11-09-07 Log: I uploaded 5 more videos, some of them are almost 11 months old. Been busy at work, no diving either. I have not been diving since early August due to an Achilles tendon injury, therapy seemed to help lots and it feels much better. I may be getting back in the water next weekend though, a Catalina trip. Enjoy the videos and hopefully I will get some filming in before the end of the year.
04-09-06 Log: New movies up, have been diving, just no time to update the web site. I have just uploaded a great California Sea Lion clip and a nice Redondo Beach night dive video. There is a Laguna Beach dive I need to compress and upload. I have two more Catalina videos to edit too. When I capture my footage I grab frames for my buddies and post them on the net. Here is the newest dive frame grabs, videos will eventually be uploaded for all of these.
12-07-06 Redondo Beach night dive - uploaded
12-31-06 Laguna Beach, Shaw's cove dive - no grabs, but a video is going to be uploaded soon
02-10-07 Catalina Island - will upload a gallery and video soon, vis was great this day
04-07-07 Santa Barbara Island - sea lion footage uploaded
07-20-06 Log: Did a three tank Catalina Island dive trip with the dive boat Mr. C last Sunday. Vis was poor, but we had a good time anyway. I actually got some really good footage during the diving. Here are some framgrabs from the trip. I just added the video to the videos main page. I also added a short, but higher quality video of the last Two-Spot Octopus I saw. At the dive site "Ripper's Cove" we saw at least 6 Moray Eels and 4 Octopus. Then another Octopus at the next dive site called "Red Bluff". There were lots of baby fish and schools of baitfish the entire three dives. Catalina's marine environment is really healthy!
07-10-06 Log: Did some great diving last weekend at the Huntington Beach Oil Rigs - First dive was at Oil Platform Eureka, this structure is huge and gets even bigger underwater. I did a deep dive (my deepest yet - to 127 feet) and got some great footage. Check out the frame grabs. The video is edited and uploaded already, I made a 50mb higher resolution version, as well as a stream-able 30mb version. This was the most macro video I have done to date, there was so much life piled upon life that there were video subjects everywhere. The entire dive day was awesome, we were treated to a pair of Finback Whales and a good sized pod of feeding Dolphins during our surface intervals. I dove with Eric and James, James took some cool stills with his digital, they are at his Flickr gallery. Today I decided to remove all the old video files shot with the old camera from the site, the new stuff just looks so much better. Below is a picture of me on the oil rigs that James took while I was filming.
06-19-06 Log: Added two new dive videos, both filmed at Catalina Island. They came out really good, nice sunny days, great kelp and wildlife, if only vis was better as it was about 20-30 feet max for these two boat trips. I did all of the April 2nd diving solo with the video camera, it was very enjoyable. The Pacific Electric Ray was a real treat. The May 28th dive was shot in "Pro Cinema Mode" and looked very cool. I am going to use it from now on I think. Web site changes... I made some changes to the links section and removed the older Catalina video I added back in February. The Thailand dive videos are going on their own page as they have little to do with SoCal. Still no DVD for sale, I have been insane busy at my new day job, and my band Electrostatic keeps me busy most nights. Now that I have three new, much better, California videos it will be better than before. I am thinking about re-editing some of my earlier GS-400 underwater video as my editing skills are much better, especially with image enhancement and color correcting.
02-07-06 Log: I added an older video to the site. I shot this when I just got the new housing back in May 2005. Compared to the new Anacapa video I see my skills are improving. I found that color correction and contrast/brightness controls can really make the video stand out. Filming and editing all the Thailand footage was a great learning experience. Especially dealing with the lights when filming. The Anacapa video is the first California video using the new housing and the dual Light Cannons. I am very happy with the results so far. I also forgot to add to my post yesterday about a buddies' GS400 and O/I housing that I got to see when on the Anacapa trip. His housing is different than mine? It has one extra control (a tele-macro button) and seems to be missing the support block that mine has. His also had a 5 button electronic control panel, but the 5th button is non-functional and isn't labeled (mine has 4 buttons) - odd? I could really use the tele-macro control (zooms all the way in real fast). I am curious about the lack of the support block too, I wonder if mine is really needed?
02-06-06 Log: Finally got back into the cold SoCal water! I just did three dives at Anacapa Island with some friends this last Saturday Feb 4th. It was a nice sunny day, but the water was really cold (around 55f). I shot a little video and some stills, a gallery of screen grabs and stills is here, and a 6 minute video I made is here (25mb AVI/WMV). One site had lots of sea lions and a really nice kelp forest. One thing I found on this trip was that I underestimated the still feature on my Panasonic DV camera, when used with my UKLC100 dive lights it takes killer pictures! A sample image I took Saturday of an Anemone is linked below this post. I feel dumb I never tried the still mode in Thailand, it would have looked great. Other diving recently - on Jan 25th I did some lobster hunting from a friend's boat. We found the deeper off-shore reef at Big Rock in Malibu, while I didn't get any lobsters, I did manage to pull 9 good sized scallops off the very large reef (yummy!).
