xl visuals - photography and video by Axel Busch

You can download my handout for the Underwater video workshop at Globaldive here:

• Shooting and Editing Underwater Video
 

In February 1986 a bad call by a New Zealand pilot caused the Russian cruise liner MS Mikhail Lermontov to sink in the Marlborough Sounds to a depth of 37m. All of the 743 passengers survived, but sadly one of the 348 crew lost his life.

Because of it's size (176m long), relatively shallow depth (14 to 37m), and sheltered location in Port Gore this is one of the best wreck dives in the Southern Hemisphere. My Auckland friends Dean and Aaron visit the South Island to dive the wreck at least twice a year. So again last weekend, and this time I came with them. My first trip to "the Lermi".

The story

Weather permitting we were aiming for four days of diving. Four days is enough time to make more then just a "this-was-my-dive-and-these-are-my-buddies" video. It's plenty of time to tell a little story. But what story? I talked to my friends about their plans and expectations for the trip, and it turned out that Dean intended to return a sherry glass which he had borrowed from the wreck two years ago.

The topic of taking stuff of wrecks is highly debated within the diving community. Some say that you shouldn't take anything but photographs and leave artifacts behind for other divers to discover. Others say that all fragile artifacts like glass and china will only survive a limited time anyway, and that the story of a wreck reaches a bigger audience if you take a small item and show it around. Others grab as much as they can carry.

Personally I'm also a "take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints" person, but I'm not religious about it and in the light of huge controversy I found Dean's practical approach - borrow it for a while then bring it back - worth telling a story about.


The wreck dive site

Shooting under water

Shooting friends is always a challenge. While they're happy to accomodate you, they tend to do all the interesting things while the camera is not running and you can only ask them so many times to do something again before they run out of patience. It's a fine line of getting the footage you need for your story, and geting on their nerves.
Because my stories are ultimately for their enjoyment - both for viewing as well as during the making - I prefer to be content with less interesting footage and don't get on their nerves. I reserve the nagging for key scenes, and otherwise just shoot a lot with the hope to piece it together in post production. While that approach hasn't made me into a good camera man, it has certainly improved my capabilities as an editor.

Shooting friends underwater is a whole different challenge altogether. Communication is difficult, moving around to set up a shot takes a long time, and there is only so much air in the tanks. And unlike actors your friends didn't come down to pose for the camera, and are far more likely to swim away from it as fast as possible in search of exciting things to see. They can also swim much faster because they don't have to push a big camera housing with video lights through the water. Nor do they have to stop to adjust white balance, focus, beam spread and angle, etc.

Enter the wreck. Beyond the light zone it's hard to think of composition and story line
because you're brain is suddenly completely occupied with thinking about getting out alive and moving as little as possible so you don't stir up silt. Which is a good thing, because silt reduces visibility (bad for video), and not getting out of the wreck is, well, also bad for video. So you don't want to ignore those thoughts too much really and put the casual video shooting on the back burner instead.

It's certainly not the right environment to fiddle with the camera for long periods of time and ignore your environment. You'll bump your head, get entangled, disorientated, or stir up a big cloud of silt. Or all together. Where was that exit again? Ups. Instead it is important to set up everything before you enter the wreck and then only make slight adjustments, one at a time. And it's important to really know your camera and where the apropriate controls on your underwater housing are.


The camera setup


Canon EOS 5D Mark III in underwater configuration.

My underwater photo/video equipment is a Canon EOS 5D Mark III inside an Nauticam underwater housing with twin Ikelite DS161 strobes, a Light & Motion Sola Dive 1200, and a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition with flip on/off red filter from Backscatter and GoPro battery BacPac.

I set up the 5DIII to record at 1080p 30fps ALL-I and for the wreck dive I choose to mount a 16-35mm f/2.8 wide angle zoom lens (to preserve the lines and angles of the wreck) behind a relatively compact 6-inch acrylic dome. The GoPro runs for the whole dive in 1080p 30fps protune video mode both as backup and to catch the scene from a slightly different angle.

