I am an avid scuba diver. All of my vacation travel usually centers around the ability to go diving. I also love to take underwater pictures and video and will use this blog to publish some of my work.
A note about advertising links on this site: I produce this blog because I want to share and communicate my experiences with the world, but the cost of running the site is not zero. I help offset the cost of the site by having advertising on the site which pays me a small payment when you the viewer click on a link. If you see an ad that looks interesting, by all means please click on it from my site to get you the information you might find interesting while helping me pay for the cost of running the site. Also, note, that I host this site on iPage, which I have found to be a great hosting company for my own site, and they provide great support as well as tools to create blogs like mine. There is a link at the bottom of this page that will take you to their sign-up process if you would like to start your own blog or website. If you do click on the link and sign up, they will provide me with a small finders fee as well, so that also helps fund the site. Ok, enough about money… back to diving.
I just got back from some great diving while in the Caribbean from March 17th – March 24th, 2012. I got to do diving in Grenada, Barbados and Dominica. I will be posting many videos and photos from the dives, but wanted to get the first video posted as soon as possible. Just finished editing and putting this together of a dive through Grenada’s Underwater Sculpture Park which felt a little like diving in a sunken city. It was very cool and if you ever get a chance to dive there, I highly recommend it.
Please enjoy this video I put together with the best highlights of video and photo’s from this dive. Note that I had to use my backup Sony TX7 camera due to a mixup with Fedex, so I didn’t have the NEX7 camera that would have shot this with much higher quality. But I did have my new lights, the Light and Motion Sola 1200 and 800 to use with the TX7.
I got the bug for scuba diving several years ago when I tried a “Discovery Dive” in tropical water. A week after I got home from that vacation I found a local dive shop in the Seattle area (Underwater Sports) and signed up to become Open Water certified. That was a fun class, although we started with 8 students in the class and pool, and on the first day of our open water dives, four people (half the class) dropped out. To be fair, the water here is a balmy 48 degrees so some couldn’t handle that condition. On top of that, the wind was blowing pretty hard causing the water to be quite rough and choppy. The four of us that continued braved the cold, wind and chop, and completed the open water certification.
I then did some fun dives, and decided I wanted to become Advanced Open Water certified. I went back to my same instructor and talked with him about doing that, and combined getting my AOW with also learning how to use a Dry Suit, and getting Dry Suit Certified. Trying to do the AOW navigation dive in Puget Sounds dark and murky water really made it critical to learn how to use a compass, since visual cue based navigation was impossible.
I then did a good number of fun dives after this both in Puget Sound and in tropical places like Kona, Hawaii. While in Hawaii, I decided to get myself certified for Enriched Air (Nitrox). That was a fun class, and now when travelling I almost always prefer to dive Nitrox.
While in the Philippines, I decided to get my Underwater Photography certification, which was quite fun, and I got to use my first DSLR underwater, which was quite cool.
Next up for me will be Rescue Diver certification, which I am hoping to take in Feb of 2012, depending on my instructors availability to teach the class. Additionally, I would like to get Underwater Videography certification sometime in 2012. I will only need one additional specialty after these two certifications and I will qualify for the Master Scuba diver certification because I am well over 100 dives now.
After this, I will need to decide if I want to consider going down the Pro path and become a Dive Master.
Anyway, for now, in 2012, my goals are Rescue Diver, Underwater Videography, and then one more cert so I can get my Master Scuba Diver Cert.
What was your path to certification? (or what will it be?)
Updated the photo gallery experience to allow more user control over what pictures to look at. For this gallery, simply click on a picture to see a larger version of it. You can scroll forwards and backwards within any one page of photographs. Use the links under the pictures to go to other pages and see more pictures. Once you click on a picture, you can click on it again to dismiss it.
All of the photo’s in this gallery where shot with my starter camera, the Sony TX 7 camera. Please let me know what you think.
Now that we have started a new year (2012, so hopefully the world isn’t going to end), I plan on making a new years resolution to lose weight (doesn’t everyone) and most importantly dive more. Hopefully diving more will increase weight loss as I have read several reports that suggest an hour of diving burns 500-1000 calories (who knew doing something fun could burn so much fat). With that in mind, my goal for 2012 is to do a lot more local diving here in the Pacific Northwest (and add a bunch of new video and photo images to my blog from local dives) as well as do more dive travel this year as well. I know I will be in the Caribbean in March of this year and plan on getting some diving there, plus I am sure I will make an appearance at least once in Hawaii towards the end of the year. Other than that, I think it would be really cool to attend the Digital Shootout 2012 in Little Cayman this year. That event will get me two big fixes, one is of course diving itself, and the other is access to the latest in underwater photography and videography technology and knowledge.
