Wild swimming in northern Denmark

Wanted to film some clips of my brother swimming at the beautiful beach in Lyngså, just below the very northern tip of Denmark.

I packed my Mavic Pro drone as well as my Gopro Hero 4 (my Canon 7d with 50mm lens was in the bag anyway). Kids have just gone to bed, and we had maximum 1 hour before it would be completely dark.

On the short walk down to the beach, I decided that it would actually be fun to make short film about this lovely place. So we were walking for 3 minutes while brainstorming and discussing how my brother should act before the drone was airborne.

This is what we got:

Photoshop Tutorial (in danish)

Sorry to all you english speaking folks, but these Photoshop tutorials that I´ve produced may not be so interesting for you to watch since they are all in danish. But if you understand danish...

...og gerne vil komme igang med basale til mere avancerede teknikker i Photoshop, så kan du her se 22 gratis afsnit i serien "Photoshop kursus for begyndere", som jeg har produceret i samarbejde med Nemprogrammering.dk

Gå til siden her:

http://www.nemprogrammering.dk/Tutorials/photoshop/kursus-gratis.php

 

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 :-)

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.

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

Diving the Similan Islands

A few days have passed since we came back from our home away from home, Thailand. Loads of pics to go through, some of them will soon find their way to the blog.

As I brought my underwater housing all the way, I just had to try it out in open water (for the first time). I booked a 1-day trip to Koh Bon at the Similan Islands, where Mette and I had been diving with a dozen of manta rays in 2008 (same time of the year). So I hoped to capture the scene!

Unfortunately, the mantas have not really been seen at Koh Bon in recent time, and nobody knows why they have disappeared. We jumped into the water and enjoyed the life at the reef - however, we were a bit surprised how crowded this dive place has become. As in OVER CROWDED! Divers everywhere, many of them not paying attention to where they kick their fins. 

It was saddening to see how much the corals have been damaged within a few years - by ignorant divers grabbing onto this and that. Well, what a surprise that the mantas were all gone...

Anyway, as we swam around I had time to play a bit with my camera and shoot this video:

The video was shot with a Canon 7D + Sigma 10-20mm in Hugyfot underwater housing, at 1920x1080p with 30fps at F/4.0-5.6 at 1/60 sek and ISO 320. Post production in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I was so obsessed by shooting video that I totally neglected taking photos. Only a few frames made it to the memory card:

Curious moray eel peeking out from its hide, F/9.0 at 1/50 sek.

School of yellowfin goatfish, F/9.0 at 1/80 sek.

As you saw in the video, the reef was absolutely packed with fry, F/16 at 1/25 sek.

Giant puffer hovering over the reef, F/10 at 1/60 sek.

All together, a great day under the surface even though we did´nt get to see the mantas :-( So I´ll post a few pics from our 2008 trip to the exact same spot...

Manta photos shot with Canon s70 in Canon underwater housing

Splash´n´kajak vol. II

Got a few video clips from the photo session with k-polo.dk

I still have a lot to learn about shooting video with a DSLR, so I hope I get the opportunity to capture the Kayak guys once again!!

The video below is the exact same, but in a higher quality..

The video was shot with a Canon 7D + Sigma 10-20mm in Hugyfot underwater housing, at 1280x720p with 60fps (that could be slowed down to 30fps for slowmo-effect). Most of the video was shut at F/4.0-5.6 at 1/160 sek and ISO1600. Post production was done in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Mid-march morning chill

This sunday was a bright, clear mid-march morning. Getting outside, however, revealed that spring was stil far away. Everything was frozen, and the wind was just ICE cold. 

This morning I set out to try shoot bits of video with my DSLR just north of Copenhagen

Equipment used: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200mm and 60mm macro lens, tripod, shot at 50 fps and slowed down to 24 fps in Premiere Pro  

It may look as if spring is on the doorstep when you see the melting icicles dripping..but it wasn´t spring :-( It was me, who pored water over them to make them look as if they were thawing. 

But we´re wating desperately for the temp to rise above 0 Celcius.

Pizza time lapse

Here´s how you cook a pizza in 36 seconds:
   

The time lapse was made by taking one pictures every 10 second while making the pizza. After taking 950 pictures, all the frames were put together to a short movie, playing 25 pictures pr. second

Equipment used:
Canon 7d on tripod, Tamron 17-50mm lens, 1/50 sek at F/8,0
Hanel Giga T Pro II set to trigger with 10 sek intervals,
Patience...it takes around 950 shots..
Software: Quicktime Pro

Here is how to do it (not the pizza):
1) Set up your camera on a tripod and set it in manual mode (its probably OK in auto if your not used to manual).

2) Get your exposure right exactly the same way as if you´d take a normal picture.

3) Set your trigger to fire with whatever time-intervals you wish (keep in mind that you need 24-30 shots for each second of movie).

4) Go ahead and do your cooking tricks...or whatever your´e doing :)

5) Open Quicktime Pro on your computer. Go to File, Open Image Sequence and locate your files. Select the first photo in your sequence, choose your frames pr second rate (I chose 25) and hit Open. Quicktime will assemble your files into one large movie.

6) You can now export it as a smaller format if you want.