Twilight Reef Colors Of Bonaire ep. 36 | A Diver's Life

Diving at twilight is special. Marine life becomes more active and with the help of lights the colors ignite before your camera. It is February, on Bonaire. Wind and rain are excessive causing the shallows to be churned up and visibility to drop. However, Bonaire's west coast second reef is deeper, the water is clearer, and the images captured are spectacular. In this episode we shoot macro for the first time at night. You will see a trumpet fish eye to eye, a Graysby, cleaner shrimp in action, beautiful sea anemone, Creole Wrasse, Sharpnose puffers, a balloon fish, up-close shots of yellow garden eels, a spotted eagle ray take flight at sunset, and much more. This episode is a Kaleidoscope of colors, filmed in HDR, that will transport you to that special place under the sea.
Strap on your fins. Let's go diving.
Related videos:
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• Night Colors Explode B...
Bonaire Reef ID and Behavior:
• Bonaire Reef ID and Be...
=== Chapters ====
0:00 Monolog
1:33 A Diver's Life Intro
2:35 Opening
2:48 Spotted Eagle Ray Invisibles
3:38 First Coral Island
6:47 Second Coral Island
7:27 Third Coral Island
8:10 Fourth (large) Coral island
9:29 Back to the Invisibles Mooring
11:32 Invisibles Mooring and Grass Eels
=====
Music:
Blue - Eklo feat. Jordin Laine (RFM youtube)
Into the Forest - Jacob Albom (Epidemic Sound)
The Storm Inside (instrument Version) - Daniel Gunnarsson (Epidemic Sound)
The Sunken Library - Trevor Kowalski (Epidemic Sound)
Video equipment:
Sony A7sIII camera
Sony A7siii
Nauticam housing
Sony FW 28-60 F/4.5.6 lens
Nauticam Nauticam Wet Wide Lens 1B (WWL-1B)
Atomos Ninja V+ Big Blue 15000 Lumen Lights
Cinematography, Photography, Monolog, Script, Narration, Post Production - Rich Schwerdtfeger
Thumbnail image of Rich and orange sponge - Steve Ando
Divers:
Doreen Schwerdtfeger
#bonaire #oceanconservation #scubadiving #bonairediving #travel #nature #coral #nightdiving

[@DutchCaribbeanDiving]

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing the beautiful video!

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you. You are most welcome.

[@eleanorcoy6432]

Gorgeous. So peaceful. Thank you for sharing.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you Ellie!

[@loekmaartens2060]

Very nice again. Love the continuous fish id comments.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you!

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you

[@LivingandDivinginBonaire]

Definitely your best so far Rich !

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you!

[@dakicpopovich]

Awesome! Breath taking... Every new video gets better & better 😀

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you! Feedback like this makes our day.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you

[@rgorji]

So beautiful; thank you very much for showing us such beauty.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you and you are most welcome.

[@ADiversLife]

My pleasure 😊

[@Juscz]

Amazing at how very devoid these Bonaire reefs are of macroalgae that have infiltrated so many other Caribbeans coral reefs. Again, thank you for sharing these amazing Caribbean coral reef documentaries. I now so much want to come to Bonaire and very, very carefully dive these amazing Coral reefs.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you. Bonaire is truly a special place.

[@michelletalluto49]

Breath taking! Hope all is now okay with family

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you. All is good! Are you planning to move to Bonaire still?

[@shotsbyscott6243]

Beautiful video Rich! invisibles is one of my favorite dive sites because of the double reef.

[@ADiversLife]

Us too. Thank you!

[@johnmontgomery2735]

Looks like your macro is spot on!! Awesome video as usual Rich. Will be in Curacoa in 2 weeks for the first time as Bonaire was pretty booked up.

[@ADiversLife]

Thank you! I have been meaning to dive over there.