Because our intended route through the wreck would include a lot of wriggling through holes and ducking under stairs and banisters I decided to leave the twin Ikelite DS161 strobes behind - they're just too bulky - and only take the small Light & Motion Sola Dive 1200.

My biggest concern was balancing depth-of-field vs. image quality. I wanted to shoot the dive as you would actually experience it when diving, which means one relatively narrow beam. At f/2.8 the depth of field is too shallow for many shots, and at f/5.6 the camera switches to ISO 12800 which results in too much noise in the image. I compromised with f/4.0, which resulted in an ISO range of 320 to 6400. Not acceptable for cinema production, but useable for this kind of movie with the 5D Mark III.

Unfortunately Dean's torch and my video light have different light temperatures, which I would have to address in post.


Diving and filming

To allow for extra time with the camera and my inexperience with the wreck (it was my first dive trip to the Lermontov) we decided to split the whole project over four dives:
Dive 1: Running the lines (no filming)
Dive 2: Entrance via pool, filming from Pool to the Restaurant
Dive 3: Entrance via Bolshoi Lounge, filming from Restaurant to Crew Mess and exit
Dive 4: Recovery of the lines (no filming)

Dean and Aaron were keen to explore more of the wreck during their visit and, understandably, didn't want to loose any dives to preparing for the video. Because of the narrowness of the passages, the risk to stir up silt, and limited air supply on open-circuit we decided that I would simply follow Dean with the camera during his dive and capture what I could. Which means only one take per scene. Challenging.

The Ikelite DS161 only offer an output off 500 Lumens and wide spread, which is ok for macro but not enough to light up rooms. The best thing when you can't get what you want is to fully embrace what you have. In this case it was the Light & Motion Dive 1200 light, which offers a narrow (12 degree) and wide (60 degree) beam at 1200, 600, or 300 Lumens. Not being able to light up the rooms and passages especially on the wide angle lens, I went with the narrow beam most of the time instead. I think it does a good job of showing how it is if one diver with a torch follows another diver with a torch through a wreck as dark and claustrophobic as the Mikhail Lermontov.

The low light levels and f/4.0 for depth of field meant that most shots were filmed with ISO 6400 to 12800 on the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, and I'm blown away how good the image quality still is at these high ISO settings. It's important to note that I choose a custom image style which I configured for little contrast and saturation:

Custom image style "Super Flat":
- Sharpness: 0
- Contrast: -4
- Saturation: -2
- Color tone: 0

This, and other, image styles are discussed in the DSLR Cinematography Guide by Ryan Koo - I highly recommend reading his book. While footage shot with these settings look boring (flat) un-edited, the low contrast and saturation records more details in the blacks and graduations in the highlights and gives more leeway when editing the footage. As the cameras can't shoot RAW this is the best we can do to loose as little information as possible.

Another thing we have to do when not shooting RAW is to set the white balance correctly or loose valuable information (and spend ages on color correction). Whenever I perceived a change in lighting I took a photo and adjusted the white balance.

The third concern is heat & battery life. We want to keep the sensor as cool as possible to avoid thermal noise, and we want the battery to last through the dive. So when I wasn't filming I switched the camera from video-mode to photo-mode to prevent it from heating up or draining the battery.

It is very hard to judge focus or exposure properly under water. When ducking through one passage I must have touched one of the wheels and adjusted the exposure compensation to -2/3. I noticed it a little later, but had already recorded a few minutes of video with these settings that I would have to use later anyway.


Discussing the wreck and route with Dean


Aaron sharing his knowledge of the "Lermi"


Gearing up

Post production

Every evening I reviewed the footage of the day in the Lermontov lodge (while waiting for Brent to cook another great dinner), tagged it, and made a rough cut in Adobe Premiere Pro CS 6.

Back in Auckland I finished editing the movie then generated the in-titles in After Effects, and the floor plans in Photoshop, and integrated them into the movie. When I was happy with the narrative i sat down to write the voice-overs for Dean. Dean came over for an hour to have his voice-over recorded (with an Olympus LS-11 + AKG K-271 headphones) and I mixed that into the video.

