I have been underwater in the past two weeks more than I have been topside shooting - and it has been fun, albeit challenging. Starting with some faulty equipment (nothing flooded) and ending with a cautionary tale and a missed shot (well, kind of, the animals weren't playing nice anyway, so didn't miss much).
Here's the tale:
I started filming in a tide pool at Marine Life Park, the largest man made snorkelling pool in the world (thank you Singapore and her addiction to superlatives), all went well, some great shots and we were off to our next destination.
Which was the Ray Bay, where people can feed the Rays by hand, well kind of. Maybe in a few months when the Rays are ready to do this. So, the idea was to get an Underwater shot of my two characters feeding the rays from under the hand (as the mouths of Rays are on the bottom of their body). Pretty simple set up, nice midday light allowing me to get a good exposure from under water looking up at the two characters - however, I didn't anticipate the following; huge condensation/fogging on the inside of my UW port...Ahhhh!!!!
Here's what happened - I had set the camera to not use the auto power off, since there is no on/off ability when the camera is in the housing and all locked up. (this was my first mistake). Then I put the camera during my 5 minute break before going into the Ray Bay on the ground and didn't realize that it was pointing directly into the sun, and then i got into the Ray Bay and realized only at that moment that the water temperature was about 15 degrees colder than the first water I was shooting in -- all of these factors joined to cause the difference in temperature inside the housing to condense and create a wonderful fogging on the inside of the dome port.
So, beware divers, if changing bodies of water, test the temperatures first to avoid these problems.
- MR
