Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Took some underwater video with my Canon G9 on the manta ray night dive tonight....


Kona manta ray night dive April 08 from Steve on Vimeo.

Tonight we had two mantas show up for the night dive. I took my camera down to see how it does with video in low light - I'm quite pleased, it seems to do better than the other point and shoots I've had.

Water conditions were pretty good today, it's still cool though... 75 degrees. I was hoping the big south swell we had the last week would bump it up a bit higher.

later,

Steve

9 comments:

otilius said...

pretty cool! looks like fun, too...

Anonymous said...

You should be pleased, the camera did a really nice job.
Brought back memories of last year's dive there.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Steve said...

very wierd spam deleted... I was tempted to leave it 'cause whoever posted it made little sense, both times they posted it, but in keeping with policy, it's gone.

Anonymous said...

Steve, I have a G9 with an Ikelite case (my backup for my SLR). I took it out to Shark's Cove last night for some stills, and didn't have a lot of luck with figuring out an appropriate setting for night stills. Have any suggestions for settings to try, or should I consider having a dedicated buddy for target lighting? I am using two substrobes. Sooo frustrating, since it's so wonderful in the light! Namaste, kelly - deepearthphotography

Steve said...

Night stills are tough. I was amazed at how well the video did, but I took a few other shots that evening. The Orange gumdrop nudi in one of the next posts was one of them. I've got a couple of others I haven't posted yet. When I took the shots I used the same settings I do shooting macro in the daytime.... 125th, auto white balance, forced flash, RAW, asa80, etc. I pointed a three LED Princeton Tec right at the subjects and it was still tough to get a good focus. I just use the onboard flash, I don't have a substrobe yet. Night photos are still a challenge for me, I waste a lot of shots but occasionally get one.

Steve

Anonymous said...

Steve,
Did you have a light or were you getting exposure from all the dive lights in the area?
mikepella

Steve said...

The first couple of seconds I had a videographer with a light near me. Notice the even lighting. She swam off (you can see her fin n the video as she's leaving) and after that point it's nothing but my C8 LED light and the other lights around.

The camera seems to pick up low lighting in video quite well.