Underwater Surfing... sort of

As the diving season comes to a close so the surfing season comes around. The crowds thin out (a bit, not as much as they used to unfortunately) and the swells pick up.

I decided not to take my board in but instead try some underwater surfing and took my camera along to try and get some footage. There were big regular lines coming in and a stiff offshore wind sending plumes off spray into the air as I put on my old fins and my mask and backed into the shore break.

It turns out I am no George Greenough! For those of you not familiar with his work, check out Crystal Voyager, a classic 1975 surf film, George pioneered filming inside the barrel and there is a long ambient section set to Echoes by Pink Floyd that will blow you're mind!

Check it out on Youtube

I managed to take a few poundings in the shore break (I'm still getting the sand out) and very few even passable shots, certainly no decent footage! I did manage to catch a few waves underwater which was fun, but another lesson was learnt. Don't use your favourite free diving mask! I took an underwater wipe-out (a first), and the mask got torn off and immediately lost. With that kind of swell running there's a lot of water moving around there was no chance of recovering it.

Still it was a lovely day with rainbows forming in the spray behind the waves filling the air with colour. I need to find some way of preventing water droplets on my lens above water as all my attempts to film them ended up blurred.

Bits and bobs

I film using a GoPro HD camera which gives much better results than the old GoPro wide low-res camera. But if you're thinking about buying one for underwater use be aware that at present the GoPro HD does not focus properly underwater. For underwater use the camera requires a flat lens rather than the dome lens that it ships with, currently you have to purchase a 3rd party modification to achieve this (or do a custom job yourself). When I contacted them about this they said I was on my own as they don't advertise it as an underwater camera which is amusing as they clearly state it's waterproof to 180ft.

I went with this goforfocus.com its a simple lens replacement that you fit yourself. The process is very easy and the results are excellent, making it a cheap effective solution.

I've been through several mounting set-ups as well and have settled on a modified hang-glider camera mount for my spear-gun. It has Velcro straps so is easy to fit and a movable arm allowing me to adjust the camera position quickly. I'd recommend exploring these options before shelling out the extra cash for a GoPro branded mount.

Up until recently I used a mount on top of my torch for night dives but I discovered that as the camera was facing directly down the beam of light it washed out the subject. The light reflects back from particles in the water as well and the effect is compounded if your filming straight down the beam. You get much better results if you hold the camera separately and shine the torchlight in from an angle.

I generally use Windows Live Movie Maker which is more than adequate for the little clips I put together but I ran into a couple of problems with this as well. Annoyingly you need to convert videos from MP4 to a format that WLMM can read, I settled with mp4cam2avi which does a great job batch converting to .avi format.

The next problem was (as you can see from some of my earlier videos) that WLMM kept putting a black border around my hi-res videos. I have just found out that there is an aspect ratio setting (under the “view” tab) that when set to wide-screen eliminates the problem.

Just a few bits and bobs that I hope might save someone some time!

While I'm posting here is a fun outer space screen grab I took from my last lot of footage....