Finding a suitable soundtrack on ccmixter.org took about two hours. I was really happy with the melody and arrangement of the song but it was a little too lively and I reduced the speed by 25% and adjusted the volume.

Although I adjusted the color temperature during the dive whenever the light changed, there were subtle differences in hue and brightness which needed to be addressed. I used Premier's Fast Color Corrector tool to color-corrected all clips. Four clips were too dark (where I had recorded with -2/3 exposure compensation by mistake) and I had to brighten them with the Luma curve effect. That left them too noisy for my liking and I applied the Neat Video noise reduction plugin for Premiere. Finally I used the "Bronze Aggressive" look from Magic Bullet Quick Looks on an adjustment layer to give the final cut the look that I wanted. But out-of-the-box this look turned some of the underwater footage too dark, and I adjusted the opacity to 50%.


Screenshot of the Premiere Pro project

And that is it. One day of shooting and 2.5 days of post. Another half day for converting, uploading, and writing this blog entry.

This is a very boring post. Unless you're thinking of buying one of the following wide-angle action cameras and wonder how they perform in low light.

- GoPro HD Hero
- GoPro HD Hero2
- GoPro Hero3 Silver Edition
- GoPro Hero3 Black Edition
- Contour+2
- Sony HDRAS15 Action Cam


The test setup. What would I do without my ironing board.

The scene is illuminated by a dive light, reflected from a white surface behind the camera. The light meter measures 2 lux at the wall that the cameras are pointed at. Not a lot of light, but not uncommon during a deeper dive or in arches and caverns. The setup for all cameras is the same: Battery fully charged, Sandisk 16GB class 10 card in the slot, formatted in camera, latest firmware update. For reference I recorded the same scene with the Canon 5D Mark III with attached EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens.

The extremely boring test videos. I even got a comment on how boring they are, yes!

720p at 60fps


1080p at 30fps



The (not so surprising) results:

GoPro HD Hero
The GoPro HD Hero camera performs very poorly in low light, especially at 60fps. At 1080p it can only shoot in a narrow field-of-view. Not recommended.

GoPro HD Hero2
The GoPro HD Hero2 is a noticeable improvement over the old model. Still very bad at 60fps in low light. Useable at 30fps, especially in protune mode.

GoPro Hero3 Silver Edition
The GoPro Hero3 Silver Edition shows only a very small improvement over the GoPro HD Hero2. Useable at 30fps, especially in protune mode. The camera shows occasional problems with a class 4 sd card. Use of class 6 or 10 card is recommended.

GoPro Hero3 Black Edition
The GoPro Hero3 Black Edition shows a big improvement over the older/cheaper GoPro models. Useable at 60fps and 30fps, especially in protune mode. The camera drains the battery very quickly and the use of a battery BacPac is recommended. The camera shows consistent problems with class 4 and 6 sd card. Use of class 10 card necessary.

Contour+2
The Contour+2 camera performs poorly in low light at 60fps and can only shoot in a narrow field-of-view at 1080p. In addition it showed misfiring pixels when recording at 1080p. Not recommended.

Sony HDRAS15
The Sony HDRAS15's image quality is on par with the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition at 720p and 1080p. Unfortunately the underwater housing has a curved dome, and therefor underwater footage with this camera is out of focus. Another disadvantage is that the settings cannot be changed while the camera is in the waterproof housing. The camera also showed an oddity during the test: When recording with 60fps the footage shows up in the editing software as 30fps but at twice the length (half the speed).


Opinion

I found it interesting too see the difference between shooting at 30fps and 60fps. The slower frame rate makes for much better image quality in low light conditions, even at a higher resolution. Good to know, no more 60fps footage under water unless I use a video light.

I didn't expect that the Sony would perform so well against the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition. Neither did I expect that the Contour+2 would perform so badly. Will shoot more with the Sony on the surface, I quite like the form factor for some applications. The Contour is pretty much for the bin.


Recommendation

GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition is the most versatile camera with the best image quality, though only by the smallest of margins over the Sony. But the GoPro cameras (2&3) are the easiest to handle and setup in the field as you don't have to take them out of the housing. But the GoPro 3 eats through the batteries fast, has issues with slower cards (camera won't start, won't record), and the protune mode fills the cards fast. So you have to get a battery BacPac and a big (min 32GB, better 64GB) class 10 micro SD card as well.

