Belize, a small English speaking country nestled under the Yucatan peninsula and boasting the second largest barrier reef in the world, is home to the thriving and delicious red lobster!  The lobster fishing is seasonal and kicks off each year in the month of June with several lobster fests across island and mainland towns and villages.  Perhaps the most popular is the annual Caye Caulker Lobster Fest which draws thousands of people from all over the world for a three-day weekend of organized activities featuring, of course, food vendors preparing lobster in every mouth-watering style – especially done to perfection on the charcoal grill while you watch!

Pollard Media Productions went down to the Caye Caulker Lobster Fest (Belize is only a two hour flight from Houston) for the June 2016 Lobster Fest and we covered the event!  We brought down three cameras – a DJI Phantom 3 standard drone for aerial shots, a Canon C-100 for the main camera and Sony’s new a7RII 4K capable digital camera for B rolls.  The Phantom drone performed well even in the brisk Caribbean prevailing winds.  The drone also shoots in 4K capturing very sharp and beautiful aerial shots.  As somewhat of a drone novice, I used the GPS mode and I did lose the GPS signal a few times, but the drone would come right back from where it took off – amazing!  I used Canon L-series lenses on the C-100 which is not compatible with the facial recognition software on the camera and so at times the center weighted focus would shift to background items.  But I had the Sony a7RII shooting simultaneously and that has facial recognition and absolutely beautiful colors at the 4K resolution.

So we spent a few days of shooting and enjoying the Caye Caulker Lobster Fest – the sun, the sea and a few lazy lizards (the island’s best know rum concoction at the world famous Split).  On return, I got to work on editing using Adobe Premiere with their really cool Lumetri color tools.

We want to go back!