This is our 5th video from our trip to Belize. During our stay at Lamanai Outpost Lodge in Lamanai, we made 4 separate trips to the Mayan ruins only half a mile away. This was one of the most important, enduring and enigmatic of Mayan cultures - much is still not understood about the Lamanai area which lasted about 3500 years. Only 5% of the structures have been excavated, of which High Temple, Jaguar Temple and Mask Temple are all accessible and shown in this video. Also, the fig tree in the first section of this video is only 10 years old!

04/30/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, Lamanai, Maya, Mayan, ruins, temple, Mayan ruins, Central America

 

Here's our 4th video from our adventure trip to Belize, this time of our crocodile encounter in New River Lagoon just across from Lamanai Outpost Lodge. This was an incredibly fascinating night excursion, where we caught about the biggest crocodile allowed with tourists on the boat when doing research. This male is about 4 1/2 feet and weighed 7 kilograms (almost 16 pounds) - it took 10 minutes for him to tire out and bring onto the airboat.

We learned so much about crocodiles in general and about the croc population in the Lamanai River, so kudos for such an education program hosted by Lamanai Outpost Lodge. The research here is done in conjunction with researchers in Florida, tagging and measuring the local crocodile populations. The most memorable thing is just how soft and smooth the crocodile skin is!

04/01/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, Lamanai, crocodile, encounter, research, croc, New River, Lamanai Outpost Lodge

 

This is the second video from our scuba diving trip on Turneffe Islands in Belize. At 5-minutes long, this clip focuses on the various animals we found underwater - rays, fish, macro critters and an extended sequence where I was cruising alongside a hawksbill turtle!

03/18/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, scuba, diving, Turneffe, Islands, Atoll, turtle, ray, eel, shark, fish, macro

 

Okay, now that we've been back a week from Belize and had a chance to look through all our photos and videos, and started posting them, I thought I'd provide a summary of our experience with our new Canon SD870 (IXUS 860 in some regions), as well as the Auto Magic Filter we purchased as a test for this trip.

Canon SD870IS (IXUS 860IS) impressions

• a great little convenient camera underwater - the large screen is fantastic to use, and I found the one-button video record *extremely* handy underwater; it was really easy to instantly start videoing when I saw something interesting, rather than having to toggle modes first.
• the 28mm wide angle works extremely well, I found I could take nice photos of the reef and my wife quite easily; while it was a major selling point to me, I was still skeptical that I would notice it that much in the real work, but I did. The downside is that on land, the distortion is quite noticeable with outdoor panoramic shots.
• the Image Stabilization also works really well, particularly when doing video - even swimming in current the IS helps make video look quite smooth.
• the battery life I found deceptively short - I fully charged the battery pack, and while I did keep the camera and LCD on most of the time, I actually ran out of juice towards the end of the 3rd dive, which surprised me; this was without using the flash at all.
• I wish the camera would keep the macro mode setting - since I had to start turning my camera off during the dive to preserve battery life, I had to remember to switch to macro mode each time I turned it on. It became a bit of a habit, but an annoying one to have to adopt.
• the manual controls are quite limited - essentially, exposure control, some customizing of sharpness, contrast, saturation but that's it. Meaning for experienced divers/photographers, the lack of focus, aperture, shutter, etc. might be limiting - for me I found it just fine ;-)
• the manual white balance was very easy to use, for most of the dive I just kept the function screen on and only had to press the [DISP.] button to white balance whenever I needed to.
• the ability to take SDHC cards was really nice, since an 8 GB card can go a long way underwater (unless you decide to video your entire dive from entry to exit!).

Auto Magic Filter review

• the Auto Magic Filter didn't work for me in Auto mode at all, I still had to manually white balance at anything deeper than about 10-15 feet
• for the most part, my underwater photos were too red - I reduced the in-camera red and also had to reduce it a bit in Photoshop afterwards. Perhaps the regular Magic Filter (designed for manual white balance) would have worked better since I was white balancing anyways
• the filter works really well with good available light, which is how they advertise it. However, that really means that at any significant depth (70 feet or below), or even in any type of crevice where interesting creatures can be lurking, it's almost unusable since you can't use the flash. If possible, have a dive partner with another camera+flash for those situations.
• having the filter also means that video clips look surprisingly good too, one of the biggest benefits (IMO) of this filter. The built-in flash or external strobe lights are great for stills, but don't do anything for video clips, so this was a huge bonus.
• on a small camera like the SD870, it was a little tricky taping the Filter to the lens - so much so that I just left it on the entire week of diving, so I'm glad we had other cameras for land shots.
• this filter, despite its limitations, had a great impact on the quality of photos and videos during our week of scuba diving. We'll still always dive with another camera using a flash just for those deep/crevice shots that require an additional light source. But I really enjoyed the SD870 and Magic Filter combination...

Overall the dive portion of our trip on Turneffe in Belize was the biggest breakthrough in our short underwater photography and videography experiences - gone are the days of all-blue photos and video! While I likely won't be bringing the SD870 on any trips as our only camera (and I can't imagine it getting much use on land anyways), as an underwater camera it really worked well for us. In fact, considering how little we paid for the complete setup of camera, housing and filter, it's hard to imagine a better amateur setup.

Bryan & Elizabeth

03/12/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, Canon, SD870, SD870IS, IXUS, 860, underwater, scuba, photo, video

 

Here's our second video from our recent trip to Belize. I chose to focus on a single day, which was Wednesday and our trip to scuba dive Lighthouse Reef and the famous Blue Hole. The first part was okay, I didn't really find the stalagtites to be worth the depth and darkness down at 130 feet (40 metres), but worthwhile doing once. As you can see, the highlight for me was our safety stop where we were surrounded by 7 reef sharks. We then went on to dive Half Moon Caye, and saw some healthy reef and coral, pretty fish and a couple of conch out for a stroll on the sandy bottom! Hope you enjoy...

03/12/08 by visitEarth
Tags: Belize, Blue Hole, scuba, diving, Lighthouse Reef, shark, conch