Friday, July 24th, 2009

Oceans, a new Disney movie for Earth Day 2010

There’s a new trailer out. Disney’s new movie by Messieurs Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud, Oceans, features spectacular flashes of imagery of whales breaching, sharks and dolphins feeding on a bait ball in South Africa, aerial shots of superpods of dolphins, and more. The trailer itself is really short and seems to be about Disney’s wildlife film legacy, but it’s worth streaming / downloading in full 1080p. Stunning!

See the trailer on YouTube or at full resolution on Apple’s trailer site (highly recommended). There’s also an interesting discussion going on in our forums about the movie and its production.

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Eric Cheng visits the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Lab

I went to visit the NASA NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Lab) today for an unscheduled, last-minute, behind-the-scenes tour, thanks to Joe Holley of Marine Visions, who worked there for nearly ten years. It was funny because everywhere we went, his old work buddies made “HEY, get that guy out of here!” gestures before then inviting us over for a closer look.

The NASA NBL has full-size mockups of the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle in its enormous pool. Wiki says that the pool “is 202 ft. (61 m) in length, 102 ft. (31 m) wide, and 40 ft. 6 in. (12 m) deep, and contains 6.2 million gallons (23.5 million litres) of water”—enormous! Continue reading for photos…

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Apple announces Final Cut Studio 7

Apple has just announced the new Final Cut Studio 7, which includes too many new features to list here. New codecs and Improved / optimized support for old codecs means faster processing, and global transition settings save time while editing. In particular, Panasonic HVX-200 users will be happy with FCS 7’s native AVC-Intra support. FCS 7 also includes multi-touch support across the board, direct DVD and Blu-ray disc burning from Compressor, and much more.

Final Cut Studio 7 retails at $999. Upgrade price is $299.

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Wetpixel POTW is not dead yet

I’ve charged up the Wetpixel Picture of the Week competition with another theme, so head on over there and submit your best shots! This week’s theme is Swimming.

The Wetpixel moderators are a running a little dry on creativity these days, which means that we need your help in coming up with some new themes for the POTW. If you have some ideas, leave them as a comment here in this post, or head on over to the forum discussion!

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Wetpixel summer Bahamas sharks and dolphins expedition returns home

Our third Bahamas expedition of the year returned yesterday, and guests have started to post images in the Wetpixel forums. The July trip aboard the M/V Shear Water focused on both sharks and wild dolphins. Trip leader James Wiseman writes:

I have to say, the experience of floating in the Gulf Stream at night w/ nothing under you but a thousand feet of water, and speeding dolphins shooting past around like guided missiles was pretty intense. Mark Prior and I looked up at 11pm and noticed no one else was around - we’d been in the water for hours! :-)

See the images in the trip report thread!

Monday, July 20th, 2009

PangeaSeed kicks off summer activities, Tokyo, Japan

PangeaSeed, a Japan-based nonprofit organization, is ramping up its inaugural activities in Tokyo this summer with events tailored to spotlight the organization’s dedication to increasing awareness of the plight of sharks.

Of the 400 shark species, more than 100 are endangered, with many species so over-exploited, it may be impossible for them to recover. The events will showcase the issues surrounding shark finning in Asia and other parts of the world, where sharks are killed to satisfy culinary and medicinal demand. In finning, it is common to cut the fin from a still-living shark, then discard the rest, as the fin is worth many times over the shark as a whole.

PangeaSeed will host a booth at the 2009 Fuji Rock Festival’s NGO Village on July 24 - 26, 2009, and will host its own event called “No Fin, No Future” on July 30, 2009 at Super Deluxe in Nishi Azabu. Among the many highlights of the event, guests will enjoy a screening of the international award-winning documentary, “Sharkwater.” Some of Wetpixel editor Eric Cheng’s shark photography will also be on display.

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Aquatica announces HD Wave video housing for Canon HF-S10

Aquatica has announced a new housing in their HD Wave series for the popular Canon HF-S10 camcorder. This all aluminum housing features manual and electronic control, and uses the camcorder’s own LCD monitor as a viewfinder. The 7.5lbs(3.2kg) housing has full menu access view buttons which actuate the control dial on the monitor of the camcorder. 3 lens options include a partial zoom 85° wide angle port, a 65° full zoom standard dome port and a flat macro port. Pricing and availability is to be announced at the moment. Click on the discussion link to find out more…

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Predators in sardine baitball by Earth Touch Crew

Earth Touch’s Barry Skinstad narrates his encounter in a baitball on June 30 where he finds all the major predators, sharks, dolphins, gannets and whales hitting one baitball. The video shows the distinct hunting technique of each predator species and seemingly unreal order in feeding frenzy whereby the only prey consumed are sardines. In the mad frenzy, it seemed the predators knew when to move out of the way of each other, except for one very unfortunate shark .... join the discussion and click on the link for the video to find out what happened!

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

How much is your film worth?

The topic of license fees pops up occasionally as more shooters win awards and are offered what seems to be low fees for rights to the works. This discussion now features online video content host Underwater Channel’s offer to one member. Join the discussion as professionals and amateurs alike discuss compensation and how to view this growing media outlet and it’s effects on traditional views, juxtaposed against the burgeoning tsunami of content available online as equipment allows more people to publish their works. What is your view on this matter?

Friday, July 10th, 2009

DiveFilm HD’s new video features 5D Mark II

Just released: DiveFilm HD Podcast episode 31, which is a cool short film shot by Backscatter’s Jim Decker and Russ Sanoian on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II DSLR.

Mary Lynn Price says, “I am just so impressed by the HD footage possible with this DSLR, I’m fighting hard not to take the leap to this cam! Really love what I’m seeing both uw and topside with this cam…”

This podcast video has been converted in Final Cut Pro to ProResHQ, edited, then compressed using Compressor to AppleTV spec for the HD podcast. The original footage is Canon’s variant of long-GOP H.264 1920x1080 30p at 40 Mbits/sec. The encoded podcast is H.264 1280x720 24p at 5 Mbits/sec. Compressed file size is 93 MB.

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