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Blue Ocean Film Festival 2012 Photo

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.

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BBC Nature features plankton images Photo

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.”

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Wetpixel show coverage: Photokina 2012 Photo

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.

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Large scale shark finning in Manta Ecuador Photo

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.

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Review: GoPro HERO2 POV cam Photo

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.

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Google takes Street View underwater Photo

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.

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Adobe releases Photoshop and Premiere Elements 11 Photo

Adobe releases Photoshop and Premiere Elements 11

Adobe has announced the release of version 11 of its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements photo and video editing software. Both feature redesigned interfaces and additional integration with online sharing platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. Photoshop Elements has the ability to organize images by people or places, a variety of new filters and a Guided Edits mode for specific editing effects. Premiere Elements also has a “guided” mode with FilmLooks and allows the addition of transitions, themes, titles, disc menus, and sound and video effects.

Photoshop Elements 11 and Premiere Elements 11 are available now from the Adobe website, priced at $149.99 as a bundle or at $99.99 individually.

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Tonga Humpbacks 2012 Photo

Tonga Humpbacks 2012

Wetpixel member Jon Shaw of ginclearilm has crafted as stunning sequence of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), shot in Tonga over the past summer. The whales migrate there to breed and to rear their young, and the film has some amazing and moving footage of mother and calf interaction. It was all shot by Jon on a RED EPIC in a Gates Deep Epic Housing with Tokina 10-17mm lens. The music is by Hans Zimmer, and entitled “Time”.

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Nauticam announces NA-650D housing Photo

Nauticam announces NA-650D housing

Nauticam has announced the release of their NA-65D housing for the Canon EOS 650D SLR. The company has created a new switch that avoids needing to push AV button and turn the aperture, by simply engaging the AV button. In addition, the size and shape of the command dial has been changed which should make the housing easier to use when diving with thick gloves. The command dial profile has also been raised, and the dial itself has a “knobbier” shape, with larger grooves. The NA-650D has a redesigned dial control with a pickup for the on-off-movie switch, with a small window for visually aligning the switch pickup.

The NA-650D will be available from 5 October at $2,400.

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