If you're never going to shoot underwater and can't quite afford the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition (plus BacPac) then the Sony HDRAS15 is a very good alternative. The different form factor might also be better suited for some applications, like mounting to the side of the helmet. A GoPro has to go pretty much to the front or the top where you get more wobble.

One of my favorite diving sites in New Zealand are near Maunganui Bay, in the Bay Of Islands. There's so much to see there - big schools of fish, a wreck, caverns, arches, kelp, often Dolphins, sometimes sharks. Last weekend I went out with Northland Dive, two beautiful days of great weather and clear water.

Saturday (Canterbury, Cathedral Cave):


Sunday (Bird Rock, Canterbury, Dolphins:)


Photos are online here.

Just down the road from where I live is the Arch Hill mountain bike trail. A trail in the heart of city - how awesome is that. Pretty awesome. There should be more trails that you can get to without a car, so when Peter and Logan from the Auckland MTB Club organized a relay race at Arch Hill I decided to shoot it for a little video to promote the trail.



All was a little bit spur of the moment, and I just showed up in the morning with five GoPros, a Sony action cam, and my 5D Mark III. I attached the GoPros to various riders with handlebar mounts and chest mounts, and kept one for myself on the end of a monopod. The 5D I just handheld because I expected to run around a lot. The Sony let me down by having issues with the SD card.






I shot everything in 720p at 60fps, and went home with 40GB worth of clips, about 4h of video. I imported everything into a Premiere Pro project, tagged the clips and then cut out the best pieces. Premiere Pro is really nice for working with media in different file formats / resolutions / frame rates, because it let's you mix everything without having to convert anything and doesn't complain. Then I went to ccmixter to find some suitable music, which was a little tedius. After a few hours I settled with the instrumental version of Brace by Alex Beroza which I found had the right energy. Thanks Alex.


I rearranged the song a little to fit the "storyline"

Peter and Logan came over for a review of the final cut and we added the titles together and finished the piece. In total I worked about two days on this video (plus 3 hours shooting).

I processed the circular fisheye shots to have a white background, which works better on this (white) website.

Yesterday I went on a dive at the Poor Knights Islands Marine reserve witih my buddies from globaldive.net, and my Canon EF8-15mm f/4.0L fisheye. The first time that I took that lens underwater.

The 8-15mm fisheye is special. At 8mm it projects a near 180 degree field of view as a circular image. At 15mm the view covers the full frame. And it can focus on objects touching the lens. Underwater the field of view is less then 180 degrees due to the magnification effect of the water/air boundary and dome port. But it's still very impressive.

But the circular image is not for everyone, or every occassion. But looking at my ten favorite photos of the dive I found that two images taken at 8mm made it into the selection. And I like the effect, very immersive.

See for yourself:

Yesterday I dived the HMNZS Canterbury, a 113m/3000ton frigate. Launched in 1970, the Canterbury was decommissioned in 2005 and scuttled as an artificial reef in November 2007 in Deep Water Cove in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.




Dean on his way to the engine room blast hole at 36m


Diver on the bridge


The bridge

Last Friday I finished my first music video as screenwriter, director, animator, and editor:



It was one of those "yes, we should totally make a movie together"-ideas, born when David and I first met at a friend's bbq. But we stayed in touch and eventually made the movie.
The song had been recorded and arranged by David's producer Mickey a few years before already. David freestylin' it in Mickey's kitchen, or so the story goes.

For the movie David, David's friend Laban, and I met at my place, and we bounced a few ideas back an forth. The song is quite serious, but it's also a few years old and David has moved on and can look back relaxed now. So we decided to make something that is fun to watch and a little tongue-in-cheek. With "Greyskull" featuring in the lyrics the jump to MOTU action figures was .. We found the figures on ... ebay of course. Personally I planned to spend not more than 80hrs on it, and that was pretty much what it turned out to be. 86hrs or so in the end I think.

