Monday 18 May 2015

Diving Stevns Klint

Here are a few impressions from a cold mid-march dive in the Baltic Sea at Stevns Klint in Denmark. This white chalk cliff is a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site. Above the surface you find nature lovers, hobby paleontologists and geologists digging for fossils at the foot of this 40 meter high cliff.

But if you get below the surface you will be left all by your self in this moody yet beautiful landscape.

The water temperature is just above 6 degrees Celcius, which means that most marine life is found on deeper waters at this time of the year. 




The video was shot with a Canon 7d + Sigma 10-20mm wide angle lens in a Hugyfot housing. The footage was color corrected in Adobe After Effects by using these
 22 Underwater Presets

 The next post will most probably contain images from this trip...just need some time to for editing :-)

Thursday 23 April 2015

Diving Køge Bugt


Spring is in the air and the water temperature has risen to impressive 9C! And the water is crystal clear so we just can´t wait to get into the water (jumps of joy)

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I was looking for the tiny winy stuff as I had my 60mm macro lens attached. The bottom was mostly sand/gravel with small goby´s hiding everywhere. It took some time and breath-holding to sneak in on them.




Wherever you find rocks with algae, you find these small shrimp-like mysids (Praunus flexuosus, I guess). Only 1,5 cm long and almost transparent, they make a challenging subject to photograph while they move around.







A slight current carries me slowly over the seabed and suddenly I come accross this beautiful monster hiding in the sand: a Turbot (Psetta maxima).




What a nice way to start your day!


All images were shot with a Canon 7d and 60mm macro lens in a Hugyfot underwater housing and the Inon Z-240 strobe (1/200sek; F/10-16 and ISO 160-320. Strobe power around 1/2 of max output)

Saturday 18 April 2015

Ready.Set.Action!

Finaly, I gave in and got one of these GoPro Hero4 (Black edition) action cameras. Indeed, a nice little toy. It was a rainy day, when I decided to try it out....of course no issue for the GoPro, as it is waterproof.


The GoPro was set to 120 fps (full HD) and afterwards slowed down to 60 fps in Adobe Premiere Pro. The time warp effect (super slow motion) and color grading was created in Adobe After Effects.

Also, a couple of magpies came across the GoPro. Here, the footage was just slowed down from 120 fps to 30 fps and color graded in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Monday 6 April 2015

Fixing the green/blue cast in underwater video

To often I´ve came up to the surface after a dive and my videos shot with ambient light turned out to have that green/blue look as you often see in underwater footage.

Several factors will affect the color of your footage when recording under water. The availability of light is key here. As you go deeper, the colors visible to the human eye will gradually be absorbed in the water column. Red will disappear first (often within 10 meters of depth), then orange and yellow until only green and blue is left. Thus, your footage will tend to have that dull, greenish/blueish look – even if you adjust your white balance in camera while shooting. 

I wanted to bring back the beautiful colors of the corals and reef fish, so I startet browsing the internet for Adobe After Effects filters that could fix this issue. However, I was surprised that I could not find any relevant items for purchase, so I decided to make my own set of presets. Check them out in the video below:




With the growing popularity of Gopro Hero cameras and waterproof iphone housings etc. amongst divers and snorklers, I thought there may be a good market for people looking for something like these. Go ahead and download or read more about it or here: 
22 UnderWater presets for Adobe After Effects





Friday 3 April 2015

Easter diving

Today was a bright, clear day. As the morning sun pulled the water temperature up to 5ºC, my buddy Tue and I dragged ourselves into our black suits. Soon after we were embraced by the green light of the Baltic.


Once again, I looked around the pier at Svanemøllen Beach in search for nudibranches. No luck - nothing but a ton of mussels - which for some reason start growing on me...I think I just like their calm movements and the thought that they keep a good visibility by staying busy filtering the waters of Copenhagen.


Someone´s sleeping beneath the seaweed.


Ouch, I couldn´t resist waking him up...he´s a bit angry so I move on.



All the small stuff (aka fish) are giving me a hard time getting close up with my macro lens..so I stick to the slow ones.


Images were shot with a Canon 7d and 60mm macro lens in a Hugyfot underwater housing and the Inon Z-240 strobe (1/200sek; F/10-11 and ISO 320. Strobe power around 1/2 of max output)


Sunday 22 March 2015

Svanemøllen Strand

A cold winters morning in february, I finally pulled myself together, packed my scuba gear into the car and went out to Svanemøllen Strand in Copenhagen. The water temperature is only 4ºC...pretty darn cold if you ask me... which means time to look for nudibranches. Actually, I´ve never stumbled upon any nudies in Scandinavia before - I was not aware that you´ve gotta look for them during winter time.

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So I set out with my Canon 7d, and for the first time I tried the 60mm macro lens in the Hugyfot underwater housing. Firing a few test shots on the mussels (Mytilus edulis) to adjust the settings and flash from the Inon Z-240 flash, I soon got carried away by the beauty of the nitty-gritty details that are found on the pier just 2m below the surface.


All images were taken with 1/250sek; F/13 and ISO 320. Strobe power varied from around 1/4-1/2 of max output.


Barnacles were my next challenge. They are found everywhere but capturing their filtering movements in a sharp shot was not to easy for me. Luckily I´m a sucker for the autofocus on the 7d, and it didn´t let me down this time either.


I could not believe what I saw through my mask: Just after 10 minutes of diving - still no more than a meter away from the pier, I spottet my beloved nudibranch. Without sounding to nerdy, this was just more than I could ask for.



This little fellow did such a good job posing, while I tried to ignore the flounder and shrimps that tried to get my attention meanwhile.

After 40 minutes it was time to say goodbye and head up for a warm cup of coffe..after checking out this sea snail below...