The Kid Should See This

Slow Life: Incredible macro video of fluorescing corals & sponges

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If you’ve seen how underwater time-lapse can show the secret life of a coral reef on this site, then you already know that brilliantly fluorescing corals and sponges have fascinating, unseen experiences. But you’ve never seen “slow” marine animals like this: Slow Life by University of Queensland PhD student Daniel Stoupin.

To make this little clip I took 150000 shots. Why so many? Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures.

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In the archives: more coral and time lapse.

via Kottke. Thanks, @cmykadam.

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