Even on a very small project like this it's easy to get lost in your own ideas. It's mostly basic errors in storytelling and psychology that can completely mess up a product. So you need somebody who reviews your work and gives objective and honest feedback - and knows what they're talking about. For me this person is my wife Liz, a trained psychologist and interaction designer. I'm really lucky to have such a great partner and help close at hand (who's willing to sacrifice her time to look at my sh***). Thanks Liz!

Here's how the time was spent:
5 hours brainstorming (David, Laban, me)
2 hours storyboarding (David, Laban, me)
2 hours location scouting (me)
3 hours shot preparation (me)
3 hours driving to/from location and setup (David, Laban, me)
4 hours shooting video (David, Laban, me)
10 hours shooting animations (me)
3 hours photoshop post-processing (me)
2 hours file handling (me)
40 hours editing (me)
6 hours 'wasted' working around bugs in the editing software (aaaaaargh!)
4 hours reviews and discussions (me, Liz)
2 hours exporting for delivery, quality control (me)

And this is the stuff we used:
Canon 5D Mark III with 24-70mm, 70-200mm
Olympus OM-D EM-5 with 7-14mm
GoPro Hero 2
Olympus LS-11 Recorder
Kaiser StarCluster video lights
Manfrotto Sympla shoulder rigg
Gitzo tripods
Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
Adobe Photoshop CS6

When you want to target different screen sizes, you could scale an embedded graphic. Or you can use the Dynamic-Texture-Atlas-Generator to create the appropriate bitmap textures at runtime from vector graphics. This is a description of the workflow. Assumption is that we start with a png graphic which we want to use in a Flash Builder project that targets multiple screen sizes, like in development for mobile devices.

What you need:
- Flash Builder
- Flash Professional
- PhysicsEditor
- Dynamic-Texture-Atlas-Generator
- My PhysicsEditor exporter for Nape & Starling
- Starling (tested with 1.3)
- Nape (tested with 2.0.3)

Workflow: Create and integrate vector assets with Starling and Nape for multiple screen sizes using DynamicAtlas

0. Decide upon target resolution for your graphics
    E.g. mobile: max is ipad 3 with 2048px wide. Make this your target screen size.
    Btw, no individual texture in Flash can be bigger then 2048x2048 px. You have to use
    tiling for bigger textures.

1. Make a bitmap graphic:
    Open Photoshop (or other) and
    Draw nice graphic
    save as png, e.g. "MyGraphic.png"

2. Convert to vector graphic:
    Open Illustrator
    File -> Place … (select png)
    Object -> Image Trace -> Make
    Preset: Low Fidelity Photo (or suitable)
    File -> Export -> .swf, e.g. MyGraphic.swf

Step 1 and 2 can of course be switched around if you prefer to start with a vector graphic. Or you can draw the graphic in Flash right away (next step) and then export it as png, skipping step 1. and 2. altogether.

3. Create your asset library
    Open Flash Professional
    Create new Flash Document of type "ActionScript 3.0", e.g. MyAssets.fla
    Adjust publish properties
        Check "SWC", Uncheck others
        Target: e.g. Flash Player 10.3
        Script: ActionScript 3
        Target directory: the lib folder in your flash builder project
    Activate Classic Workspace
    Switch to the library tab
    Create new MovieClip symbol, e.g. MyAssets
        -> This will be the name of your asset class in Flash Builder
    Change properties of MyAssets:
        Name: MyAssets
        Type: MovieClip
        Check "Export for Actionscript"
        Check "Export in frame 1"
        Class: MyAssets
        Import previously saved .swf Graphic into project
    Adjust properties of the graphic
        Type: "Movie Clip"
    Double-click on MyAssets
    Drag Graphic into scene
    Switch to properties tab (instead of library)
    replace with a string, e.g. MyGraphic
        -> This is how you will access the graphic within the class in Flash Builder
    adjust the effects properties if necessary/as desired
    File -> publish

4. Create the Nape physics shape
    Open PhysicsEditor
    Import the png Graphic (either from Flash or from Photoshop)
    Trace the outline
    Set the anchor
    Uncheck "Auto-place anchor at centre of mass"
    Export as "Nape v2 (Starling)". Filename "PhysicsData.as". Into src directory

