Rangiroa, French Polynesia, South Pacific. My best video for my best dives Ever

[max_oo 2]

Hey Everyone,

I had the chance to go diving in this far remote atol lost in the south pacific. 10 amazing dives. A fews days with the edting rig to create this video. Hope you'll enjoy. Make sure to watch it in HD.

Filmed with EOS 550D. Tokina 11-16 lens. Pro Video 2800 lighting. Post production with FCP X & Apple Motion 5

Cheers.

[vimeohd]48656967[/vimeohd]

Edited September 2, 2012 by max_oo

[Balrog 5]

Really enoyed that. Thanks for posting

[Walt Stearns 51]

Max, what is the story on the grey reef sharks there. I could not help but notice that there were hardly any about. When visited Ragiroa in the very early 1990's they were the most prevalent thing in schools more numrous than barracuda you have in the video, which by the way had good stuff.

Edited September 2, 2012 by Walt Stearns

[Longimanus1975 1]

Nice video, thanks for sharing

[Oceanshutter 121]

Max,

 

That was very nice. Thanks for posting it!

 

Dustin

[max_oo 2]

Max, what is the story on the grey reef sharks there. I could not help but notice that there were hardly any about. When visited Ragiroa in the very early 1990's they were the most prevalent thing in schools more numrous than barracuda you have in the video, which by the way had good stuff.

 

Hey Walt. Thanks.

About the Grey Sharks, Yves Lefèvre, who you may know, told me that big grey gathering as we call as the "Grey Wall" is not predictable. More chances to get the wall in Fakarava. I was more excited by the Silky

Hope to film there as well in 2013.

Cheers

[Drew 0]

Always love Rangiroa and Tahiti. Looks like you had some nice dives there.

I did notice you were getting some lens reflection on your port. You may want to cover up the front area with some matte material to avoid that. Also the manta cleaning station sequence had too much image stabilization from FCX. You may wish to consider turning down/off translation smoothing so there's no distortion, which can be distracting.

You may also wish to put music credits for music that you don't own or created. I liked that you tried to be different with the overlay sequence at the end.

[ehanauer 37]

I dove Rangiroa about 10 years ago and Fakarava earlier this year. Lots of gray reef sharks at Fakarava but none came very close. At first I compared it unfavorably with my Rangiroa experience, but people I've talked to confirmed what Walt said.

[MikeVeitch 0]

Eric, do you mean the place we dove 10 years back where we were dive bombed by the sharks? That was Apataki, not Rangiroa.. (i assume you are talking about when you joined us on Tahiti Aggressor trip in 2002?) That trip was the most intense action with the sharks in Apataki the whole time we were there (3 years, but it was always amazing there)

 

Fakarava is definitely a better shark location than Rangi for grey reefs, both north and south pass Fakarava are amazing.

 

Thanks for the memories Max good video

[ehanauer 37]

My bad, Mike. I thought that was just a typical dive there.

 

I also remember Wyland being swept out further than anybody else and being picked up with a shit eating grin. Also, sadly, it was Jim Church's last trip.

[MikeVeitch 0]

Yes, we were making bad jokes afterwards about losing Wyland hahaha.. i bet he uses a safety sausage now And yes, it was great to spend a couple of weeks with Jim, great photography mentor.

 

yes, the sharks at Apataki were fairly typical to your/our encounter, but that first trip was still the best of all of them, they would circle along the bottom of the pass after that but never did the dive bombing thing again. I guess they got used to us after that.. supposedly the action there is even better now! I want to go back

 

However, of the 4 atolls that we regularly dived, Rangi, Apataki, Toau, and Fakarava, Rangi had the least shark action in the way of grey reefs other than the mating season around may/june (awesome that!) However, it did have great silver tip encounters as Max video shows.

[mcliffy2 10]

Great video -- as to Walt's question, when I was there last December it seemed the schools were there, but just very deep. I'd start to see them at 110 ft. or so, and got the feeling they were very dense at 130+ ft. (However, Six Passengers was strict with safety and wouldn't let us go that deep with only Advance Open Water Cert.) The wall was definitely present in Fakarava, especially in south pass. This picture was taken at about 70 ft in Fakarava, last December.