I’ve finally succeeded in uploading a follow up to my 3D video of a cenotes diver going through a halocline. The new video contains the original clip plus a few more:

3D video is a huge pain to produce.

Our group has transferred to Isla Mujeres from Puerta Aventura and has just finished our first day of photographing the whale shark aggregation that is here feeding on bonito spawn.

3D video workflow has proven to be the downfall of my relatively-new MacBook Pro, and so I am unable to show you any new video at this point. I have a 1:36 video that is ready to show, but uploading is proving to be difficult from my connection here in Mexico.

Cave diver at Cenote Chac-Mool, Mexico

Instead, I’ll leave you with 4 images taken during my 2 dives with a still camera. These images were taken at Cenote Kulkulkan and Cenote Chac-Mool. (read more »)

For my first underwater 3D shoot, I dove cenote Chac-Mool, which is about 20 KM from Playa Del Carmen (just outside of Cancun). I had never taken my modified BS Kinetics 3D housing underwater, so I had to first mount lights on it and do a pool test for buoyancy. Adding 4 lbs made the housing almost exactly neutral, although it is just a little bit back heavy.

I was quite worried because a dark cave is not exactly the best place to use a camera system that relies on auto-exposure for its picture. I set the camera to underexpose 3 units (whatever that means in Sony land) and hoped for the best. The results were actually quite good!

Here is the first clip I processed, which shows Mario, our dive guide, swimming through a halocline (the layer between fresh water and salt water, which is more dense). Don’t worry — the fuzzy halocline water clears up after a few seconds.

I’ll do a more formal write-up about my 3D workflow when it is fully tested, but at the moment, it includes ClipWrap¹, MPEG Streamclip, PluralEyes, Final Cut Pro, Dashwood Stereo3D Toolbox, and Compressor. I shot 107 clips (214 total, since each camera shoots separately), taking up a total of 16.6 GB of space (8.3 GB x 2).

3D workflow is extremely time-consuming. (read more »)