's it like modeling under water?
- [Joanna] Well it's kind of like dancing,
you know, you're floating, you're weightless.
You feel very elegant. It's a lot of fun.
- Do you have to have a lot of control
over your buoyancy so that you're not
floating up to the surface or sinking to the bottom?
- That is something that you really have to figure out
because, of course, if your lungs are full,
then you're gonna float.
And if you're a completely empty,
then you're not going to be able to stay
in the water for very long.
So there is a balance where
you kind of wanna like exhale
just enough so that you can float,
but not too much that you're gonna
feel like you're drowning.
- Is it hard to not make a face like?
- To avoid the panic face?
I think it takes practice.
I have been in, like a water baby since I was a kid.
And so for me, it's not that difficult,
but I, you have to be conscious of it, you know.
And, and I think, I don't know, as a kid,
I used to practice like pretending to be a mermaid,
and what that would be like.
- Are there any sort of chemicals or materials
or anything that you have to do to kind of
maintain all the O-rings or anything like that?
- Maintenance is pretty low,
but you can use soap.
So especially if you're on the ocean,
if you're out on boats
with petroleum-based products and all that,
what you wanna do is you wanna hand wash it,
when you're done, with some mild soap and clean tap water,
let it dry, and then keep it in a dry, cool place.
We also sell some lubricant.
It comes free lubricated,
and that could last years depending on use,
but you can always get more
and very small amounts will also go a long way.
- I love the fact that I'm able
to manipulate this camera as much as I am,
'cause I did not dial in any of my settings beforehand.
My camera's giving me issues,
saying "Unable to read memory card, reinsert".
So something must have happened, but oh, look at that.
I can take out the memory card,
and I can put him in through the case.
Now that's convenient.
- We did not plan that. That was not planned.
- (laughs) All right. And it's working now.
How's the audio quality out of this thing.
Hello, this is what it sounds like.
It probably sounds muffled.
This would be a good example of what that dome does,
because you can see the photos that he thinks
is that nice 50, 50, where it looks nice and natural.
You get half over water and half under
opposed to my video clip where you can see
that I'm either over-water or underwater,
and it looks like it zooms way in
every time I go underneath.
The issue I'm having is that
I keep coming right back up to the surface.
Now, do you just sink?
Because you're just nothing but muscle.
- What actually is happening
is when you let your air out, you'll sink.
- Yeah.
- So you have a lot of air,
but I'm comfortable letting all my air out.
And then I sit down.
- Ah, I don't like that feeling
of having no air in my lungs and sitting,
but, let's give it a shot, I guess.
(water splashes)
Alright, so that worked.
That takes a little bit of getting used to,
because you know how you usually you're like,
(sucks in air)
when you go down? You have to go (exhales deeply)
and then you like have no air.
There's like this psychological thing about it
where you almost don't wanna do that.
You wanna have a lot of air when you go in,
but you kinda have to do the opposite.
Okay, so quick disclaimer, this is also how people drown.
So please don't go around dying
and saying "Yeah, Potato Jet told me to do it, all right.
Okay. On with the video.
One thing you could just practice on your own
is just to go to your pool and even without a camera,
you just practice your breathing
to try to stay floating at the level you want.
When I was doing my scuba diving certificate,
there's this course I took,
called the peak performance buoyancy.
And all they teach you to do is exhale to sink
and inhale a little bit to come up.
And they had us hold a rock and just float there,
not hit the ground, but not float up to the surface.
So that's something that you can just practice.
And that's a really valuable skill for this kind of thing.
It's been a long time since I took that class
so I feel like I'm relearning it.
Now, right now we're just working with natural lighting.
So I imagine, you know, if you have a pool,
you have to really think about
what time you're gonna shoot, right.
- Yeah. We could do a whole video on lighting.
There are lots of different options for lighting.
And of course, you know, natural light is great.
You can augment that.
Sometimes I've done water shoots completely in the dark
where all you're using are lights.
So it's like, you can think of it like a studio.
- I'm trying to keep my arms stable under there.
So I don't want to have to use my hands at all.
So I'm gonna try using these fins.
Fins are really awkward if you're not used to them.
I imagine like when we go into the ocean,
we need these fins.
So I might as well practice while we're at the pool.
It's nice because at any point
you just let go the camera and just, you know.
When you're on land, you have to figure out,
oh, where's a safe place to put it, right here.
Until it floats away of course.
- Yes. In an open water environment,
it's nice to have the wrist strap or the neck strap.
You know, like if you're doing standup paddle boarding,
- I'm glad we're doing day one in a pool,
because if we were trying to learn all this
in the ocean with waves and saltwater,
it wasn't going to be as pleasant.
- More steps on the curve.
- Exactly.
- If you're a wedding photographer
and all of a sudden you need to do
a "trash the dress shot".
- Mm-hmm. - You know,
that can help you differentiate yourself and your work.
- I love that. Trash the dress,
that sounds like a cool shoot right there.
- Brides will want a photo-shoot of their dress
because they really don't get to use it again.
So they'll do a shoot where they'll trash it, right?
So they'll either get in the mud or they'll do dirt
or they'll rip it or do something.
And so if you've got a housing like Outex,
you can really differentiate yourself
from all the other wedding photographers out there.
'Cause whether it's on a beach shoot
or in a pool shoot like this,
you can do some pretty cool stuff.
- And on top of that, when you have this thing on there,
you don't have to worry about rain or mud or dirt.
- [JR] Oh, people use it for dirt all the time.
You know, if you're,
even if it's like a baseball shot
and you want the dirt flying over the camera.
We had a shoot with Suzuki
where they literally were in the sand
and the truck drove right by the camera
and you're, you know, covered in mud.
