Everio Video Hunters! Aquarium Shooting Challenge with Accessories – 1

Hello everyone, Sakura here. Hope you’re all doing fine!
It’s July already, and to re-energize ourselves for the coming summer, Eri and I decided to visit one of the biggest aquariums in the East Japan area, the Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise!

Even as Everio Video Hunters!, we seldom have the opportunity to film creatures in the water. When I consulted with our boss (we call him ‘Boss’), he recommended to "try out the wide conversion lens and circular PL filter" as he passed me his favorite accessories. This is Boss’s typical way of thinking… Even though it seems a very high hurdle for us as video shooting beginners, we went ahead to challenge ourselves in using these tools for the shoot!

The Everios we used for this shoot are shown below:

Let’s prepare for the aquarium shoot!

Generally at aquariums in Japan, visitors are allowed to take videos and stills as long as they do not use their flash. However, since aquariums are usually dark, coupled with the far distance of the subject and the reflection of lights on the glass, shooting in aquariums is difficult. According to Boss, it is in this kind of environment that his ‘secret weapons’ really work. For this shoot, we borrowed his wide conversion lens, circular PL filter and cross screen filter. We brought the tripod as well.

Arrival at Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise!

What welcomed us when we arrived at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise Aqua Museum main facility was a yellow tang. Apparently these bright yellow fish are the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise’s mascot fish.

Filming with the wide conversion lens at the gigantic pilchard pool!

Once you go through the entrance and enter the aquarium, the first thing you see is the gigantic pilchard tank, housing 50,000 pilchards in its pool, which is one of the greatest in Japan. As it is made to recreate the natural environment of the great sea, the tank provides visitors with a view of 30 different species, numbering up to a total of 60,000 creatures, including eagle rays and tiger sharks.

For the sake of your viewers, you certainly would want to capture the pure scale and awesome panorama of the pool. In person, it really seems like you are actually looking into the sea, but it is extremely difficult to capture with regular angles of normal shots. And when you try filming away from the pool, you can only see a part of the actual view. We soon understood that it is at these times that the wide conversion lens should really do the trick! The wide conversion lens is a wide-angle lens that allows for wide shots even in areas where you do not have much distance with the subject. I attached the special adapter for the GZ-HM545 and then put on the wide conversion lens. It lends a decent weight to the camera and feels very professional. However, its effect is so evident that it can be noticed even by an amateur!

Since the school of pilchards was shimmering so beautifully, we filmed them in a close-up!

We tried using the wide conversion lens for the arch-shaped pool in the ‘Dolphin Fantasy’ and show and noticed that the ‘perspective’ reproduction of the wide conversion lens had been enhanced as well.

>> Continued next week

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