Yay!

Finally, I've got Adobe CS5 on my computer at the shop, and after an update download my camera I bought last year has RAW support... this means, maybe I'll start taking my camera back in the water. I realized the other day that after a year without the camera in the water, I forgot how it works. I didn't even have the zoom/focus ring in the housing so I was pretty much stuck with wide angle, couldn't remember how to change the camera into macro, all sorts of photo mishaps ensued. I did manage to get this ghost shrimp photo though. It was down at 92 feet and this was taken without any type of flash and no zoom control. If you'd see the original photo, it'd be very blue and lacking in detail or color, the nice thing with RAW and underwater photography is that you can set the white balance after the fact and there's a real decent chance in getting the orginal colors back.

Ghost shrimp are also known as Fountain Shrimp in many parts of the world, named after the foutainous spray of their antennae I guess. They're a pretty decent sized reef shrimp, not eatin' size, but big compared to what we usually see.

We've had a pretty good south swell lately, with a fair amount of west in it on occasion. South we can deal with, west can be a problem if it's big enough. From the dive shop I can see things are kind of washed out near Honokohau Harbor (yesterday they were just fine). Tomorrow we have 3 intro divers and a couple of certified divers on the boat, hopefully it'll settle down by then. One of the very nice things about Kona diving is that because of the lack of soil at water's edge, it can be stirred up one day and cleared up the next if the surf settles down. Sand, the limited amount that there is on the reefs here, settles out very fast and we can have 100+ foot viz the day after having poor viz.

Yesterday's diving gave me the first 79 degree reading for an entire dive that I've had this year. Things are finally starting to warm up. It never got "cold" here (by our standards) this winter, but it has yet to really start getting warmer either. Last year it maxed out at about 79 degrees, I'm hoping we see 80/82 later this summer and into the fall. The warmer water temperatures often will hold out through November and early December.

We've been quite busy for a while and I've got a few days off right now, with the schedule getting hectic again in a couple of days. We've had back to back south swells the last couple of weeks, so the dive charters have been spending lots of time at spots outside the harbor and up near the airport, with a few dives in the north pine trees area, but the southwest facing sites have been pretty much off limits for a while. We've been able to find flat water by avoiding the sites facing southwest. Yesterday I was kind of glad to have the day off as the surf was probably as big as it's been.

On Monday evening I ordered an enlargement just to see how it'd turn out... it had arrived by Friday afternoon. It's BIG. I'm not sure if I want a BIG picture of an eel hanging prominently around the house... likely to be office material. It turned out great though, I wasn't sure if the detail would show up in the white, but it's fine. Here's a shot of the pic with me next to it just to give you an idea of how JumboGiant.com does with their enlargements.

Aloha,

Steve

Aloha,

I get a fair number of inquiries about which camera to get for starting out with underwater photography, so I'll chime in with a few of my thoughts here.

Many people think you have to get a dedicated underwater camera, while this may be the best for some people, it isn't the only way to go. Oftentimes you can pick up a great new camera, with all the bells and whistles, and it'll have a corresponding manufacturer designed underwater housing that is good to about 130-140 feet or so. In many cases you can even find a housing available for a digital camera you may already own. There are housings avaiable for many Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Casio, Canon and Fuji cameras already on the market, and they seem to be committed to supporting housings in the future. there's probablay a couple others I have forgotten. Below are some examples available at Amazon.com. You can refresh the page for more examples, or I suspect do a search for specific cameras and housings when you get to a results page. Note: Some of the lower priced housings here are geared to snorkeling depths, make sure to read the fine print.



Remember, each housing is generally made for a specific model of camera. If you have camera and are looking for the housing, you can always reverse the process and look up the camera and see if the housing is available as an accessory. Older models may be problematic as they get discontinued as cameras are phased out.

Having picked up our first digital camera and housing in about 2000/2001, Pat and I have been upgrading as time goes so I'm semi-familiar with what's out there. I'm not going to recommend specific cameras(The big photo show is at the end of the month - everyone will probably introduce new cameras and today's stuff will be out of date shortly anyway), but Canon, Olympus and Fuji seem to be the most popular with the semi-serious underwater hobyists. I wouldn't hesitate to house a Nikon, Casio, or Sony either though. Many of the more popular point and shoots even have underwater settings built in these days.

Some basic recommendations I'd give are...

LCD screen, get it as big as possible. You'll probably want at least a 2.5 inch screeen, LCD screens that size and up are much more forgiving to middle-aged eyes, plus you'll see more detail in what you're doing while taking the photo.

Optical zoom is more important than digital zoom, you are probabaly looking at 3X-6X or so optical zoom for underwater, although I've heard people are happy with their superzoom cameras underwater, they just don't use the full zoom capacity underwater.

If you are going to be serious about it, and have access to nicer image editing programs, you might consider getting a camera with RAW. At the very least I'd recommend getting a camera with a "Manual" or "Custom" white balance setting.
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Many people think they have to invest in external strobes and the whole shebang right up front. That's really not the case. Take a look through my archives, there's not a picture on the blog yet that used an external strobe. They were all done with the onboard flash or with natural light. People who know what to look for can tell if an external strobe was used or not in some shots, but most people who aren't really into the hobby can't or won't care. External strobes will allow you to do more things, and get you well lit shots from further away, but you can always add them later if you don't right away.

Many of the underwater housings suitable for diving depths are running in the $150 to $225 range and corresponding cameras can run anywhere from $150 and up, but you can often get into a pretty decent little setup from $300 to $650 these days. There are higher end cameras and housings available of course.... it seems once you get hooked there's always the desire to upgrade.

Anyway, once you've got your equipment together, the best thing you can do is get to know your camera, and practice.... It's almost a lock you'll be disappointed with your initial results at first, I was, but with practice you'll get to know what you can and can't do with what you have.