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Cayman Islands Film Festival details announced
Details of the lineup, and a trailer, for the 2012 Cayman Islands International Underwater Film Festival have been announced. The event is to be held on Thursday 8 November at the Westin Casuarina Resort & Spa on Grand Cayman. Featured filmmakers include Frans DeBacker, Leslie Leaney, Howard & Michele Hall, Michael Maes and Dr. Guy Harvey.
Tickets for the event are available to purchase from the Cayman Islands Tourism Association website.
Inon releases product compatibility updates
Inon has released product compatibility information for the use of its products with Olympus compact cameras. This relates to the TG-01, TG820 and TG810 in their respective Olympus branded housings. All three can trigger Inon’s strobes via S-TTL, and the use of Inon bushings to attach the cables to the housing ports. In addition, Inon’s wide, macro and micro fisheye wet lenses can be attached via the use of a step up ring.
All products are available now
Blue Ocean Film Festival 2012
The Blue Ocean Film Festival is currently underway in Monterey, California. The event runs through this week until Sunday 30 September, with a full schedule of talks, seminars, panel discussions, social events and the film showings themselves. Featured photographers include Kip Evans, Bob Talbot, Brian Skerry and Jason Bradley, who will also be providing Wetpixel with coverage from the event.
Tickets are still available for the remaining days, but for those who can’t make it to the showings, please check back here soon for Jason’s coverage.
BBC Nature features plankton images
BBC Nature has published a slideshow of images from the Tara research vessel entitled “Marine Microworlds: The private life of plankton”. The pictures were collected during a two and a half year and 70,000-mile journey around the world’s oceans, during which over one million new species were discovered. By studying the plankton in the oceans, the project hope to achieve a snapshot of their state and health. Dr Chris Bowler, scientific co-ordinator of the expedition says:
“Nobody has ever done this on the scale that we have before. The task now is to understand the physical and climactic constraints that have created these ecosystems.How much is pollution affecting them, how much is temperature change affecting them? If a species of plankton sensitive to temperature migrates, it could devastate that food chain and therefore local fisheries.”
Wetpixel show coverage: Photokina 2012
Photokina is the world’s largest imaging show, with 1,158 suppliers from 41 countries attending this year. Over 63 percent of exhibitors are from outside Germany and the organizers expect around 180,000 visitors from all over the world. The show is held every two years at the Koelnmesse in the historic city of Cologne, Germany. It is almost traditional now for manufacturers to time the release of new products with the show, and the slew of new products over the last few weeks bear testament to this.
Wetpixel Editor Adam Hanlon is attending the show and will be reporting on all the new products that are around and about. Underwater imaging is a very small section of the industry, and this is reflected in both the limited number of manufacturers exhibiting and the area devoted to them. There is a designated space for underwater, but it actually only has around seven companies attending.
Large scale shark finning in Manta Ecuador
Wetpixel member Juan Carlos Navarro posted a slideshow of pictures in the forums of large-scale shark finning in Manta, Ecuador. Navarro reports that about 2000 sharks are being caught and finned daily on the beaches of Manta, all reported under “incidental fishing” so the Ecuadorian authorities have not acted to stop this activity.
Navarro claims that he has received threats after his pictures were published in local newspapers. We look forward to more reports from Navarro from the area about the mass finning in the area.
Review: GoPro HERO2 POV cam
Steve Douglas presents a review of the GoPro HERO2 POV cam. Now being an almost ubiquitous part of the underwater imaging landscape, the GoPro HERO has practically “democratized” underwater filmmaking. Traditionally restricted to expensive housed cams, the $299.99 GoPro has allowed vast number of people to capture video underwater.
Steve finds the camera to be an excellent product, but finds that the CineForm studio software for it seems a bit unstable.
Google takes Street View underwater
Google Maps has launched a new feature to their Street View service. It now offers panoramic virtual scuba trips through 6 reef areas, namely Heron, Lady Elliot and Wilson Islands at the Great Barrier Reef, Molokini Crater and Hanauma Bay in Hawaii and the Apo Islands in the Philippines. The underwater filming has been carried out by the Catlin Seaview Survey using a submersible fitted with three wide-angle lenses designed to take high-resolution images in low light conditions.This took a 24-megapixel photograph from each lens once every four seconds to provide 360-degree views, as the rig moved over the reef at about 2-3kmh (1-2mph).
The new imagery is available via the Street View feature of Google Maps or via the Street view Gallery.