Hello, it’s Eri from the Everio Video Hunters! The first two blogs about the Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise were covered by Sakura. This time however, I’ll be moving to the aquarium’s main attractions, which are of course, the sea creatures! To start, I will be shooting our friends from the sea using a number of Everio’s unique functions.
Filming the World’s Largest Crab, the Giant Spider Crab, with Low-light Shooting
To begin, we set off up to the Aqua Museum’s 2nd floor. On this floor, where the lights are dimly lit, there are a number of tanks that are illuminated and on display for visitors. One of the most intriguing tanks holds the world’s largest crab, the Giant Spider Crab, which lives in the seas surrounding Japan. A large male’s legs can reach up to 3 meters. As they normally live 200 meters underwater, the lights are kept quite dark. My eyes met with the eyes of a fish lurking in the dark – pretty scary! But putting that aside, I went to test the upgraded Everio 2010 model’s low light sensitivity with its Super LoLux feature, and so I set up the tripod and started shooting!
First, I started with full auto shooting. I captured the aquarium ‘as is’ and the lighting was adjusted naturally. Then, I tried it with the Night Eye mode. With this feature, the lighting increases, making the fish in the back visible as well! The scariness of the sight decreased slightly… However, with the Night Eye mode, the camera gets a bit shaky and so a tripod is definitely necessary.
Everio GZ-HD620 World’s Largest Crab in Full Auto
Everio GZ-HD620 World’s Largest Crab in Night Eye
Now, to the Marine Mammals Show!
As the rain started to let up, we decided to go off to see the Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise main attraction, the Marine Mammals Show! Alongside dolphins, the show features sea lions, penguins, beluga whales and other creatures taking part in the presentation at one of Japan’s largest stadiums. Since we had to follow each animal’s unpredictable movements, we hoped to capture some moments of truth without using the tripod! We did this despite the strong wind, which made it quite difficult to keep the camcorder secure.
What I really wanted to do was capture the dolphin jump in high speed. So I tried capturing these moments, hard to see with the naked eye, using the GZ-HM545′s high-speed continuous shooting! As dolphins cannot actually see where the ball is with their eyes, they must remember where the ball is after repeated practice. These are therefore some exciting moments that result from hard work. I am also very impressed with their effort!
Taken with the GZ-HM545
Now I tried the high-speed video recording feature. Watching the movements in slow motion, I can even notice the details of the water splashes. The video really captures the dolphins’ energy!
Everio GZ-HM545 Dolphin Show with High Speed Recording
>> Continued next week
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