Big Frame Hunting, Or: Dive Vader's Shootout

Dive Vader's Shootout? Well, sort of. Christian, a dive instructor and (despite this) friend of mine finally unearthed some underwater video shootout footage taken in 2013 and which we thought to be lost. Usually, I'm the one behind the camcorder eyes and shooting video. So this surely is a rare incident where I was shot myself.

As I still had my own footage with the same shootout scene from my perspective as well as some more funny footage about a hungry perch that wants to get a fair share of crab but simply can't.
So I made this small video about Big Frame Hunting in the Austrian lake Plansee. Enjoy!

Big Frame Hunting / Dive Vader's (Video) Shootout (view on YouTube)

Green Lake

The Green Lake in Styria, Austria, is a mountain lake renown for its crystal-clear waters. Of course, under water sight thus is great. And when you get a samlet succession in front of your camera, it's such a beautiful sight and you've got a great dive.

The samlet succession (view on YouTube)

This film marks the point of me turning away from the unreliable GoPro cameras. After I lost video footage completely on several occasions the new camera is a Canon HF G30. The Canon works reliably and produces great footage, as you can see here for yourself. Thanks to the fine optics of the HF G30 I could shot from distance, not disturbing the samlets. Additionally, the Canon doesn't have any issues with reliably writing video streams to memory cards, as the GoPro cameras do. This is the way cameras need to be. GonePro.

GonePro Part 2: Krazy Kraken Cannon

In the meantime I could gain some first experience using the Canon VIXIA/LEGRIA HF G30 in open water under real life conditions. So, in this second and follow-up post I'm going to analyze the footage taken with both the HF G30 and GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition. This post follows in the steps of GonePro Part 1: Krazy Kraken Cannon.

GonePro Part 1: Krazy Kraken Cannon

G30 cannon and krazy kraken

In the meantime I've got the Ikelite dive housing delivered fro my video cannon, erm, Canon VIXIA/LEGRIA HF G30. The cannon finally got a krazy kraken as its sidekick.

But how does this new krazy kompany of a cannon and a kraken perform under water in practice? So it's time for some first reports, fresh from a flooded gravel pit...

100 Safe and Comfortable Full Face Mask Dives

What else can be more fun than celebrating my full face mask dive #100 in an exceptional beautiful diving spot, such as the Green Lake in Styria, Austria?

100 safe and comfortable dives with the Dräger PND full face mask.

The Green Lake is a clear, cold mountain lake with mindblowing sight. The water temperature was 6°C, so diving with the Dräger Panorama Nova Dive full face mask was a real pleasure. Over the past two years, the Dräger has proven to be a rock-solid and highest quality full face mask. In combination with the Apeks regs you get a dream team. This ain't a once-in-a-while full face mask. You either dive the Dräger as often as possible, or you don't dive full face masks at all.

I won't like to miss the unique features of the Dräger, such as the damn easy to operate nose clips for pressure equalization, the quick release handles, the easily switchable regs, and its good visual field. This quality comes at its price, but I find this mask to be worth every nickel. The Dräger Panorama Nova Dive makes diving with a full face mask such a great and relaxing experience. No stupid marketing gimmicks and cheap compromises, but instead a safety-first design. The Dräger mask pays back its price in its superior handling and good field of vision without annoying distortions and reflections. That is, units of safety that really count. And which cheap full face masks miss by a wide margin.

On a final note ... as usual, I'm diving here with my double reg set with full double reg redundancy. Ah, there's that «lifestyle» full face mask that yet needs to integrate this level of intrinsic safety, me thinks...

PS: this awesome photo was shot by my buddy Axel Eisele.

Finger Food Specialist

Fresh from the freezers of mountain lake Grüblsees we've got this new specialty. At least we now understand what this «finger food» is really about...
 

Finger Food Specialist

PS: Many thanks go to Jochen Grau for pressing the shutter, Michael Heimbach for playing the model, and Axel Eisele for the camera equipment. A dream team...

Protune Under Water: Contrast Crunch

Some time ago, I published an introductory blog post about Protune. In it, I explained that GoPro uses an S-shaped tonal curve for encoding the image the camera sensor sees into the three primary color channels RGB. The idea here is to extend the range at the far ends at the expense of the intermediate tonal range, in a way that Protune stays within the allowed tonal value range of 8 bits per channel H.264 video data. A good idea, it seems ... but unfortunately not always under water...

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...

Cannoning a Hero Fly on the Wheel

Cannoning the Hero Fly on the Wheel.

After having lost video footage three times on different occasions, in each one of my three GoPro HD Hero 3 Black Edition cams, and each time on a different memory card, I finally contacted what, erm, GoPro boasts as its, cough, «customer service». This «service» is absolutely sure that either (1) I am at fault or (2) my memory cards. With clear signs of having lost any sense of reason at GoPro I took finally their trademark advice seriously and have «go(ne) pro». So I got myself a shiny new FullHD video cannon, so to speak...