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San Francisco's Aquarium Under the Bay

andrys
 
Posts: 2701

San Francisco's Aquarium Under the Bay

Post Thu Dec 11, 2008 12:18 pm


I was at an underwater aquarium in San Francisco in late November and since we were in tunnels with fish, sharks, and sting-rays swimming alongside or right above us, I thought I'd take a few snapshots but found out I'd forgotten my memory card (for the general-use camera) still in a usb slot at home. I had a Rebel with zoom 70-300mm only, but in a narrow corridor with the moving sea creatures only 5 feet from me most of the time, in a dark space, that was hardly going to work too well.

So I decided to use my cell phone, which has minimal videoclip possibilities at 320x240, hardly remembering how to even start a movie going since it's been almost 2 years since I tried the cellphone video. The water scenes though, were so interesting, that the videoclips turned out better than I thought they would. So I put them on Youtube for friends and then found that youtube now offers larger versions even from 320x240 but they've done something to make them more bearable when expanded that much.
THEN I found a link format that links us to an almost full-screen version, which is still mostly bearable, not ideal but it gives a feel for what you see while there.

Image -- I did a page that has the standard embedded videoclips that you get to via the usual thumbnails in the gallery - but I added a TEXT Link at the top-left of the each video's border frame that people with fast Internet can click on if they want to try the very-large sizes that Youtube now offers even with low-res video.
This is at http://www.pbase.com/andrys/aquariumbay

There are only 4 videoclips - less than one minute each (except the last one is 2 minutes). The first 3 are okay at the larger size but the 4th one is probably better viewed through the standard frame on the page. That last one (4th) also shows a bit of the tunnel layout whereas the others don't -- but it's more pixellated as I was trying to combine 4 clips and was trying out various trial-ware.

Below the 4 video thumbnails are some for still photos that I took at 70mm zoom! despite being too close and the subjects being moving fish in a dark narrow space, so of course most are pretty fuzzy!

All this is to apologize for the fuzzy stills and the low resolution videos but I hope they give a general idea of what you'll experience there.

If you're in San Francisco, well worth a visit! Here's the one still that's not blurry, because the fish was strangely still :-)

Image

Board index Other Travel San Francisco's Aquarium Under the Bay

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