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...

Contour ShuttlePRO Linux Woes

Contour's ShuttlePRO v2 multimedia controller surely is a fine piece of hardware which I like very much. However, the device developers at Contour messed up with the USB HID profile for sure. Unfortunately, in Linux this causes shuttle and jog events to get lost from time to time ... so I started to investigate...

Fallen Heroes: SD Card Err

When you are seeing this with
a memory card inserted...

Unfortunately, and based on my own in-field experience, I'm slowly coming to conclusions that GoPro's firmware in the HD Hero 3 is clearly unreliable. And this even as I carefully handle the cam, never running the battery flat, shutting down the cam correctly before swapping memory cards, and so on. In return, GoPro's famous firmware just has bricked the file system on a memory card for the third time. Unfortunately, you can't repair such a disk in cam or with the basic tools that come with all the operating systems – but fortunately, I found a way to salvage my video footage despite this mayhem, so please read on...

Backscatter 3.1: Big Pink Hero Eyes

As a self-confessed herograph («aberrations? This is art!») I nevertheless would like to try something new, not just plain fish eye shots. I would like to get closer to some of my photo motives, but the built-in fish eye limits the minimum distance. In several situations I could get closer, yet the GoPro HD Hero 3 lense was the limitating factor. Thus, I would like to experiment with a macro lens. In addition, I want to test green filters: do they give any benefits in the freshwater lakes I'm often diving in?

Three Heroes ... and mad as a Hatter

I've just returned from a weekend of ice diving ... well, it actually was more the next-to-the-ice diving, to be precise. I had the chance to test my new Backscatter Flip 3.1 equipment consisting of a +10 macro lens and a green water filter. The winterly Lake Plansee was an unforgiving test environment: really green waters and not much light...

GoPro's Protune Hero 3+ Down-Grade: C+ at Best

Apparently, GoPro changed the Protune tonal curves the HD Hero 3+ uses when white balance is switched off from what they previously used for the HD Hero 3. It seems as if they now use separate tonal curves for the red, green, and blue channel, while for the HD Hero 3 the channels all used the same tonal curve. The unpleasant outcome of this is that raw HD Hero 3+ footage gets a massive tint. To this time, no satisfying set of effects and their parameters is know to deal with such footage in Kdenlive or other open video editing and grading tools. All experiments so far were unsatisfactory.

Albeit this tint problem is only seen when white balance is switched off, this is exactly the mode you want to shot in your underwater footage. Thus, GoPro without any real need mucked around with Protune, making it useless. GoPro's Studio software is nothing more than a bad joke: since when is grading done on raw footage before the footage has been cut and arranged? Whatever GoPro is, it needs to go pro as soon as possible, as breaking Protune is ridiculous.

Over here were I live, we have grades that go from «1» (best, «A» in some other countries) down to «6» (worst, «F» grade). It may be a sign that the HD Hero 3+ thus translates to a C+ grade. At best.

Unfortunately, GoPro still don't gives any useful information about how to deal with Protune. They simply point you to their pointless Windows and OS-X software. Seeing this openly customer-hostile I'm not the only one getting HD Hero 3 Black Edition cams while their prices dives, as the 3+ seems to rot in shop shelves.

Kdenlive, Kubuntu, and the Contour ShuttlePRO v2 Jog Dial

Cuts the video, as well as the mustard:
ShuttlePRO v2 by Contour Inc.

While today computer mice are almost ubiquitous input devices at least for the larger personal computers, it is sometimes much better to (additionally) go for a special-purpose input device. Such specialized devices are much more convenient when working, for instance, with video and audio. (Re)Winding forth and back through the footage is easy, while mice are not exactly the best tool, erm, at hand.

Dry Heroes

Proven in practice at 4°C water temperature.

In the past months, for me GoPro's anti fogging strips performed totally miserable. Today, I could put my new method for defogging to a real-world test under water...