Juhanis Blog

This was interesting. Snake River Prototyping release rig to underwater filming. The tray is machined aluminum and it has several connection points.

There are in the market other also. Some of them have lights like Sartek, Noctural lights, Tecdiving

I made post from Snake River Prototyping flat lens fix, although there are now similar ones like Backscatter, the snake river is still the one of the most interesting ones. I currently own two snake river flat ports and have been very happy with them. Actually I participated to the Eilat Red Sea Underwater competition only using GoPro cameras. Well, I did not won anything, I was still very happy to the quality of the pictures that I got from there. In all those pictures I used Snake River Prototyping BlurFix flat port with attached SWCY or CY filters. The color filters makes big difference in underwater because otherwise the it will easily clip the red from the video material totally and no post prosessing will get that back.

What I find interesting in the the tray as the called is there are so many possibilities to attach the camera. The only worry I have is that as the camera is attached front of the handles is similar as you would hold the camera with stick, even with both hands. I hope that I will have a change to test it. I would like to make some comparison then between the rigs that I have and theirs. For travellers like me this will be at least very interesting because of the simple design and as it very light(1.7 lbs/0.8kg) and that is including the camera.

The introductory price is 129.99 $, and it seems that the final price will be 150$

Here is their example video using the tray and some color filters

Information from the tray

I’m making a Christmas card every years to all my followers and friends. So Happy Holidays 2011

My Athens trip turned out very nicely, although I do feel bit sad of economic situation of Greece. So I do feel that There is something that I can do. For my it was no nice to see good people struggling on several jobs just to get so income. Special thanks goes to  Aqua Divers Club that picked me up from the center of Athens and took me to their dive center just to make two dive and I was the only customer diving. The dive center is located about 35km from center of Athens. We ended up misunderstanding of the second day scuba diving and I missed the underwater car cemetery, but then again that day was raining all day so somehow I don’t think missing so much. Also special thanks to Virve who lives currently there and showed me the city.

Scuba diving was actually very nice in the Greece. The equipment’s were very good shape and the water was clear. Although there are not so much live in the sea as like red sea has but at least comparing to Finland, well almost everything is better There are parts of my video from it. They are filmed with GoPro HD heroes, I’m starting to love these small cameras.

In the city there are lot of cultural activities but somehow I didn’t end up watching those, because somehow I have learn that where ever I go. I’m more interested of the people and what they do. Athens is a big city, people are very busy. Day to day jumping from bus to metro is not for me in long term but for a while it’s ok.

Nowadays it seems that where ever I go, I end up shooting pictures and video. They are different way of expressing oneself and don’t exclude each other.

You can find my portfolio from Athens here.

And what comes to video, It’s filmed mostly with GoPro cameras, but there are used Canon 5Dmk2 with Canon 100/2.8L Is macro as well. You just can’t do all with GoPro cameras.

I was visiting at my friends at Brasov, Romania and decided to make my first video only using my mobile phone. The phone is Nokia N8. The lightness of the phone made it difficult to make stabilized video even I had my manfrotto travel steady cam with me. The time lapses was still successful for my opinion.

Programs I used

• Adobe Premiere Pro CS5(Main Editor)
• Adobe After Effects CS5(for stabilization of some footage)
• Adobe Lightroom 3.3(Data manage and Timelapses)
• Neat Video Plugin(for reduce noise)

Edit: I forgot to tell how to Interpret the footage before adding to timeline. So basically you need to interpret the footage if your framerate is showing like 500 frames per second. So select all video clips and select modify-> interpret footage and write frame rate to 25 frames per second in Europe at least. In US you might need to use 30 frames per second.

I had my GoPro attachments that I used to attach my mobile phone to tripods, suction cup and steady cam. The program I used in the phone for time lapses was FastMotion that I bought from OVI store.

My Mobile phone custom Rig

Tripod attachement

Tripod in use

Suction cup(GoPro)

Suction Cup in Use

I was traveling in Australia and New Zealand for a month, taking pictures and shooting 3D videos with my rig. This started my project to get one short film from every city I visited. This is the video I made in Sydney.

After the airplane, next scenes are filmed in Hyde Park and in there I met Michael from Germany. He is the bicyclist that told me that where ever he goes, bike comes with him.

After Hyde Park the next scene are from shopping mall and another park following scenes.

Just next to Sydney Opera house there was these music artist with didgeridoo. I really liked his music, bough one CD and filmed him a bit. I also got permission to use his music in my video.

After that scene there is the strange person that I don’t know what he was doing, but as far as I understand he tried to earn some money to start some kind of religion. He had lost his foots in somehow.

The beach is Bondi beach.

In the end Sydney was kind of nice place for as a metropolis.

I will make trip into outland in August and will be spending there for 4 weeks, 9 days in australia. Hoping to get really good videos and pictures from there. Let me know if you have some ideas where to visit. I will be back bagging there.

