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Surf Video

Stunning super slow motion video of surfer Dylan Longbottom gliding through a 12 foot barrel wave. The scene was shot with a special HD camera that can film at 20 times the normal speed. This clip is taken from a BBC documentary that looks at the islands of the South Pacific.

From the BBC site:

“I really wanted to slow the wave down, so it was like being there,
immersed in that environment,” says the BBC’s Huw Cordey, series
producer of South Pacific.

“I wanted to capture the scale of the event.”

Doing so took special skills and equipment. Australian cameraman
Bali Strickland, renowned for filming expert surfers at some of the
best surfing sites in the world, had to float in the water as the wave
passed over him.

He filmed the wave using a £66,000 ($100,000) high-speed camera that
captures the action at 20 times slower than normal speed, and in high
definition.

The kit required a special housing unit designed and built by German
specialist high-speed cameraman and technician Rudi Diesel.

Until this film, no one had ever tried using this type of camera underwater before.

The spectacular results show the wave barrel closing over Australian
big wave surfer Dylan Longbottom, who rode the wave to illustrate the
scale and power of the water.

Clearly visible are long underwater vortices created by the moving
wave, a feature the BBC team believes has never before been caught on
camera.

“So much is revealed by slow motion,” says Mr Cordey.

“We saw these vortices on one shot, which I don’t think anyone has
noticed before. It opens up this huge insight into the birth of a
wave.”

The vortices only appeared once, despite the team filming more than 10 waves, he added.

“Maybe it’s when the wave gets to a certain height or size. It
wasn’t a scientific experiment, so its difficult to judge. But its
interesting we only saw it the one time.”