So, everyone have a GREAT 2012, and lets get diving!!!
Thank you for your continued reading of this blog, it makes diving even more fun because I can share my passion with my readers. Looking forward to a great and dive-ful year.
One of the coolest dives I have ever done (and I have done it twice now) is known as a black water Pelagic dive. Basically you leave after dark on a boat and head directly out into the ocean, a few miles off shore. You want to be in water that is essentially bottomless (obviously it isn’t, but it’s over a mile deep).
50 foot lines are tied to the boat and each diver is attached to a line (given the diver the ability to focus on the dive and not worry about how deep they go – all the cool stuff is usually in the 20′-50′ depth range anyway).
At night, things that live at the bottom of the ocean come up to feed and more often than not what you see looks a lot like the creatures from the movie “The Abyss.” I am convinced that James Cameron must have done a dive like this in order to get the idea for them.
The video at the top of this post is of a cone jelly that I happened to see, if you have good bandwidth, bump up the resolution of the playback to 720HD.
If you ever get a chance to try a black water dive, jump on it, this is one of the most exciting experiences you will have in the water. Imagine, total blackness, not being able to see anything except the creatures you find when they are right up on you, no warning, you just see them. Obviously not for the faint of heart, but more for the adrenaline junkies among you.
On a recent trip to Hawaii (11/27 – 12/10) I was given the chance to play with the brand new Sony NEX 5N camera and an even newer Nauticam housing for it. Obviously this camera is quite a bit more advanced than the Sony Cybershot TX7 I have talked about in my starter camera post.
Since I only had the camera for 1 day prior to my trip, I didn’t really have time to learn all the bells and whistles on this system. The first step I had to do was figure out how to put the housing together and then the camera in the housing. When first looking at the housing it looks rather complex (it was made even more complex for me because I had no documentation). After about 10-15 minutes of reviewing the various parts, I was able to fairly easily figure out how to put the unit together, attach the camera to the unit and try it out.
The camera has many advanced features, of which I only had enough time to scratch the surface but I tested the ability by snapping a few shots in my hotel room, with the lights off, the shades pulled (very low light) and I was shocked at how much I was able to pick up in a photograph. This is not true for the video mode as that definitely needs good light in order to shoot a good video.
After playing above the water with the camera in my hotel room, it came time to get wet with the camera. One of the
A close up of a Titan Scorpion Fish shot with the Sony NEX 5N
cool things I wanted to try with the camera was shooting video in 1080P 60p (60 frames per second). The quality is simply amazing. I am finding however, that in this super high-end mode, Windows Live Movie Maker does not seem to be able to properly import the video.
Both Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier are capable of importing the videos, but both of those programs are far more complex, so one disadvantage of the higher video mode is that the simple, and easy to use video editor (Windows Live Movie Maker in my case) hasn’t been able to process the codec correctly.
As I get the photo’s and videos from this camera edited, I will post them here, but things I noticed right off the bat compared to the TX7 was how quickly and correctly the camera focused for still shots, especially smaller items. With the TX7 trying to focus on small items requires many tries, zooming out and back in, and other tricks to get a shot, while the NEX 5N almost always was able to correctly focus on what I wanted in a very quick succession (10 shots per second quick if I wanted).
One problem I found when shooting video (and a few times for stills) was that autofocus on the camera would sometimes focus in and out of the particulate in the water vs the image I wanted to shoot. The video that shows this clearly happening was when I was swimming with Hammerheads (a VERY cool experience). See how the camera comes in and out of focus of the sharks vs the near floating particulate?
I would have loved to spend more time with this camera learning the in’s and out’s, as well as mastering the best settings for both the camera and the external flash in order to get the most optimal photographs. What I did discover was that for video shooting, the best light was a Light & Motion Sola Video 1200.
In all, this was an amazing camera and housing to use, and I found the quality of my photos and videos increased dramatically while still having the compact size I love about the TX7. No big bulky DSLR and heavy housings to carry around.
One last note that was one of the GREATEST features of this system was that shooting video and shooting a photograph are accomplished with two different buttons on the housing (and camera) such that I was able to switch between video and photography without having to use any menus. If I wanted a picture, I simply pushed the photo button, and if I wanted video, I simply pushed the video button. It was amazing to easily switch back and forth to get both types of images.
The first underwater camera I used (and still the only one I own so far) for scuba diving is the Sony Cybershot DCS-TX7 with the Sony Marine housing.
For basic underwater photography and videography the camera is ok, but sadly the camera was fairly limiting for underwater photography (in terms of getting good color, and configuring it for underwater shots).
This camera, however, shines when it comes to shooting 1080i underwater videos. Most of the video’s on my website so far were shot with this camera.
