Welcome to the website of Elysia Productions. Elysia Productions consists of award winning photojournalist André Crone and text writer Eveline Crone de Brabander. Elysia Productions specializes in underwater photo productions like magazine articles or images used for advertisement purposes. Our articles and images have been published in leading magazines like Fathoms Magazine, Unterwasser and BBC Wildlife Magazine just to name a few. We also organize photography courses and workshops.
I am happy to announce our new initiative: ElysiaVisuals. Elysia Visuals distributes professional motion control equipment that can be used for time-lapse photography or for general video footage. We mainly distribute equipment from Dynamic Perception. But we are in the process of expanding our offering in the near future. We have been very interested in time lapse photography for the last two years. This had lead to the development of our own equipment.
Today I received these PCB's in the post. I designed these myself. That was a difficult road since I had never done this before. Electronics is a hobby of mine, but designing and producing my own boards was always something that I tried to prevent. In the end it wasn't that hard. The board is designed with Eagle, a software package that is free to use for small non commercial boards. The boards were produced in China. The only drawback of that is that you have to wait six weeks before you get your results back.
For years we have been waiting for a suitable moment to go ice diving. Unfortunately circumstances have not been ideal in the western part of Europe for a decent ice dive. To increase our chances for a beautiful ice dive we take off to the northern part of Europe. Here we will have a guaranty for ice, cold and nice people.
Today is Humboldt Squid day. I just got a copy of "Duikmagazine", the best diving magazine that we have here in the Netherlands. The magazine features an eight page story about Humboldt Squids that I made last September. That trip brought us far into the Sea of Cortez. I was on a live aboard expedition with the goal to find these enormous Red Giants. It took a lot of time before we finally found the animals, but at least we found them. Duikmagazine has used one of my Humboldt Squid images for the cover.
I am currently running running a story about the Sharks of Cape town in the South African diving magazine DiveStyle. I love South Africa and I do love Cape Town. Our latest trip to South Africa brought us to various places including Cape Town. This is really a town that I can recommend. The city is great. The Table Mountain is great. The diving is more than great. Imagine a place where you can easily find Seven Gill Sharks, Mako's, Blue Sharks and Great White Sharks just to name a few. We visited Cape Town together with our twin girls who were only 18 months at that time.
Mooie tropische riffen, warm water en uitrusten onder een Palmboom, dat is wat veel duikers onder een duikvakantie verstaan. Koude bestemmingen, zoals Antarctica, lijken veel minder tot de verbeelding te spreken. Toch kan duiken in (sub) arctisch en antarctisch water fantastisch zijn. Dat zijn koude bestemmingen die door de gemiddelde duiker niet bezocht worden. Wie krijgt er een vakantiegevoel bij de gedachte om te gaan duiken onder 70cm dik ijs!
Andre Crone - Elysia Productions will, following the successful journey in 2011, lead an exclusive expedition to Mexico in 2012. The purpose of this expedition is photographing Sailfish. Sailfish are the fastest fish in the world and their hunting behavior is spectacular. The past year the trip was such a success that we decided to return in 2012. There are very few people who have seen this phenomenon since this is only done 5 or 6 years now.
In de vorige aflevering hebben we gezien dat kleuren onder water verdwijnen doordat water niet alle kleuren van het zonlicht even gemakkelijk doorlaat. Hierdoor ontstaan blauwe, contrastarme opnames. Dit kun je voorkomen door een roodfilter te gebruiken. Een roodfilter werkt alleen goed als er voldoende licht aanwezig is. Als dat niet het geval is, kun je altijd zelf nog licht meenemen: flitsers.
Tekst & Fotografie: André Crone
I have mentioned the technical aspects of exposure ramping with a Nikon camera before on my blog. The has resulted in a lot of work for me the last month. The result is a ramping solution that works on both Nikon and other brands like Canon. The video that you see on this article is the first real outdoor test of my ramping solution. You are seeing the Maasboulevard, one of the main roads that bring you into the center of Rotterdam.
This is the first test I did with my dolly that is converted to the NanoMoco electronics. The sequence was taken at one of the most popular dive sites here in the Netherlands. My "old" electronics consisted of an Arduino, a custom made shield to control the camera and a stepper motor controller. I am currently beta testing the new OpenMoco NanoMoco board. This is a small 1.5 " x 1/5 " electronics board that holds everything you need. The boards holds an AVR micro controller, a stepper motor controller, electronics to control your camera and an RS-485 chip.
I gave an elaborate explanation about timelaps exposure ramping in my last blog called Bulb ramping with a Nikon dSLR - The technical story. I am very interested in exposure ramping timelapse photography. These are movies where you for example see a sunset while the exposure of the movie stays more or less the same. My previous blog describes a solution for a problem that Nikon camera's have when you use them for this complex technique.
I hate it when Canon users say that a Nikon is not capable of something. Well there is one thing that Canon camera's do better. Exposure ramping or bulb ramping. Imagine you want to create a time lapse movie of a sunset. Normally you would do that with a fixed shutter speed. But then your movie will become darker and darker when the sun sets. Wouldn't it be great if you can make the shutter speed longer after each frame? Then the day will go into the night and the night will have the same exposure. This is where bulb ramping comes in.
André Crone together with African Watersports will organize a photography trip to South Africa for the Sardine Run next year. This trip is planned from 5-11 July 2012. The Sardine Run is the most impressive showcase of natural predation in the world. Vast schools of Sardines are swept along the eastern coast of South Africa by an enormous body of cold water. These Sardines attract Dolphins, Humpback Whales, Brydes Whales, birds and many different kinds of sharks that all predate on the Sardines.
Niemand weet hoe de onderwaterwereld er in het echt uitziet. De kleuren op analoge foto’s zijn eigenlijk de kleuren die de chemici van Kodak en Fuji voor ons hebben bedacht. Wat wij zelf onder water waarnemen, wordt door onze hersenen bepaald. Het is een aanname. In dit artikel zullen we zien wat er gebeurt als onder water zonlicht wordt gebruikt om te fotograferen.
Tekst & Fotografie: André Crone
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