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EPIC DRAGON Goes Underwater With Bob Cranston and Johnny Friday
March 4th, 2014

Bob Cranston and Johnny Friday have made their living diving to the depths of the ocean to capture larger-than-life images. With an impressive resume of IMAX 2D and 3D underwater features, these men have a wealth of large format experience that puts them in an upper echelon of photographers.

Since the original RED EPIC was released, shooting for the big screen has never been easier for the duo. Fifteen person crews have been pared down to two and the size of both the boat and camera rig has gotten significantly smaller.

"That's what RED has allowed us to do is get small", Bob explains. "We've replaced a 1200 lb camera with something that weighs 300 lbs...we've replaced a run time of 3 minutes with a run time for 45 minutes...all of these things will allow us to make a much better IMAX film."

Recently, Bob and Johnny took a dive into Catalina Island's underwater kelp forest—bringing an EPIC DRAGON and their Gates underwater rigs with them.

"There's a few goals that we're trying to accomplish out here", Johnny explains. "One of them at the moment is testing the dynamic range of the new DRAGON camera".

Bob explains how this dive will do just that.

"The kelp forest is a great place to test for dynamic range because it's dark down there and it's really bright [at the surface], so we hope the DRAGON camera will show some good improvements."

The footage is beautiful and can only be truly appreciated on the big screen. But in the meantime, Johnny already can tell the DRAGON is a whole different animal.

"I've clearly seen that this is a new camera underwater. I get a cleaner sensor at 2000 ISO... I'm not seeing where goal posts are blowing out."

Above or below sea level, RED DRAGON is making an impression with its noteable improvements across the board. You can catch some of their footage in the video above or wait until their next breathtaking IMAX endeavor to catch underwater 2D and 3D RED DRAGON footage on the big screen.

In the short clip here, all daytime shots of squid were at about 85-90 feet underwater and all shots in the kelp beds were using available sunlight only. All the topside shots were on a EPIC MYSTERIUM-X with a RED MOTION MOUNT and RED 18-50mm lens. The clips shown were a mixture shot by Bob Cranston, Johnny Friday, Justin Jones, and Sean Ruggeri.