If you need a relatively inexpensive underwater setup that can double as a great above water point and shoot and video camera then this one is for you.
It is very light weight, easy to travel with, and the underwater housing works great.
In the end however, this is a starter camera setup, so if you are really going to get into underwater photography or videography then this system will only take you so far.
Problems with the camera for underwater use:
In housing mode (to use it in the underwater housing) you can not configure many options, including ISO. This makes it hard to use external flash correctly, causing either too blue or too washed out of photo’s.
The auto-focus had problems with particulate in the water, as many cameras do, but also could not properly focus on a subject in crevices and the like.
Battery life was limiting underwater. The battery could make it through a 1 hour dive no problem, however, it would not endure a second 1 hour dive. You will need at least 1 hot spare battery and a dry place to switch it on your surface interval for each additional dive.
Taking pictures of very small creatures was not effective with this camera. It does a far better job with larger items.
Next up… my use of the Sony NEX 5N camera and Nauticam housing for it…
I know I love to dive, it’s in my blood now. When I have the chance, I want to be in the water all the time, and if I don’t have a camera with me I feel somewhat naked. This is why I created this blog, to share the love of diving and the cool photo’s and video’s that I make with others who might share the passion for the sport. I am still learning, both diving as well as video and photography. If you have comments and feedback on my blogging skills, my diving, places I have been, equipment I use, suggestions for better photography and videography, please share it with me. I welcome all feedback and want to continue to improve. Some of my photo’s are overly “blue” which is a common problem underwater, and I am working both on getting better equipment to help with that (notably lights and camera) as well as improving my skills in post production. I also hope to improve my video post-production quality to produce entertaining and exciting video content that not only shows off the amazing things I have seen, but also adds a sense of wonder and awe with better editing and scoring. I am always looking for help and advice and so if you have some to give, please feel free to share.
Picture taken while diving in Tubbataha, Phillipines
The best dive trip I have taken so far was in March of 2011 with Jack’s Diving Locker (out of Kona, Hawaii) to the Philippines. I flew from Seattle to Kona to meet up with the other folks going on the trip, and then we flew from Kona to Manila. From there, we caught a flight to Dumaguete and then caught a shuttle to the Atlantis Dumaguete dive resort. The resort itself was very nice, and the room had a great ocean front view with a hammock on the deck that allowed for very relaxing rests between dives. We typically had 3-4 boat dives a day as well as unlimited shore diving, and the house reef was great, especially at night. The staff at the resort are very friendly indeed, and my word the amount of good food was simply overwhelming (I thought for sure I would have gained weight, but luck that diving burns calories too so I turned out losing 2 pounds over the course of 2 weeks). In Dumaguete the typical diving is “Muck Diving” which is really cool to find all kinds of smaller critters and such, and I have lots of video and photo’s that I will process and post now that I have a home to publish my content.
After a week in Dumaguete, we said our fond goodbye’s and then flew to Puerto Princessa in order get on the live aboard charter, the Atlantis Azores to start the long journey (10 hours or so) to Tubbataha (located in the Sulu Sea, at the center of the Coral Triangle between Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines). Because Tubbataha (pronounced Tooba-Ta-ha) is a marine preserve and very protected, very few people get to visit this amazing reef. They only let 6 boats a year travel to the reef, and there is no land on which to set foot on while in the reserve. The diving here was amazing as well, and being on a live aboard, all you do is eat, sleep, dive, rinse and repeat. I loved it, and the people on board where very friendly, and again, the food was amazing.
If you are an avid diver, and ever get the chance to head to the Philippines, do yourself a favor and find a way to do it, it will be the most amazing diving you will ever do.
This was a great (hopefully not once in a lifetime) trip. It wasn’t all just diving as my friend Mongo (Michael Hazard) captured in some video. We went to the once a week Dumaguete market and we got the dive resort to include us in their “entertainment”:
Here is a highlight video of our time in the Philippines:
More pictures and video will be added to this post shortly.
Here is a quick taste of what I saw in Dumaguete. This Flamboyant Cuttlefish that was simply amazing to see:
A note about advertising links on this site: I produce this blog because I want to share and communicate my experiences with the world, but the cost of running the site is not zero. I help offset the cost of the site by having advertising on the site which pays me a small payment when you the viewer click on a link. If you see an ad that looks interesting, by all means please click on it from my site to get you the information you might find interesting while helping me pay for the cost of running the site. Also, note, that I host this site on iPage, which I have found to be a great hosting company for my own site, and they provide great support as well as tools to create blogs like mine. There is a link at the bottom of this page that will take you to their sign-up process if you would like to start your own blog or website. If you do click on the link and sign up, they will provide me with a small finders fee as well, so that also helps fund the site. Ok, enough about money… back to diving.
