Hello all - to test the waters, here's a little clip 😀

I’ve been wanting to film clownfish eggs ever since seeing a great vid Nick Hope had posted some years ago.

Well, there’s been a lot of spawning/nesting action over the past few weeks here in east Bali, and these are a few shots of saddleback clownfish (Amphiprion polymnus) egg patches, showing their evolution over time.

Equipment used:

- Panasonic Lumix LX10 (LX9/LX15 in some locales) compact camera  in a NALX10 Nauticam housing, AOI UCL-09 +18.5 diopter, Inon UCL-165M67 +6 diopter and Backscatter Macromate +15 Mini closeup lense (I hope to upgrade this last lens over the coming weeks, for better image quality for supermacro).
- Backscatter MW 4300 video light and two Archon D11V2 video lights
- Homemade quadripod

Shot in Amed, east Bali, in 4K 30fps, CineD profile 

cheers!

ben

Nice video Ben, hopefully you'll see a good improvement with your new macro lens.

Wow amazing clips and nice documentation on the ethology of this species.

I hope Santa will bring you a huuuuge diopter!

19 hours ago, bghazzal said:

I’ve been wanting to film clownfish eggs ever since seeing a great vid Nick Hope had posted some years ago.

The legendary Nick Hope.

He was great. His videos had a high educational value and have an incredible number of views on YouTube. More than Ballesta and Howard Hall combined 🤣

Great M43 user. Always nice and helpful on the forums. Too bad he doesn't dive anymore. I miss him.

8 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

Nice video Ben, hopefully you'll see a good improvement with your new macro lens.

Thanks Chris, and fingers crossed for that. Still sitting on the fence at the moment, but will probably pull said trigger, one way or the other, sometime after Xmas!

3 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Wow amazing clips and nice documentation on the ethology of this species.

I hope Santa will bring you a huuuuge diopter!

The legendary Nick Hope.

He was great. His videos had a high educational value and have an incredible number of views on YouTube. More than Ballesta and Howard Hall combined 🤣

Great M43 user. Always nice and helpful on the forums. Too bad he doesn't dive anymore. I miss him.

Cheers Davide!
Yes, big fan of Nick Hope’s work here as well – we were working in exactly the same area as where his “Reef Life of the Andaman” opus was filmed, but a few years later, and watched it quite often.

Beyond being gorgeous footage of critters of all shapes and sizes, it was a fantastic education ressource to brush-up on local fauna and flora in between trips, and also fascinating because though we were diving almost the same sites - some in the area are closed-off to this day for "regeneration"-  they’d changed quite a lot over the years (those giant seafans at Elephant’s Head Rock, I'd heard about them from old-timers in the area, but actually seeing them, wow…)
b

Edited December 10, 20231 yr by bghazzal

Amazing, something I've never seen before ... and a beautiful composition.

Wishing I had but a fraction of your skill.

Gary

On 12/12/2023 at 12:02 AM, Proteus said:

Amazing, something I've never seen before ... and a beautiful composition.

Wishing I had but a fraction of your skill.

Gary

Thanks a lot Gary!
I'm shooting a lot of macro at the moment, being in a very nice area for this, but getting increasingly fond of juvenile forms, really interesting to observe.
If you watch closely, you'll see the larvae moving in their little egg shells - seeing this, I was thinking that Iwould love to catch the moment when some leave the egg and swim away, but that's not going to happen on open-circuit! 😅

Truly outstanding work @bghazzal !  Fascinating to see the development of the eggs.  Keep them coming!