- Now let's say I accidentally scuffed the lens
up against a rock.
Is it an option to just get a replacement front element?
- Absolutely. So all of our parts are interchangeable
and in our online store there's "Shop by Parts"
and we sell all the parts we make individually.
- So good news, we made it through day one
and we didn't drown any of the cameras.
And yes, I did even put my Canon C 70 under there,
but I definitely learned a few things.
Buoyancy is something that we already talked about
and controlling your breathing so that
you sink just the right amount.
But another thing I noticed
that they were really, really good at
is getting to the bottom of the pool really, really fast.
So I was doing this whole thing where I exhale
and try to push myself under water,
but they would do this thing where they hop up,
and then exhale, and then they would just fly
to the bottom of the pool.
So not only were they able to hold their breath
way longer than I could,
but they were able to get into shooting position way faster.
So that's another thing that I need to practice.
Now I'm sure once you get your underwater housing,
you're gonna wanna go straight into the ocean,
but I'm very happy I did that pool day,
just so that I have that comfort with the equipment
and not only just the camera equipment
and the underwater housing,
but also things like fins
is something that you really have to get used to.
And also goggles.
You wanna make sure that you have a set of goggles
that fit really nicely.
If you have a leak in your goggles
and you're in saltwater that could ruin your day
and it's gonna have a really bad impact
on being able to see what your camera is doing.
And since the Outex has that nice big window in the back,
I had a lot of confidence that the shots were in focus
and they were gonna look good.
So it was a very pleasant experience.
And now I think I'm ready to go out there
for part two of this video.
We are also funding another project
for the Potato Farm project
because we have Musicbeds sponsoring this episode.
What is Musicbed?
Well, if you like any of the music you hear in this video,
it's all thanks to their library.
I'll throw a link down there in the description
so you could go listen to them.
They have really high quality music
that you can license for your own videos.
And that just makes the editing process
that much more fun and creative.
Right Dylan, do you wanna tell us about the concept
we are funding on this project.
This is for Roman Marchuk of Miami, Florida
Roman writes "I went to Costa Rica for 18 days
and was shooting a wildlife documentary.
Filming in rough conditions on Canon R5,
putting that camera through hell, so as the drone.
Literally had to backup every night,
512 gigabytes of footage.
I have a YouTube channel and have a lot of short films,
but it's always been my dream
to make an actual full length film.
I picked up all my gear, including 150-600,
took my girlfriend for BTS and we shot nonstop. Literally.
We got so much incredible footage, I am still hyped.
Pretty much, the plan was to go to every part of Costa Rica
and try to find wildlife that is native to that part
and create short stories about this or that animal we saw
and then connect it all to a full 90 minute film
of our journey, seeing what we saw and telling stories.
- All right, Roman,
we'll be reaching out to you to send funding your way.
Congratulations. Excited to see his finished project.
Anyways, Dylan, do you know that
I raced an Olympic swimmer in the pool?
- Yeah? - You wanna see the footage?
- Let's do it. You win?
- Mm sure.
Is it time for me to put you to shame with the race?
- Oh, okay.
(laughs)
I was hoping you'd forgotten about it.
- To the diving board and back.
I'm legit gonna try my hardest.
- [Sam] On your Marks, Set, Go.
(intense music)
- You got this Gene.
You don't, you don't got this, I'm sorry,
you don't got this at all.
Not even close.
- Is that a win? (sputters)
- We'll fix that in post. - How'd I do?
I was like, okay, if I'm going, I'm good.
I see you going ahead and then all of a sudden,
like you kick off the wall
and then you're like (whooshing noise).
I'm like, what the heck?
Holy cow.
- I've had some practice at this.
- I may have to answer some questions from the audience.
Okay. But let me catch my breath first.
- Question number one. How to do it affordably.
Get a closeup of me thinking.
If only there was a way.
- I know. Ziploc bags.
- Sam says, can I get the day off tomorrow?
- Well, I thought we were gonna edit this video tomorrow.
- To be honest, I thought you were gonna be editing this.
- Best way to set up white balance.
- I noticed that the underwater modes,
they add more of a magenta tint.
- I'll go off of skin tone.
So I'll use some post editing
and I'll focus on the skin tone to look right
and then I'll work my way around that.
- Does water pressure affect the equipment?
Scuba gear, for example,
is designed to protect the camera
and it's designed to withstand pressure.
Outex is not. The housing in essence doesn't care.
So it's rated for 10 meters or about 33 feet,
but we've had people go twice that
because the housing itself is flexible
and below a certain depth
that water pressure will start pressing the camera buttons.
So eventually the camera just won't respond
or it'll start acting crazy.
And that's how you know you've gone too deep.
- Definitely. That's something I noticed with the GoPros.
I'm not sure about the nine, but I know for sure,
the five and the six,
I would take it diving and right around 30 feet,
I couldn't control the camera.
And I thought, oh crap, is it broken?
But then later I went down a couple more times,
you realize all the buttons are being pressed in.
So that's why it's not responding to anything.
- And one of my favorite things about shooting in the water
is the three dimensionality of it.
On land you're limited by gravity.
And, you know, you can only do so much.
But under water in a way you are the drone.
You can be above the subject.
You can be below the subject.
You can circumnavigate the subject.
- It is very cool, because when I first started shooting,
I kept thinking, okay, let me just be on the side.
And then at a point you had her swimming over us.
And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot you can do that now.
Well, we'll have to do a part two
'cause I definitely want to go into the ocean.
I wanna know what it's like
to do different types of shooting.
Now the wood chipper has started,
so that pretty much wraps up our shoot for the day.
Let's go ahead and cut to the close.
(upbeat music)