Greetings from Lembeh, Indonesia. Chris Parsons from Nauticam USA here. I'm at the beautiful NAD Lembeh resort with the Canon 70D camera and the new Nauticam NA-70D housing. Over the course of this week, I'll be posting some images and some video from the camera, along with some field notes about how things are going with it. I'll have to make the videos pretty short so we can get them uploaded daily, but will try to add several clips each day with the best shots of the day.
Today is setup day... unpacking everything and getting the rig ready to go for dives in the morning. Check out the video below for a stop-motion look at how the system is getting set up. Lembeh is primarily a macro place so I'll plan on mostly using the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens or the Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens. I'm using two Inon Z-240 strobes when setting up for stills, and 2 Keldan Luna 8 CRI lights with the 50º reflectors for video, plus a few extra odds and sods. I'm also using the new Nauticam Carbon Fiber arms which I think will help balance the load nicely.
70D Lembeh Blog Day 1 from Christopher Parsons on Vimeo.
Tomorrow I am planning to shoot still photos, and then will switch to primarily video for the remainder of the trip. Part of the reason for this is to really test out how the new video autofocus system in the 70D will work underwater. We did mention this in the press release we issued yesterday, but it is worth repeating... the 70D has a new piece of technology under the hood that allows most of the actual imaging sensor pixels to become phase detection autofocus sites. In theory it should be fantastic, but we'll give it a real world test with one of the most challenging focus assignments... muck diving macro.
That's it for today... check back tomorrow for the next installment.