Catalina 08/04/2007

Date: 8/4/2007

Dive Location: Catalina

Dive Sites: Isthmus Reef, Big Geiger

Viz: 20-30'

Water Temp: 66-68 surface, 63 avg., 61 at 80'

Bottom times: 56/60/46

Joined buddies Rob & Traci C. for a day aboard Sundiver. BCSC was chartering the boat, but I was a paying customer this time, no DM duties! (Lori did a splended job in that department - including keeping the crazy PB'ers away at Isthmus. I don't know what it is about dive flags that just seem to attract speeding boats...)

The crossing was calm and uneventful, until the first blow from a Blue Whale was spotted. That's right, Blue Whale! And not one, but at least six!! Two whales sounded before we could get too close, but a juvenile and mother allowed us to get within 100 yards or so before mom showed us her fluke (which, of course, I missed with my video camera!) and disappeared into the abyss.

Our first dive site was Isthmus Reef. Scuba Cat was anchored off Bird Rock, so we found our anchor in a little closer to the Isthmus Reef marker. Conditions were decent, and the kelp was still super thick. Boat traffic was a little hectic, so we moved on to Geiger for dives 2 and 3. Viz was a bit better but of course the surge was stronger for these shallow dives. Of course, I brought along the HC7 and ended up using the W/A port all day (so not much macro action.) No unusal sightings (except seeing Frisbee with a different horn shark in his hand each time we saw him..) but all in all a great day of diving! Thanks to the Sundiver crew!

Pics and video:

Flash Video (38MB)

Hi-Def 720p Video (160MB)

Nice little clip there BOB.

Not bad from the HC7.

What did you cut that up with..looks like Aspect HD page peel effects.

I'll download the big one and have a look.

Bob

thanks for the clip. In good light, the HC7 does very well.

I do have a couple of suggestions:

For underwater, turn off AF. Use momentary focus or fixed focus, especially in the turbid conditions of Catalina water. All the floaty stuff plays havoc on the AF system and you can see the AF was searching for a few frames.

It's better to add that you didn't seek to jump in the water with the blue whale in a public forum. It is obviously illegal to do so in the US without permits. The Sundiver crew could get in trouble for putting people in the water with whales.

Bob

thanks for the clip. In good light, the HC7 does very well.

I do have a couple of suggestions:

For underwater, turn off AF. Use momentary focus or fixed focus, especially in the turbid conditions of Catalina water. All the floaty stuff plays havoc on the AF system and you can see the AF was searching for a few frames.

It's better to add that you didn't seek to jump in the water with the blue whale in a public forum. It is obviously illegal to do so in the US without permits. The Sundiver crew could get in trouble for putting people in the water with whales.

Thanks Drew! Good point indeed. I definately notice the AF searching at depth (or low viz), and for macro (like the goby pic above) it always seems to want to focus on the background. I'm still trying to get used to using the dial control.

And of course, all blue whale shots were taken from the bow of the Sundiver and no one would be allowed to disturb the whales (in the water or otherwise) while aboard the boat.

Nice little clip there BOB.

Not bad from the HC7.

 

What did you cut that up with..looks like Aspect HD page peel effects.

I'll download the big one and have a look.

Yeah, I think I was using the Aspect HD transitions. I don't usually use too many different transitions, so I was playing around with different ones with this footage to keep fresh in my memory what was available. Please let me know how the big one turned out. I noticed some weird tiling last night when I watched that one, not sure if it was due to my HTPC or the clip. I think ppro 2.0 may have some problems with the wmv encoding. I've always had good results with M$'s encoder, so I may need to switch back.

Bob the big one played fine.

Damsel against the blue water looked wonderful.

Pretty cool that I can download it and watch it on my computers LCD screen and at the same time it gets overlayed to my TV.

@ 3.18 there was a flicker or something.

I found that if you use the HIGH setting for Aspect HD as you suck it in, it will give help in the open blue water shots.

Yes Prem Pro 1.5 & 2 have *&^%$ exporting.

nice stuff Bob. Agree with Wags, exporting on PP2 to different formats is one of its weakpoints...