5. Use the assets and physics shapes in Flash Builder
    Import SWC
        Project properties -> ActionScript BuildPath ->    Library Path -> Add SWC ... -> MyAssets.swc
   
    to go fullscreen, e.g. in Startup class:
        stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;
        stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
        stage.stageWidth = stage.fullScreenWidth;
        stage.stageHeight = stage.fullScreenHeight;

    to use DynamicAtlas:
        import com.emibap.textureAtlas.DynamicAtlas;
        import starling.display.MovieClip;
        import starling.textures.TextureAtlas;
        import starling.display.Image;
   
        public const targetFrameRate : Number = 60;
        public const targetScreenWidth : Number = 2048;
        screenScale = stage.stageWidth / targetScreenWidth;
   
        var mc : MyAssets = new MyAssets();
        var atlas : TextureAtlas = DynamicAtlas.fromMovieClipContainer(mc, screenScale, 0 , true, true);
        //var graphic:MovieClip = new MovieClip(atlas.getTextures("MyGraphic"), targetFrameRate);
        var graphic:Image = new Image(atlas.getTextures("MyGraphic")[0]);
   
    to create and place the appropriately scaled body shape:   
       
        import nape.phys.Body;
   
        var body:Body = PhysicsData.createBody("MyGraphic",graphic, screenScale);
        body.space = _space;
        body.position = Vec2.weak(stage.stageHeight/2,stage.stageHeight/2);

    Apply the "screenScale" factor whenever working with pixel measurements in the target
    resolution.
   

I've started looking into Starling (v1.3), Nape (v2.0.3), and PhysicsEditor (1.0.10) today and found that the tutorials/examples on the web don't work with the current versions. Nothing new there, I'm sure in a few weeks (or months at the latest) my changes will be incompatible with the latest library versions. You can't stop progress.

Anyway, since there is so little on the web about Nape and Starling (actually, I think there's only this and this), I thought I'd post my fixes for download. I've created a PhysicsEditor exporter based on the AS3 exporter and updated the example. I've also integrated Nape's debug view into the example's source code, because that's what I used to figure out what was wrong.

Here are the files: nape-starling-physicseditor.zip. And here's the compiled example: Main.swf. You'll need Flash Player 11.4.0 or greater to run it. You can see the Nape debug lines drawn around the objects.



Changes to the example:
- added a loader that creates a Starling object and calls the example class
- the main class extends flash.display.Sprite instead of flash.display.MovieClip
- used the correct events for Starling
- use of starling.display.Image instead of flash.display.Bitmap
- use of starling.events.Event instead of flash.events.Event
- use of Starling.current.nativeOverlay and nate.util.Debug to show debug drawing
- it is necessary to link with starling.swc and nape-release.swc

Changes to the exporter:
- use of starling.display.Image instead of flash.display.Bitmap
- removed unnecessary angle conversion from graphicsPosition() because it made the Images rotate like crazy

Remember, in order to avoid the error "This application is not correctly embedded (wrong wmode value)" you have to make changes to your ActionScript Project in Flash Builder 4.7:

If you target the Flash Player (web), you have to add the line
params.wmode = "direct";
at line 49 in the file "index.template.html".

If you target AIR (Desktop or mobile) you have to add
<renderMode>direct</renderMode>
to the application descriptor XML file.

Many thanks to Luca Deltodesco, Andreas Löw, Daniel Sperl, Holger Weissböck, Devon O. Wolfgang, Dmitriy Yukhanov, and all other contributors, bloggers and forum-heros. You guys make my day, every day.
 
 

How did Darth Vader know what Luke got him for Christmas?

He felt his presents.




Merry Christmas everybody! Hope you get awesome presents and have a great time with family and friends!

The Poor Knights Islands, 15 miles off the north-eastern coast, is one of the best diving spots in New Zealand. Because of the distance to the coast the water is clear, and the millions of years old volcanic history of the islands formed many caves, arches, and chasms. As a nature reserve sea-life is abundant, too. What more can you ask for.


