Fogging-Free Heroes

«Dry Suit» for my HD Heroes.

Lately, my GoPro HD Heroes have been massively plagued by fogging when filming under water. And this after years of fog-free operation – despite (or because) of the anti-fogging strips that GoPro sells.

While I could salvage most of my footage by declaring it to be a work of true art, I yet had to find a working solution. It seems that I was successful in keeping my Heros free of fogging...

IBAN Specialist

For quite some time I asked myself: what really differentiates the Ten-Star-Instructor from the diving plebs and instructor subworkers?

The IBAN expert: gets you high ranks.

Since a few days ago I now understand, thanks to a friend: it is the knowledge. Knowledge about numbers. But not arbitrary numbers, but only these numbers that matter: the IBANs of dive tricking organizations (for those in the U.S.: IBANs are an internationally agreed means of identifying bank accounts across national borders). So it is exactly this card that makes the difference. Only with it, you are a real master.

Oh, sweet irony: the idea for this particular specialty card was born of all places in Schwabach, a German town near Nuremberg, which is especially famous for its gold foils. Go figure...

Impressions: Happurger Baggersee 2014

The first dive for this new year 2014 was in a small quarry pond, Happurger Baggersee. And we could finally find and photograph one of the crabs rumor had for a long time already. Another pleasant experience was to dive into a swarm of small fish and enjoy all the glittering and sparkling of my dive lights getting reflected on the small bodies.

Out dive took 70 minutes, water temperature was 4°C: the perfect environmental conditions for wearing my trusty Dräger full face mask. By the way, it was my 85th dive with this fine mask. Fog-free view, comfortable breathing without biting into a mouth piece, warm head ... what else do you want?

Happurger Baggersee (BY/D), 70 mins at 4°C.

PS: Many thanks to Jörg Lucinski for the photos.

New Year's Eve Pikes 2013

The last beautiful and calm dive in 2013: the New Year's Eve pikes in Lake Murner See. Enjoy the nice impressions from the final dive (61 mins, 6°C)  of the year just bygone.

Murner New Year's Eve Pikes (view on YouTube)

This video shows that next to suitable and willing actors you cannot get away with the following two important indegrients for getting good shots: light and sight.

So when it comes to light: the money I spent on my two video lights Sola 2000F from Light & Motion was spent very well. Appearently these lights are quite an improvement for scene lighting. Even with the overcast sky the pike in their environment show fine colors. You know what? I rarely had so far so much fun grading the underwater raw footage ... because I mainly just had to adjust the contrast, while colors were already almost fine, apart from really small adjustments.