Tag Archives: diving

Camera Equipment, Diving Blogs, The Digital Shootout 2012

Day 2 of The Digital Shootout (first day diving)

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Still taken on my first day diving in Little Cayman

For this trip, I took with me a Sony NEX 5N with the 18-55mm lens, and a Nauticam housing.   I have used this rig once before, but always in an automatic mode (similar to using a Point and Shoot).   Now, for this trip, my goal was to get better at using the full functionality of the camera and increase my skills as an underwater photographer and videographer.   So, I got a quick lesson in how to use the system in completely manual mode.  I manually set/changed ISO, f Stop, and shutter speed depending on if I was shooting video or photo and depending on the conditions where I was.   I did leave the camera in auto white-balance mode and then fixed up most of the shots/video in post production.  For lighting I was using 2 Light & Motion Sola’s (one 1200 and one 800).  These lights did a good job for video, but created quite a challenge for shooting stills.   Ultimately I will need to upgrade my rig to include 4 lights, 2 strobes and 2 video lights to give me that flexibility to switch between the two mediums at will and not burn down my video lights when I am shooting stills.

In the morning we went on two dives, that were nice (although lets face it, for me any dive is a nice dive so I may be biased).   I shot quite a bit of stills and some video, although nothing super inspiring happened in the water, but it was my first real attempt at going completely manual and having all the control.   It was quite fun, and I learned a lot on these dives.

In the afternoon, we got a seminar on underwater photography techniques, there was quite a bit of good information for me in the talk (and handouts) so that I could improve my skills in this area.

Every night during the week, there was a slide show and video presentation of the stuff shot that day if you wanted to get feedback on what you might do better, what looked good, and in general how to improve the work product.   It also provided a good drinking game for the event staff by playing “buzzword bingo” and drinking on phrases like “tack sharp” or “dialed in”.   I found these slide shows great not only for my own feedback, but the feedback and shots given to others.   This first day is where I really got the idea that I liked macro images of animal eyes, and later in the week got some good shots.

I also learned to make sure that of all the elements in a shot I need to ensure that I had clear focus on certain elements over others to ensure a high quality shot/video such as the eyes, mouth, and fins.  This is much harder than it sounds, especially underwater with moving “models” and current that causes you to move as well.

This video is cut together from work shot on the second day of the trip (first diving day).  Hopefully it will give you an idea of what I experienced in the water this first day… and why I fell in love with Little Cayman almost immediately.


And this video is a slideshow of some of my favorite stills from the second day of the trip.

 

Diving Blogs, The Digital Shootout 2012

Getting to The Digital Shootout 2012

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Flight to and from Little Cayman
This is the plane we flew to get to and from Little Cayman

I knew getting to Little Cayman to attend The Digital Shootout was going to be a challenge, but it was still quite intense.   My first leg of the trip was quite comfortable flying on Delta to get from Seattle (where I live) to Atlanta (where I am originally from).  I decided to spend the night in The ATL in order to see family and have dinner with them, and then caught another Delta flight to Grand Cayman the next morning.   This is where the jet travel stopped and where “pray you don’t die” travel started.   We flew Cayman Airways on a Twin Otter prop plane holding a maximum of 13 passengers.  I sat in “first class” (no not really)  which was basically the seat right behind the cockpit, did I mention there was no wall between me and cockpit, so I was watching the pilots fly the plane the entire way?  It was crazy, but kind of cool.   On the way over we first stopped in Cayman Brac (another island about 35 minutes away from Grand Cayman), and then flew to Little Cayman (about 10 more minutes away).   I will say one thing that is great about flying a small plane like this, baggage claim is very easy, we just took our bags right off as we get out of the plane and that was it.

After we landed in Little Cayman, the Little Cayman Beach Resort came and picked us up and took us to the resort.  Keep in mind that was only about a 5 minute ride as the entire island of Little Cayman is only 10 miles long and 1 mile wide, and has a total of about 160 residents.  The resort itself is quite lovely and the people working at both the hotel part of the resort and the dive shop are just amazing.   One of the best run dive operations I have ever seen.   And the kitchen staff was very accommodating to my crazy “no grain/no starch” paleo-like diet.

