Self-Reliant Photographer

Now this is safety...

How often you don't have a buddy ... a real one ... well, a buddy that actually can properly film and take pictures under water? If the other di(v)e instruction groups can, so can we at iSS! So here is our brand-new specialty: The Self-reliant Photographer.

Now as the old saying goes: a quiet conscience dives in thunder ... even if your «buddy» has not the slightest clue about filming and photographing. Now this is safe!

And if you get yourself that extra large mounting tray for your cameras, you are also good for that TXR card.

Ice Diving in Urisee, Reutte, Austria

After some beautiful ice diving, the GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition jury's in ... and the verdict is very positive. I'm positively impressed by the sensor performance of the Hero3 Black Edition even in difficult lighting situations. Such as diving under a thick layer of snow that cuts off much light. So read on and enjoy watching ice diving!

Ice Diving with Full Face Mask

Urisee (T/A)

Ice diving in Lake Urisee (near Reutte, Austria): snuggly packed we dived under ice ... that was more of a thick layer of snow than proper ice. One week ago, there was rain and later heavy snowing, so we ended up with this less-than-perfect situation.

But it was still a real pleasure, especially with my Dräger Panorama Nova Dive full face mask on the face, keeping the cold waters at bay. And the redundant reg system was also adding to the good feelin'. Of course, there is much more to safety than just the redundant full face mask regs.

Behind the Mask: Bilingual

The main translation work is done so that there's now yet another English blog with personal rumbling about full face masks, drill, and filming underwater with inappropriate camera equipment. You now have the incredible choice between me producing incomprehensible English or terrible German. After all, it was to be expected that this would happen...

Backup Your UW Video Footage On-The-Go

When I'm away for diving and filming there's a lot of raw video footage produced by m GoPro Hero cameras. So far, I had to carry a laptop with me just to pull the material from the SD cards onto a large capacity harddisk for backup. The laptop more or less acted as an oversized HDD cabinet. Not any more: just a tablet and a slightly more mobile HDD...

Update: I've since then upgraded to a dedicated SD memory card backup solution using a Sanho Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA2. The other standard Wi-Fi mobile hard disk drive units can't offer any decent backup throughput, so I didn't really use my mobile HDD unit in the field.

Dive Vader's Mask Defogging Force

Imagine Dive Vader with a fogged visor? Not good at all.

Especially in case of the Dräger Panorama Nova Dive defogging plays a role as this mask does not have a special defogging gas flow. So you need some defogging agent. Of course, you can find many commercial products for fighting the fog. The slight problem: large amount of unknown and undeclared additives and lots of annoying scent. Think about all this concentrating in your longs over the time of a dive, such as one and a half hour. No, thanks.

Ironically, there is much fog when it comes to defogging agents. Luckily, it's really easy to avoid this situation if you know where to look for suitable agents...

Herography

Herography in perfection?

While one and the other diver turns away from his/her GoPro HD Hero or HD Hero 2 in total frustration, I probably need to be counted to those die-hards that stick to the style of (underwater) «Herography» ... much in the sense of Lomography.

Why else on earth should someone accept this discoloring feature of the HD Hero2 that has been sailing under the misnomer of «white balancing» after all? Why buying another Hero model after all the adventures in GoPro firmware regression land? Die hard? Unconvinceable? Is there something interessting with the new «HD Hero 3 Black Edition»? My first glimpse...