Some impressions from scuba diving with the Osmo Action 4 in the Red Sea.



My Osmo Action 4 settings: efficiency(HEVC), screen off when recording: never, brightness 100%, front screen off, 4K/60fps, RockSteady, standard (compensation), sharpness -1, noise reduction -1, auto ISO 100-800, -0.3EV (0 would have been better), auto exposure 1/60 - 1/8000, D-Log M, fixed white balance at 5.600K.
After two dives per day with roundabout 30 minutes recording time the battery power was never below 70%, never used the spare battery. For macro I used the INON close up lens, mounting the lens underwater was easy. For my next trip I will buy the AOI UWL-03 Wide Angle lens . With the dome shaped front lens the blurred edges should disappear and the adapter is the same as for the INON close up lens.

Used gear:
Underwater Housing: T-Housing
Adapter for Close Up lens: INON
Close Up lens: INON UCL-G165 (discontinued)
Close Up lens holder:AD Lens Holder for Float Arm
Lamp: SUPE V3K V2 (no website from SUPE company found)
Rig: EVO 25 (used with two handlebars)
Software: DaVinci Resolve Studio

Very kool stuff!

Excellent!

Very impressive footage.    The OA4 performed remarkably.  

DowntownRDB Posted at 9-19 12:25
Very impressive footage.    The OA4 performed remarkably.

I'm actually having problems with the videos I get out of it. OA4 performs flawlessly at shallow depth with a lot of light, but fails miserably when you go deeper to 30m for example. All videos will have artefacts and weird ghosting, even when set to 4k@30fps and DLogM. Default noise reduction setting results in red pixel artefacts in darker areas, noise reduction -2 results in regular artefacts.

Wow, just Wow

R4Dives Posted at 9-27 02:48
I'm actually having problems with the videos I get out of it. OA4 performs flawlessly at shallow depth with a lot of light, but fails miserably when you go deeper to 30m for example. All videos will have artefacts and weird ghosting, even when set to 4k@30fps and DLogM. Default noise reduction setting results in red pixel artefacts in darker areas, noise reduction -2 results in regular artefacts.

Sorry to hear that.  

Very good, I plan to dive with it too.
I am amazed by the fact that corail reef is actually uncolored - white, meaning that they are mostly dead.  Where was it? I dived near Hurghada 12 years ago and corail was colored and rich...
Thanks for material heads up.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

@greg_p: El Quseir, Mövenpick Resort with Extra Divers Dive Center. Most of the scenes were captured at the house reef (El Quadim Bay). Although the water temperature was 30°C end of August/beginning of September, there were very few bleached corals.

@R4Dives: have you looked at this thread? It seems that High ISO and Noise Reduction can be an issue. I only had ghosting when I edited with the Mimo App on my smartphone. It was gone when editing at the computer with Resolve.

Beautiful Imagery. I wish they had this tech 25 yers ago when I used to dive.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 09:55
Beautiful Imagery. I wish they had this tech 25 yers ago when I used to dive.

Thinking exactly the same. I started recreational diving in the 60's and worked diving commercially in the oil fields and other industrial settings in the 70's - I'd love to have some footage from those days (even pictures).

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 10:41
Thinking exactly the same. I started recreational diving in the 60's and worked diving commercially in the oil fields and other industrial settings in the 70's - I'd love to have some footage from those days (even pictures).

At that time it was a small fortune to put an SLR camera in a housing. I wanted to share my experiences underwater but it was just too expensive. At that time diving was expensive enough without the extras.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 11:22
At that time it was a small fortune to put an SLR camera in a housing. I wanted to share my experiences underwater but it was just too expensive. At that time diving was expensive enough without the extras.

Very true - I couldn't afford the SLR, much less the housing, in the 60's. I invested my $ in dive gear, which wasn't cheap.

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 11:29
Very true - I couldn't afford the SLR, much less the housing, in the 60's. I invested my $ in dive gear, which wasn't cheap.

Agreed. I was the same in the early 80s.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 11:51
Agreed. I was the same in the early 80s.

Sure wish I'd kept that double-hose US Diver's Royal Aquamaster regulator - it would be a collector's piece hanging on my wall.

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 12:35
Sure wish I'd kept that double-hose US Diver's Royal Aquamaster regulator - it would be a collector's piece hanging on my wall.

Jaques Custeau was them otivator of the industry then. I got in later and bought all Scuba Pro. I just got rid of the equipment I started with. It lasted me over 100 dives from the late 70s to now. I used to die mostly in NYC. Lots of wrecks here to explore.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 13:09
Jaques Custeau was them otivator of the industry then. I got in later and bought all Scuba Pro. I just got rid of the equipment I started with. It lasted me over 100 dives from the late 70s to now. I used to die mostly in NYC. Lots of wrecks here to explore.