Fraser's Landing, Poor Knights Island

Unfortunately the underwater housing for my 5D Mk III was still in transit from Fiji, so I only had my backup compact available. It is a Sony RX100 in a Nauticam NA-RX100 housing. To make things worse Scubapix forgot to send the fibre optic cable for the YS-D1 strobe, so no external light source. Fortunately the RX100 can shoot RAW and has a maximum aperture of f/1.8, so not really a bad setup.


Sony RX100 + Nauticam NA-RX100

A few highlights below, more photos of Nudi Branches, Scorpion Fish, Moray Eels, Lobsters, Jelly Fish, and lots of Kelp on my smugmug album.


Nudi Branch


Moray Eel


Jelly Fish


Scorpion Fish


Big fish that makes funny bubbles

The photos are ok, but an off-camera strobe would have made a big difference for three reasons:
a) you can take macro shots at higher shutter speeds and lower ISO -> sharper photos and more detail
b) you can illuminate the underside of subjects, for example the face of the diver coming towards me.
c) by limiting the ambient light you can highlight the subject behind a dark background. Much more spectacular.

The on-camera flash doesn't really work here because there is too much sediment in the water, which causes backscatter and over-illumination. So I'm very much looking forward to another visit, hopefully with strobes this time.

The video was shot in parallel with the photos with a GoPRO HERO2, which I glued to the bottom of the Nauticam housing. For the GoPRO I use the Backscatter custom housing with magic red filter to compensate for the loss of red, orange, and yellow under water. I just leave the GoPRO running, and then cut out the bits I don't like later with Premiere Pro (CS6). Editing a short summary movie of 3 to 5 minutes usually takes me about double the time as the footage I have available. In this case I had about 1h 20min of footage, and it took me 2 1/2 hours to edit the movie.


Sony RX100 + GoPRO HERO2



More photos of Nudi Branches, Scorpion Fish, Moray Eels, Lobsters, Jelly Fish, and lots of Kelp on my smugmug album.

 

The water here in the South Pacific is the clearest I've ever come across. Below a few shots from French Polynesia and Niue


Snake alley, Niue


Grey shark. Tahiti


Fakarava


Tetamanu Village, Fakarava


Niue


Light. Tahiti


Self portrait with rebreather, Tahiti

And here are some recent videos:

Diving in Niue:


A humpback whale with calf in Bora Bora:


In the water with dolphins in Niue:


Wrecks in Tahiti:


Diving with the staff at Tetamanu Village, Fakarava:


Rebreather introductory dive, Tahiti:

Surf Photography

Surfing is fun to watch, and when the waves are right you're almost certain to bring some spectacular shots home. Here are some tips to help you make the most out of your day at the beach.


Canon 1D m4, 500mm lens, 1/3200s, f/4.0, ISO 200

Shooting from the beach

Most of the time you will be standing on the beach, and for most beaches the action will happen 50-150m away from you. If you want the surfer to fill a significant part of the frame you're therefor looking at the following focal lengths or zoom factors:
• 400-1200mm on a full-frame sensor (36mm)
• 250-800mm on a cropped sensor (24mm, 1.5x crop factor)
• 200-600mm on a Four Thirds sensor (18mm, 2x crop factor)
• 15-40x zoom on a superzoom compact

That's a lot of lens. Even with a 1.4x extender it's a serious investment in case of a DSLR. If your lenses only have half of the above focal lengths you can still crop the images, but less then that and the image quality suffers considerably. Tip: rent a lens for a day. And at that range you definitely want image stabilization.

Personally I'm shooting with a Canon 1D Mark IV (which has a 1.3x crop factor), and I usually bring a 100-400mm f/4.0-5.6, a 500mm f/4.0, and a 1.4x extender. That gives me an equivalent focal range of 130-910mm and I found that this works very well. Add a second body with the 16-35mm or 24-105mm (or simply a small compact), and all bases are covered.


Canon 1D m4, 500mm lens + 1.4x extender (700mm), 1/1250s, f/11.0, ISO 320


Shooting from a boat

If you have the chance to shoot from a boat - grab it. Not only can your standard sports/portrait lens (70-200mm, 5-10x zoom) do the job as you can be a lot closer, you can also shoot from a variety of angles.