An image taken using the Panasonic GS400 still picture mode when using two UK Light Cannon 100s for light.
All the Thailand trip media online so far:
Underwater photo gallery - James took all the underwater pictures and many topside pictures. A few topside pics were taken by me.
Bangkok photo gallery - We visited lots of temples, the river and more while we were in Bangkok.
Phuket photo gallery - We did an elephant ride and a sea canoe (caves) trip.
Video still gallery (NEW 1-21-06) - A bunch of frame grabs from all the video I shot when diving.
Richelieu Rock video (NEW 1-21-06) - shot during 4 dives including a really cool night dive (WARNING - It is a 43mb download).
Ko Tachai Island video (NEW 1-21-06) - shot during 3 dives. The schools of Bat fish were really cool (WARNING - It is a 36mb download).
Clownfish video - A short video with different species of anemone fish (clownfish) and different anemone species.
East of Eden dive site video - a 5 minute video (20 mb) of the first dive of the trip at a site called East of Eden.
01-21-06 Log: I added two more videos from Thailand. One is of Richelieu Rock, a very nice dive site that we did 5 dives at during our trip. There is a little night dive footage in there as well. The second video is of Ko Tachai Island, where we saw large schools of Batfish and other neat stuff. I also added a neat gallery of video frame grabs from some of my Thailand footage. No new So Cal diving yet, conditions have still been pretty bad. Hopefully next week, if not then I am scheduled to go out to Anacapa Island on the 4th of Feb. At least I will get some diving in then.
01-04-06 Log: Happy New Year! I added a new Clownfish video today from Thailand. California weather has not been very good lately so no local diving has been done since August 05. I may try to go out this weekend if weather permits. Another note, my SoCal DVD is on hold due to my computer not letting me open the Adobe Encore DVD project file. Sadly I may have to create all the menus again if I cannot restore the file from a backup. In the meantime I made a really cool Thailand DVD for my friends and family. The videos I made of the diving are quite long so I may not be able to host them here, I am currently working on a "best of" Thailand video for the site and to enter in some underwater video competitions.
11-21-05 Log: Back from Thailand! It was a wonderful trip. The diving was totally amazing! I will be making lots of videos. I shot about 4 and a half hours of video and filmed on all 22 dives. The water was really warm at 82-84f and maybe getting down 4 or 5 degrees if we hit a thermocline. We dove most of the dive-able Similan Islands, and also dove three times at Koh Bon Island, twice at Ko Tachai Island and 5 dives at Richelieu Rock including a real cool night dive.
The first dive was the most amazing thing I have ever done, I keep reef aquariums as a hobby and always thought that coral diversity and density of a packed tank would never be replicated in an ocean. I was wrong, it was like diving in a giant pristine, fully stocked aquarium. Stunning. Here is all the decent shots from the dive, the shots are in the order that I saw it.
Thailand - Similans - East of Eden (20mb AVI/WMV file)
10-12-05 Log: Long time since last posting. Dove on 07-17-05 at Catalina, need to upload some of the good Moray Eel footage. Did some shore diving in Laguna on 07-31-05 and 08-07-05. Then left California for a job from 8-18-05 to 10-03-05 (I was in Atlanta, Georgia). I did manage to drive down and dive at Ginny Springs in Florida on 09-18-05, that was pretty cool. I may do some dives in the next few weekends but it is up in the air. I think I am all ready for James and I's trip to Thailand on October 28th. We will be doing a week of boat diving while there. Lots of Thailand video will be shot. I wonder... should I buy a new site to show them off (thailanddivevideos.com???) or just host them here? Before I forget, I need to let everyone know I enabled the DVD link since the DVD is 99% done. I think I am going to price them at $24.99 each.
07-06-05 Log: Did some dives in Catalina on the 2nd. Dove on the dive boat Aquatica. I was first disappointed with the first site selection of the Rock Quarry, but it was far better than I remembered. For the first dive, my buddies, Wes and Cal, and I dove to the left toward Yellowtail Point. The second dive to the right into the Quarry. Both dives were very good and we saw some cool stuff. Vis wasn't great but opened up to 25-30 feet in places. On the second dive I saw a Scythe Butterflyfish. This is a pretty rare fish this far north and was a nice treat, it looks really tropical. A short video of that fish and a cool Giant Kelpfish are in the video section. The third dive was fun but my camcorder battery died about 6 minutes into the dive. Of course when I am carrying a dead camcorder is when even cooler stuff is seen. A decent sized Bat Ray swam by Cal and I, and then in only 28 feet of water a Giant Black Sea Bass passed right near us, a decent sized one too, maybe 200lbs. Time to buy a longer life camcorder battery! Camera was just back from Ocean Images before last weekends diving. They are great, they helped me get a faster zoom speed and re-aligned the mode control as it was a little off. They also made it more compatible with longer life batteries with a cool cutout in the back plate for it. I am getting more comfortable using the new housing and camera. Soon it will be time for the lights to be figured out.