Those were neat days in the 60's. My NAUI instructor in Seattle was the legendary Bill High -

https://scubaguru.com/lxd-025-bi ... nder-safety-expert/

He inspired me to become a commercial diver.

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 13:16
Those were neat days in the 60's. My NAUI instructor in Seattle was the legendary Bill High -

https://scubaguru.com/lxd-025-bill-high-saturation-diver-and-cylinder-safety-expert/

That's cool. They did inspire a healthy fear of sharks though in the television documentaries.

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 13:16
Those were neat days in the 60's. My NAUI instructor in Seattle was the legendary Bill High -

https://scubaguru.com/lxd-025-bill-high-saturation-diver-and-cylinder-safety-expert/

Every time a shark came onto the screen they would play ominous music and make them out to be villains and man killers.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 14:36
Every time a shark came onto the screen they would play ominous music and make them out to be villains and man killers.

lol - yeah, we'd see them but they never bothered us while working. Probably figured that our hats (what we called our helmets) weren't edible.

DaveSp Posted at 9-30 16:32
lol - yeah, we'd see them but they never bothered us while working. Probably figured that our hats (what we called our helmets) weren't edible.

I ran into a few but was never bothered by any.

BetterBizTech Posted at 9-30 09:55
Beautiful Imagery. I wish they had this tech 25 yers ago when I used to dive.

I am diving since 20 years and this time was the first time I had a camera with me (and it is also my first video). Size, weight, cost and quality is very well balanced for me.

Reiner. Posted at 9-30 23:54
I am diving since 20 years and this time was the first time I had a camera with me (and it is also my first video). Size, weight, cost and quality is very well balanced for me.

Keep them coming. They are beatiful images.

R4Dives Posted at 9-27 02:48
I'm actually having problems with the videos I get out of it. OA4 performs flawlessly at shallow depth with a lot of light, but fails miserably when you go deeper to 30m for example. All videos will have artefacts and weird ghosting, even when set to 4k@30fps and DLogM. Default noise reduction setting results in red pixel artefacts in darker areas, noise reduction -2 results in regular artefacts.

Excuse my ignorance as I’m not 100% up on underwater photography but I’m having trouble at depths around 15-30m with what seems to be like an over exposure of the sun rays throughout the water column. ISO 100-800, auto white, 2.7k at 60fps ev -0.3, dlog. Even after some post work seems no where near as clear as GoPro stuff I used to use. Any advice? I thought this camera wld be good for spear fishing with the low light performance but struggling

djiuser_UUcovZ01roMy Posted at 10-1 17:44
Excuse my ignorance as I’m not 100% up on underwater photography but I’m having trouble at depths around 15-30m with what seems to be like an over exposure of the sun rays throughout the water column. ISO 100-800, auto white, 2.7k at 60fps ev -0.3, dlog. Even after some post work seems no where near as clear as GoPro stuff I used to use. Any advice? I thought this camera wld be good for spear fishing with the low light performance but struggling

If it is over exposure of sun rays than try to go down further with the EV. Can you show an example?

Reiner. Posted at 10-2 22:38
If it is over exposure of sun rays than try to go down further with the EV. Can you show an example?

That’s after a bit of post but it’s got that cloudy kind of look compared to what GoPro seem to produce?

R4Dives Posted at 9-27 02:48
I'm actually having problems with the videos I get out of it. OA4 performs flawlessly at shallow depth with a lot of light, but fails miserably when you go deeper to 30m for example. All videos will have artefacts and weird ghosting, even when set to 4k@30fps and DLogM. Default noise reduction setting results in red pixel artefacts in darker areas, noise reduction -2 results in regular artefacts.

the problem you been having is basically the Action 4 noise reduction is having a hard time at high ISO with a lot of noise, to my eye when I first saw it, it felt like the denoising is doing a temporal frame referencing from the current frame with the old frame, so whenever you see the ghost that's the previous frame overlay with the current new frame to improve the sharpness... so yeah reducing it or even just make it -2 is enough then do the noise reduction on post editing is the better way to go.

I don't know if im right about how the camera is doing it but that's what it looks like to my knowledge and I hope some Admins or tech Admins here in the forum will correct what I said

Reiner. Posted at 9-28 08:42
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

@greg_p: El Quseir, Mövenpick Resort with Extra Divers Dive Center. Most of the scenes were captured at the house reef (El Quadim Bay). Although the water temperature was 30°C end of August/beginning of September, there were very few bleached corals.