After getting checked in, I took my dive gear down to the dive shop to get it ready for the morning dives, got my nitrox tanks analyzed, and then setup my camera gear that I used for the trip (see next post for details on that).

That was it, my 4 flight, 2 day travel to get from Seattle to lovely Little Cayman to start my grand adventure to dive, learn, and compete at The Digital Shootout 2012.

Camera Equipment, Dive Equipment, Diving Blogs

My new lights… it makes all the difference in the world!

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Light and Motion Sola 1200 and 800

Have you ever taken underwater photo’s and videos only to have them look very blue?   This was my problem and for the longest time and I thought it was the cameras I was using, so I kept looking for better camera equipment.  What I have recently discovered is that the best investment you can make in underwater photography and videography gear is not the camera or the housing, but the lights that you use.  There are plenty of lights to pick from, strobes and flashes for photography, and other lights for videography, but for me, what I have found works best are Light and Motion Sola lights that can mount to my camera housing via a tray.   When I need the lights, I turn them on, and then when not using them I turn them off to conserve the battery life.   With this method, I found that I can do 3 full dives and have juice left over after shooting a lot of video and photographs.

 

 

Light and Motion Sola 1200 and 800

These lights provide a very rich color that works great even with my Sony TX7 entry level underwater camera.  I can’t wait to try them out with the Sony NEX7 in a Nauticam housing which I will be doing at the 2012 Digital Shootout in Little Cayman this June.    I highly recommend that if you are serious about underwater photography or videography to pick up some of these Light and Motion lights.

These LED lights can illuminate a wide or narrow beam of light with three different intensities to create many lighting modes as well as extend battery life of the lights under water.   Charging the lights is fairly quick and easy to see what the current state of the battery life is both while charging as well as while using the lights.

General Messages

My current and future Certification path with PADI

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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?)

Make sure you post on the site for others to see.

Thanks,

LouisK

 

Diving Blogs

Diving the real world “Abyss”… doing a Black Water Pelagic dive

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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.

If you decided to try it, I recommend doing this with Jack’s Diving Locker in Kona Hawaii.

Camera Equipment

Trial run with the Sony NEX 5N camera and Nauticam marine housing…

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Hairy Hermit Crab
Hairy Hermit Crab taken with the Sony NEX 5N

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

Titan Scorpion Fish
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.

Camera Equipment

My starter underwater camera…

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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…

 

General Messages

I would love to hear from you….

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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.

Thanks for coming to my blog.

Diving Blogs

My trip to the Philippines

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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:

Dive Equipment

My tropical dive gear…

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When I travel someplace warm, I have my travel gear I take with me.   First, I use the coolest travel bag called a DiveCady Gen 2 (http://www.divecaddy.net/).  This system lets me pack almost all of my dive gear, and easily get through TSA at the airport and on the plane.   I love it.

My regulator is an Atomic B-2 (http://www.atomicaquatics.com/reg_B2.html) which I have really enjoyed using as well.  This is actually my reg I use for warm and cold water diving and I never go anywhere near the water without it.

My tropical BCD is a Scubapro Litehawk (http://www.scubapro.com/en-US/USA/bcs/products/litehawk.aspx) and it really lives up to its name when it comes to small/compact but fully capable BCD’s.

My Dive Computer is a Uwetec Galileo Luna by Scubapro (http://www.scubapro.com/en-US/USA/instruments/computers/products/galileo-luna.aspx).   This is a very capable dive computer and I have really enjoyed using it, however, the screen can sometimes be a bit hard to read in the water.  The nice thing about this computer is the ability to upgrade it to add more capabilities if you need them in the future.

Mask/Fins/Booties/stinger are nothing special, but they do the job for me.  I tend to not be too picky about such things.

Also, you may notice I have not listed any thermal (wetsuit) because I do not wear thermal if the water is above 70 degrees.   I tend to not get cold and the feel of being unencumbered by a wetsuit is a wonderful feeling in the water.   The stinger suit (basically nylon/lycra body suit) protects me from sun exposure and of course, stingers in the water, but that is about it.

I love this equipment and it travels quite well.

If you have any questions about this equipment, let me know, happy to answer any/all questions.