06-16-05 Log: Mac users rejoice! I just added QuickTime versions of 4 of the new videos. I am still figuring out the best compression and streaming settings for these, so if they re-download/stream it is because I re-compressed it. Please email me with bugs if something isn't working, do not email me if you do not have the latest QuickTime (Mac users) or Windows Media Player (Windows users) installed. I have found that adding all these videos in both formats is eating up space fast. I may only keep 8 new videos online and drop three of the old ones. This should keep me under 200mb. The hosting company was cool about being a little over what I am allowed if needed. I need to see what kind of bandwidth I am using now though. Most of the videos are encoded at around 300-500kbps and some get over 10mb in size. I went to my old personal website I used before the socaldivevideos domain. I cannot believe the hit counter --> 770276! It's cool that they keep it up since I have not been a customer of SBC(pacbell.net) for over a year now. Looks like not much diving until the weekend or week after the 4th. There is still red tide so all good shore diving is scrapped for a while unless we get a good seaward wind. UPS-brown colored water is not fun, although some say if you can get below it, the vis opens up and it is like a night dive.
06-08-05 Log: A new video was added that shows the crazy surge in the kelp at the top of East End Reef at SCI last Sunday. I also added a new video of a male Garibaldi tending and guarding his nest and a video of a small Horn Shark. I also revised the entire video section. I even added a few of my older videos including an oil rig dive, a different Black Sea Bass video and the 1 minute Channel Islands compilation video I made for the Ebay auction when I sold my last video rig. I am editing up a video I shot at the Black Rock Reef dive site off Catalina Island on the 29th of May. The Garibaldi and Horn Shark footage was from that dive. I must say again that the new camera and housing rock!
06-06-05 Log: I got the new housing and have filmed 7 dives at Catalina and San Clemente Island so far. Some new footage was uploaded to the video section. The housing is quite impressive and handles well underwater. The video camera is so much better than the old one in terms of color and sharpness. The videos look more natural and don't have the green/blue tint that my previous camera had. There is one issue with the electronic controls (zoom is broken) so I am going to send the housing back to Ocean Images, Inc. in a few days so they can get it working. It will be a learning experience for the next few months as this camera has so many options. I am still experimenting with different white balance methods, using the internal flip filter and the rest of the manual modes the camera and housing give me access to. I have not tried using my UK Light Cannon with this housing and camera yet (need to buy a second UK Light Cannon).
My new GS-400 Ocean Images, Inc. housing - sweet!
Recent Dives:
- A dive in Laguna Beach in early April with James and Adam. We dove at Wood's Cove - I took some stills.
- Four dives at Catalina Island on May 15th with Adam (with one dive shooting video). We saw the Sea Fan Grotto, saw some big Bat Rays and some Leopard Sharks.
- Three dives at Catalina Island on May 29th with James (all shooting video). Very nice dives at Hidden Reef and Black Rock cove. Got some good Moray Eel footage.
- Three dives at San Clemente on June 5th with James and Adam. Vis was a disappointment and there was so much surge that it was hard to find underwater critters to film. I got some neat surge video that shows how crazy it can get out here in the Southern California kelp forests.
Here is a screengrab of a garibaldi with the new camera and housing (in 16:9 filming mode).
03-19-05 Log: Sorry so late with any updates, as you can see I started the site redo, email me at mike@socaldivevideos.com with comments. Links and "Buy DVD" are not active yet. The photo section has a handful of my best still pictures taken with my Olympus 5000Z in an Olympus PT-019 Housing. I need to buy a real strobe, tray and strobe-arm for the camera, I am getting hooked on taking stills. But this may be because it is all that I have right now. The new housing and camera is on it's way. I got a Panasonic PV-GS400 3CCD camcorder and will be ordering a Ocean Images housing for it. Ocean Images makes a stock housing for this excellent camcorder, the most manual control for this type of Camcorder. All future underwater filming will be done in 16:9 widescreen and should have far better color and capture far more detail than the old one. The horrible white-outs (over exposure) should be a thing of the past (or at least more controllable). A link to the housing is here. A link to a review raving about the GS400 is here.
03-13-05 Log: I sold the old camera rig and currently only taking still pictures on dives. Some of them are quite good and I am in the process of making a gallery for the site. Recent dives were: 4 dives at San Clemente Island (with Lea), the Underwater cleanup in Avalon Harbor, and three dives at the Catalina Avalon dive park (with James and Wes). I made a DVD compilation of my videos for friends and they have told me I should try selling them on this site. I need to add music and create artwork to make it sellable, but I am thinking of doing it.