[@frankscarabino3597]

Doreen and Rich: I'm working in Juneau. I'm told there is a small but dedicated dive community here. Cold . We could sure use a week or 2 in Bonaire. For now I turn up the heat and watch your videos. Thanks again. How's the new boat treating you? Frank and Elisabeth

[@ADiversLife]

Hi Guys! The boat is great and we love it. Still ironing out some minor issues like the trim rams. We replaced the seals in Florida but the rams need replacing. We will do that at 200 hours. We are glad we bought the boat. It is much better in higher seas and more comfortable on the mooring.

[@ADiversLife]

I corrected the English subtitles. Google has introduced you bugs in their autogenerated subtitles. KZbin creator support is definitely gone down hill.

[@lazydivermel]

Hi A Diver's Life, been following your channel recently, enjoying the amount of effort, thoughts and most importantly storyline in your videos! By the way, beautiful shot on the fish mating! what a rare sight! Just curious, for Wide Angle are you shooting aperture at least F8-F11? and when using video lights did you match the WB to the same temperature of your video light? or still using underwater AWB, as it appear to be reddish on the video.

[@ADiversLife]

I shoot f8-11 when filming at night as I need to open up the aperture. If I want to go in tight and give a blacker surrounding color I might reduce the aperture. If I am shooting real shallow (15 ft) I might be shooting f18-22. It depends. Good pickup on the white balance. I don’t try to match video light temperature. You are right about that reddish tint when shooting up at the surface with that ray. I had underwater awb on. It was frustrating because the ray was already moving and so I had to cut the length of that clip. It was worse the closer I got to the surface. Custom white balance is hit or miss though. I was filming blue parrotfish for a documentary I am helping with and I was shooting up and that red tint showed up so I switched to custom white balance. It took me three tries of pointing it at the sand and choosing pressing the custom white balance setting and it finally gave m a good white balance setting. Definitely, the underwater white balance has problems shooting into the sun in shallow water. I have not had that problem otherwise. I can usually correct it in post but it was so severe in that ray clip I had to shorten the clip. I am actively trying to find the right solution for this with the Sony.

[@lazydivermel]

@@ADiversLife forget to mention. Even with good CRI lights it will not solve the red tint problem..you might try to match video light ie 5600K and your WB at 5600K..you should be able to solve the mixed light condition.(sunlight is more powerful than any video light below 20000lm). For example when im shooting whaleshark(posting in 2mths) i off my lights just use sunlight as primary source..this is because i dont have a blue filter on my video lights. Currently im struggling whether to get A7Siii vs GH5ii :(

[@ADiversLife]

@@lazydivermel thank you. I will give that a try. My first A Diver’s Life camera was a GH5S and it was fantastic. It was great in low light with very large photo sites. It did not support HDR however and Panasonic rarely updated its firmware for it. That said, I love it’s color science. I think the first thing to do is check out the sensor it uses. It has a 20 mp sensor. Are the photo-sites large? As you know I talk about how the Sony uses 4 photo-sites to form 1. It is not ideal but it does give you that low light capability. It will be a long while before I upgrade. It took me 6 months before I could use it effectively for the channel and I am still learning its nuances as you have discovered. My next camera will be at least 6k so a long wait. I need a lot more sponsors :-). Thank you for your questions and discussion. We really appreciate it.

[@benevered5604]

Looking to head over for a month to escape the Vancouver weather, by mid feb is the viz back to normal? We lived in Cayman years ago and loved the viz there but the life in Bonaire looks fantastic!

[@ADiversLife]

It is starting to clear some but it is slow as the winds need to come down more. That said the water is 26c so the coral loves it.

[@benevered5604]

@@ADiversLife many thanks. Ill was thinking feb 1 to march 1 but sounds like later in feb or even march 1st would be best. Tks for your time and insight. We both worked as instructors in Cayman for a few years and getting the best diving experience is the key for this trip.

[@ADiversLife]

@@benevered5604 safe travels and thank you for watching our channel