I finally managed to get some post from Honduras.

Here are some pictures during the trip
Pictures during the trip

First I have to say that Honduras is not so cheap as many would expect. Of course I was most of my time at Utila and Roatan islands that are more just for tourists, and that is also shown in the prize as well. Most of places that we were we heard that somebody have get robbed so for safety the country is not so good. We didn’t get robbed luckily but there were times that I had to leave my cameras at hotel to get walk little more relaxed.

Our flights were first into San Pedro Sula and after 24 hours in 3 different airplanes we just wanted to go directly into La Ceiba because from there the ferry leaves. You can go with the ferry into Utila or Roatan. Utila is very small island comparing to Roatan and Roatan is much more commercial tourist place as well. First we went into Utila. We spend little over week at Utila and then met one retired Canadian that had sailplane. We got trip into Roatan with some money from him. There is also more commercial catamaran sailing as we did have reservation already with that. Still we wanted more experience and it really was great trip. And also when I informed the captain of the catamaran that we will cancel, he was really pissed of. I’m just glad that we didn’t took it.

We spend rest of the time at Roatan. First we went to Fantasy island, which is very expensive luxyry island. There was two hotels at that time, both were very expensive. I think ours was called Fantasy island Resort. They had own dive resort as well and you could buy room with dives included. Well we spended only one day there. It was quite expensive. From there we took taxi into west end, a place that is located at the other side of the island. There we spended cheap but cosy hotel, it was called Dolphin hotel.

Few words from diving at Utila and Roatan. First some pictures again.

Pictures from underwater

I have to say, I was bit disappointment from the amount of animals and diversity at the underwater live. I made 15 dives, 12 at Utila and 3 at Roatan and it really wasn’t so amazing. I’t was nice but you can get much better divesite in Thailand or Egypt. The diving at Roatan is quite relaxed. The dive sites are so close to shore that you can just go diving for couple of hours and come back. In Utila the morning dive is in the other side of the island if the weather is good. and the other is more close, but this means that when you go to diving you spend all morning there. And you can also dive third dive at afteroon. So from current experience the Roatan is really better place to dive, although Utila is getting better.

I had my first summer holiday in this year, though it was only for a week, but I went traveling into Romania.

I visited Brasov and Bucharest cities, yeah, one week is quite short time, but still I had a great time there. In Brasov I had one that I knew from Internet and we agreed to see each other. This person turned very good friend of mine, and hopefully we will see each other again.

But to the subject. It’s interesting when people don’t seem to see Romania as good place to travel. I would say that the change of being robbed is pretty much as big as many other places. Big cities are of course the most easiest places to get robbed. For myself, I didn’t got that insecure feeling during my trip, but I did hear one photographer got her subclasses stolen in small village. I understood that it was gypsies village. I also got warned many times from those gypsies that can stole easily my camera and other things also. Well, of course is person is poor then it may easily be the easiest way to earn some money. The culture of gypsies is quite interesting and many Romanian seem to  hate the imago the do for other native people. Well, I have to admit that even my parents called and SMS to me just to find have me get robbed already. So at least the imago is quite bad shape at currently.

Still I found that Romanian people are mostly friendly and try to help as much they can, of course some older people still don’t speak English and  those younger people that can speak, are little afraid of using the English language. This is a bit same in Finland also and about 10 years or so it was basically the same.

So what there is for photographer, well a lot. I only spend there for a week and I feel I just scratched the surface. In Brasov there are many old buildings, nature, mountains, fountains, forest, waterfalls and not mention the people. Romanian people are much closer than Finnish people, but of course all know that Finnish people are very distant and quiet.

Brasov

Brasov is a small city between the mountains, there is a lot of old buildings and culture. I went there first because I knew there one person and I wanted to meet her. I managed to contact her at the evening. We started walking there daily and started to know each other better. At the first day we went to center. There is this nice street just in the center what is full of shops and cafeterias.

In the center there is at least one relative big park where I saw at least two couples and families taking wedding portraits, so it seems to be quite popular place to get married. There are some beautiful  flowers everywhere.

I would still say that the most thing I remember from Romania is that how peaceful and beautiful city it is.

Bucharest

What to say from Bucharest, well not much. It is relative big city among others. Some things still managed to find from there even I was only very short time there. At least there was quite many parks that balances the other traffic and noisy city environment.

I think I will visit in Romania again and look for other things in Bucharest also, I think the city has its potential and probably there is lot more to see also, but for time being most from this trip I’m remembering Brasov.  Big thanks to this is of my new friend Denisa, I hope to see you soon again.

Here is pictures in Nokia Ovi where I uploaded several pictures taken with my mobile phone.

Mobile Phone Pictures(Nokia N82)