O’NEILL FOREBAY REPORT and 3D Fishing Videos

Last weeks early morning surface action as well as a Thursday post on Blanton’s BBoard on the forebay had me looking forward to Saturday Morning and the opportunity to fish crease flies and gurglers to busting fish.  In addition,   I just acquired a 3d GoPro rig and wanted to test it out on some fishing.  The Friday morning wind reports were not  light and I feared that it would be blowing 20 plus at daybreak on Saturday.  I canceled my plans to take a friend but  I prepared for the morning with real doubt that conditions would be right.  At 4 in the morning,  it was blowing 17mph so I took a chance and headed down to the forebay with my camera gear at the last minute.

When I got to the flats,  it was dark and I was anticipating fish busting where they were just  last week at the crack of dawn.  Well the crack of dawn came and went with surface orgy never happening.  A few individual fish showed themselves in the golden glow of the smokey morning sunrise but it was not last weeks experience.  They must have felt the cameras brought to film them.   The fishing however was pretty consistent all morning and I caught dozens of fish averaging larger than last week.  Water was 72 degrees and there was a 8 mph wind all morning.  It was a good day and I caught fish in deep and shallow water on both sides of the trench at Mederious.   Even the trollers and plastic fishermen were picking up occasional fish, but flyfishing was more effective.   I noticed more light short hits than typical even using small flies.  Also,  I had much better luck on the small flies with glass rattles than the ones without.  I’m pretty convinced that especially in low visibility conditions,  those rattles and lots of long pauses between rigorous stripping,  draws the fish in from a larger range as they come in to look for it.  I once read that a blind striper can survive on vibration detection alone.  They are that sensitive to vibration as predators.  The fishing started to taper off around 11:00 and I headed home to catch the Oregon Ducks football game which they owned.  The success of the Ducks is the “Hurry up Offense” which is a ground floor change in the way football is played to WIN.  This philosophy  helps my fishing as well with less false casting,  more casts,  faster landings,  getting back into the water quickly and less talking.  Essentially eliminating anything that does not improve performance and efficiency but thats a different post.

I took a bunch of 3d videos with the new GoPro 3d rig built around a pair of older Hero 2 cameras.  GoPro just released a new version of GoPro Studio to edit the 3d content.  The resulting films are the  first 3d films of fly caught stripers in the Oneill Forebay.  The footage was taken with two Hero 2s in a 3d enclosure manufactured by GOPRO.  The footage was edited on GoPro Studio 2.0.  I exported the film in four formats  Anaglyph (viewable with  those red blue glasses),  Full resolution Over and Under  (for my passive 80 inch 3D viewable with those polarized 3d glasses), Side By Side for active glasses 3D and 2D which was just the left eye view of the 3d film.  In this first attempt of filming flyfishing in 3d, I learned a few things, paticularly camera distance and placement is pretty key.  Too close is dizzying but too far is not as dramatic.   Depth of field shots are the best from 12 inches out. The reaction to this 3d film viewing was nothing less than breathtaking.  You can feel the water and the the size of the fish – it is truly an immersive experience.   The Anaglyph version is only half as good as the over under 3d so if you have a 3d capable TV,  you can hook up a computer or download the original 1080p .mov and play it from the USB port  (if your tv plays media),  set the tv to 3D (240hz),  and choose Top and Bottom mode and put on the passive polarized glasses.   The Anaglyph version can be viewed on the computer screen with any red\cyan glasses but till you have seen it on a big screen in passive mode, it hardly does it justice. Its extremely fun technology, shooting in 3D,  and I can see all sorts of applications.  I can’t wait to film fly tying or site fishing a bonefish–even dental surgery.   For fishing films,  there is a missing element in 2d  after experiencing this.  You will agree if you get a change to see the full resolution of over under passive 3d.

The Anaglyphic Version: viewable with Red\Blue 3d Glasses 1080p

Top and Bottom 3D 1080p

There are still many 3D TVs that incorporate  Active Shutter System Glasses.   The glasses are powered by a small battery and incorporate LCD lenses which sync to alternating full frames.  Active 3D requires a Side by Side configuration export file.    Here is a Side By Side version of the video for Active Lens 3D.  I recommend downloading these files vs streaming them since many streaming sites limit streaming to 720P and 1080P is just a little better in 3D.

Side By Side 1080P 3D (for Ray’s Vizio)  Download it.

So after much consideration over the merits of SBS (side by side) over TaB (Top and Bottom). For passive displays, TaB is preferable for progressive content, and SBS is preferable for interlaced content.

With passive displays, compressed 1080p content resolution is effectively:
SBS – 960×540 per eye
TaB – 1920×540 per eye

With 1080i TV content:
SBS – 960×540 @ 60 Hz (960×1080 @ 30 Hz) per eye
TaB – 1920×270 @ 60 Hz (1920×540 @ 30 Hz) per eye

With 720p TV content:
SBS – 640×360 per eye
TaB – 1280×360 per eye

There is a great discussion on the merits of both systems on AVS forum.

 

“It used to seem to me
That my life ran on too fast
And I had to take it slowly
Just to make the good parts last
But when you’re born to run
It’s so hard to just slow down
So don’t be surprised to see me
Back in that bright part of town”

Steve Windwood – Back in the High Life Again

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

wp-puzzle.com logo