I always lock in the ISO 100-800 (cloudy) and 100-400 (sunny day), so it shouldn't be the ISO, unless the camera ignores the settings. NR is set to -2

R4Dives Posted at 10-4 05:57
I always lock in the ISO 100-800 (cloudy) and 100-400 (sunny day), so it shouldn't be the ISO, unless the camera ignores the settings. NR is set to -2

Default settings, everything auto, Rocksteady on, DLOG M, 4k60fps, ISO 100-800, 3m deep. pay attention to what happens in the blue:


All processing is off (sharpening -1, NR -2), stabilization is off, DLOG M, exp: auto, WB: auto, 20m deep, 4k30fps, ISO 100-800.
Look at what happens in low contrast areas and at overall quality of the image:

Shooting at 60fps exaggerates the problems and makes the footage which has been shot at depth unusable regardless of the settings by adding nasty red pixelated noise to the image.
Attempting to color grade such footage will simply destroy the image further:


This is what happens when you simply add a DLOG M CST and a little bit of Red to the image in Davinci Resolve:

R4Dives Posted at 10-8 07:32
Default settings, everything auto, Rocksteady on, DLOG M, 4k60fps, ISO 100-800, 3m deep. pay attention to what happens in the blue:
[view_image]

If I compare with my settings, differences are noise reduction -1, auto  exposure with 1/60 - 1/8000 range and fixed white balance at 5.600K. Have you tried with fixed balance?

And in Resolve I don't use an input color space and leave it to Resolve (as long as DJI does not provide the DLOG M information). In Resolve Color Management Color science is set to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed, Automatic off, Color processing mode is HDR DaVinci Wide Gamut intermediate and Output colorspace is set to Rec.709 and Gamma 2.4.

Reiner. Posted at 10-8 22:49
If I compare with my settings, differences are noise reduction -1, auto  exposure with 1/60 - 1/8000 range and fixed white balance at 5.600K. Have you tried with fixed balance?

And in Resolve I don't use an input color space and leave it to Resolve (as long as DJI does not provide the DLOG M information). In Resolve Color Management Color science is set to DaVinci YRGB Color Managed, Automatic off, Color processing mode is HDR DaVinci Wide Gamut intermediate and Output colorspace is set to Rec.709 and Gamma 2.4.

I will give locked WB a try, but I doubt that WB sensor is a culprit (although I hope it is). DJI needs to take a look into this regardless, because something isnt right. I shouldn't need to tamper with settings to get decent results.

CST workflow isn't the reason for red pixels to occur. You will get the same issue without CST.

I just made 3 presets and jumped in the water to test that theory. It appears that Auto WB is indeed a culprit. I see no artefacts at 4k30, 4k60 with locked WB.

R4Dives Posted at 10-9 03:53
I just made 3 presets and jumped in the water to test that theory. It appears that Auto WB is indeed a culprit. I see no artefacts at 4k30, 4k60 with locked WB.

Great, thanks for testing!

Reiner. Posted at 10-9 04:19
Great, thanks for testing!

That means someone at DJI needs to look into it.

Looks very good!

Have you tried similar recording but using the auto white balance? If so did you find you got colour jumps with changing lighting?

Eikyu Posted at 2023-10-3 02:27
the problem you been having is basically the Action 4 noise reduction is having a hard time at high ISO with a lot of noise, to my eye when I first saw it, it felt like the denoising is doing a temporal frame referencing from the current frame with the old frame, so whenever you see the ghost that's the previous frame overlay with the current new frame to improve the sharpness... so yeah reducing it or even just make it -2 is enough then do the noise reduction on post editing is the better way to go.

I don't know if im right about how the camera is doing it but that's what it looks like to my knowledge and I hope some Admins or tech Admins here in the forum will correct what I said

Hi Always state the camera mode and settings, ie log, awb, max iso lens setting  (ie wide) stabilisation on.
Hi iso is always a issue with small sensor cameras, What do you call high? id call high 800+.
the other setting ate very important like sharpness and Noise.  

R4Dives Posted at 2023-10-8 07:50
Shooting at 60fps exaggerates the problems and makes the footage which has been shot at depth unusable regardless of the settings by adding nasty red pixelated noise to the image.
Attempting to color grade such footage will simply destroy the image further:
[view_image]

Hi
I cant see anything on the clips on my PC here, Should the clips be video or screen shots?

andywillett Posted at 2-10 07:39
Hi
I cant see anything on the clips on my PC here, Should the clips be video or screen shots?

You can see it better in this thread, 2nd video, scenes with the whale shark at the beginning.