Shooting from the water

Getting into the water yourself is the most difficult way to shoot surf shots, but the photos can be spectacular. Or not at - it all depends on your and the surfer's skill of positioning and movement. So don't forget to take your fins into the water so you can move around efficiently, otherwise you will tire too quickly. A line to attach the camera to your body is also a good idea.

The good news is that your standard zoom lens (e.g. 24-105mm) or regular 5x zoom compact is perfect for the job. The drawback is that you need an underwater housing which costs as much as the camera plus lens, or more.


Camera settings

Shutter-priority mode is the way to go for sports photography. It let's you either freeze the action with a fast shutter speed, or introduce some deliberate motion blur for artistic effect.

In order to eliminate unwanted motion blur a fast shutter speed is required, in this case ideally below 1/1000s. A fast shutter speed requires a large aperture, and here shooting from the beach is at a disadvantage: only the most expensive super-zoom lenses have a large maximum aperture (e.g f/2.8), and beyond 400mm even a f/4 lens costs a fortune. While range extenders (e.g. 1.4x or 2.0x) will allow you to zoom in at an affordable cost, they also reduce the amount of light that hits your sensor. That means that you often onle have a maximum aperture between f/5.6 and f/8 to work with. This is also true for superzoom cameras at their largest zoom setting.

On a bright day a maximum aperture of f/8 means you can only have a maximum shutter speed of 1/500s at ISO 100 to expose the scene properly. On a cloudy day it's only 1/100s. That's not enough to eliminate motion blur, which means you should set your ISO speed somewhere between 200 and 400, depending on the available light.

Another thing to avoid is over- and under-exposure. Think about it: what you're typically looking at is some tanned person on a white surfboard in light blue or white water with a bright sky in the background. In "evaluative" and "center-weighted average" metering modes the camera will therefor expose for the bright water or sky, and underexpose the surfer, unless the surfer takes up a large part of the frame. With "spot" or "partial metering" only a small percentage of the middle of the scene is used to calculate the exposure, and that usually works much better. But you have to keep the metering spot pointed at the surfer.

Instructions for shutter priority mode:
• Mode: shutter priority at around 1/1000s to avoid motion blur. Faster = better.
• ISO: manual ISO of 100 to 400, depending on lighting and maximum aperture
• Metering: spot or partial


Canon 1D m4, 500mm lens + 1.4x extender (700mm), 1/1000s, f/8.0, ISO 250

Unfortunately having the subject dead center doesn't always make for the most interesting composition. And sometimes the subject just moves too fast and you will miss it and instead focus on the white spray next to it - and end up underexposing the subject.

To make my life easier and give myself more creative control I therefor prefer to shoot manual and fix the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO speed in advance. I found the easiest way to do this is to take a spot reading in shutter priority mode on a surfer who just sits in the blue sea waiting for the next wave. Then I switch to manual mode and adjust the settings accordingly.

This is actually quite easy to do and will make sure that your subject is always properly exposed. Just remember to review the RGB histogram of your shots regularly so you don't miss subtle changes in lighting as the day unfolds.

Instructions for manual mode:
• Use shutter priority mode as described above to measure exposure on still subject in water
• switch to manual mode and adjust shutter speed and aperture according to reading
• frequently review RGB histogram for subtle changes in lighting


Don't forget

If you're looking at a full day of shooting, like at a contest, shade quickly becomes the most sought-after thing on the beach. If you're lucky somebody put up a tent for you. Otherwise you have to bring your own parasol, or at least a large hat which hides your face and neck from the sun. And don't forget to cover your arms and legs, too.

Holding those big heavy lenses all day will very quickly become tiring, so bring a tripod. It has to be large enough to support your camera at head-height, even when the tripod sinks into the sand an inch or two. If the tripod is too short you will quickly develop a back-ache.

Another handy thing on the beach is a little PELI case in which to put any extra stuff, for example the 1450. They are rugged, water-proof, sand-proof, and also great to sit on.


tent + tripod = comfort