Impressions: Cam Eyes

Resurrected from a NSA backup file thought to be lost: a camera high noon shooting in Lake Plansee in Tyrol, Austria.

Impressions: Buoyancy Perversion

(In Lake Blindsee, TI/A)

Okay, this a posed shot ... the idea was in my head for quite some time already while I worked on the various certifake parodies. Lake Blindsee then turned out to be a really good spot for realizing my idea. And Axel Eisel knew immediately what to do when I carefully glided on the trunk. Just this moment a group of beginners came by. Luckily, or in a twisted turn of irony, the beginners were so distracted by their own buoyancy attempts that they did not notice me ... except the instructor.

Impressions: The Catalog Picture

(In Lake Murner See, BY/D)

A snapshot taken by Jörg Lucinski ... which could be straight out of a Dräger catalog for full face masks. This is one of those shots that you cannot pose. At least not with me.

Impressions: Full Face Mask Nirvana

(In Nirvana, that is, in BY/D)

Seeing this Jörg Lucinsky simply had to shoot. I'm not going to say anything more about this picture.

Impressions: Dive Vader

In Lake Steinberger See, BY/D)

Peter von der Sitt appearently had to document my first visit with the Schwandorfer Sporttaucher for the club chronicles. So I stopped and posed when stepping into the filthy floods of Steinberger See to allow the chronicler to document this moment. At this time I just had started diving with a full face mask. Thus, there's the special backup reg for the Dräger PND missing. And my half mask was still clipped to the BCD (...one never knows for sure).

Easy Canon Cam (Re) Configuration

Canon configuration made easy

In the meantime I could gain some first practise in using my new Canon VIXIA HF G30 video camera, both above and below the water line. In particular, I've now recognized that I need to configure the G30 considerably different for underwater shooting, compared to normal shooting on safe ground. For instance, the variable speed zoom is very useful, but not under water. It's easy to overshot when zooming under water, as control is difficult using the dive housing's controls.

Unfortunately, the G30 features exactly a single set of configuration settings. Configuring all the many differing settings manually one after another when preparing the cam for shooting just isn't feasible.

Fortunately, there's a solution for this, albeit it looks slightly odd. In the end, history is calling...

Mobile Video Backup, Episode II

Working mobile backup using the
Hyperdrive Colorspace UDMA2

Slightly more than one year ago I purchased a mobile Wi-Fi hard disk drive in order to backup my raw video footage while on a journey. With respect to the GoPro HD Heros bricking file systems on several occasions this was truly visionary.

Unfortunately, the weak spot of all current wireless hard disk drives is their abysmal low wireless performance. They barely can send or receive a hand full of megabytes per second. While this performance is just enough for some simple low bitrate video, it is far from the throughput that any hald-decent footage demands. In the end, today's typical mass-market Wi-Fi mobile hard disk solutions heavily suck.

So I started researching again and finally found and then ordered a specialized device for backing up my video SD memory cards while on a journey. And without the need to carry around a notebook, yet with satisfying backup performance...