One Diver’s Perspective.

Soon, we head to the outer islands in the Bahamas, known as the Exumas.  This trip is intended as a practice run in many respects, for the following summer we head out to dive Komodo in Indonesia.  Neither Colleen nor I have ever done “live aboard” diving (i.e., diving where you live on the boat), and both of us are somewhat prone to sea sickness.

We are both hoping to learn the use of our respective cameras on this trip as well.  She will be shooting with the Sony compact camera, and I will be shooting with the gigantic Nikon D300 camera.  I expect that she will get the best pictures of the sharks, which is too bad for her, because I’ll be the one in the picture with the animal, while my picture of her will probably be way too tiny due to the wide angle lens I will be using.

I hope I am wrong, and that we both get some great pictures of sharks.  And, i f possible, pictures of sharks and ourselves taking pictures of sharks.  I am not inclined to touch or ride the critters, however.  Colleen, on the other hand, wants to hug them.  I do hope she waits for me to compose and focus before letting go….

French Angel, checking herself out in the reflection of my camera housing

Eel at rest…

This is a toothy critter known as a “Spanish hog fish”

Here are some fish feeding on a piece of food.

She is not seeking the vice presidency, and no one speaks for her but her,” communications director Howard Wolfson said.”

Associated Press Quote.

Does anybody fail to see the irony here? I sure would not want my communications director telling the world my plans in one breath, and then stating that nobody speaks for me but me.  Who does this guy think he is speaking for Hillary while saying nobody speaks for Hilary?  Guess that makes Mr. Wolfson a nobody.

One Diver’s Perspective.

Well, after months of agonizing, today I ordered a “housing” for my Nikon D300 camera, which will let me take it beneath the sea, and hopefully capture some beautiful pictures in July when we head to the Bahamas to swim with the fishes and the sharks.

The housing  choice was a very difficult one.  Basically, I could chose the plastic housing and get “through the lens” (TTL) flash circuitry, or I could spend thousands more and buy an aluminum housing without the TTL circuitry (requiring manual setting of the flash).   I decided to go the less expensive route.  With the flash, it cost me over $3,000.00.   Adding the camera body and the lenses, and I pretty much spent a boat load of cash on something that can be destroyed in an instant if I make a mistake setting up the gear and have a flood.  Of course, unless I drop the housing, I should be able to salvage at least the flash and the “arms”, but I think I’ll just be super careful and avoid accidents!

If I had it all to do over again, I have no idea if I’d have gone this route.  On the positive side, I’ve had a lot of fun using the D300 topside and can definitely say that I love shooting with an SLR camera. How I will feel about packing and using a “gigantic” camera scuba diving is anybody’s guess. I just pray that I do not drop or flood it.

-One Nervous Diver’s Perspective.

_DSC0103, originally uploaded by davidscubadiver.

Sitting in the 5th row or so of a church means you’re going to get some heads in your photos unless you stand up and block the view of the people behind you. So what’s a guy to do? I used the “vignette” option for an “artsy” shot while simultaneously eliminating the 3 or 4 heads at the bottom of the frame. I also did some color adjusting to make it boarder-line sepia.

So, in addition to capturing the two heads I wanted, I eliminated several I didn’t. Hence, the title - Head Shots.

Before spending thousands of dollars on underwater gear, I thought it would be prudent to shoot with my new camera on the surface and see how I liked it.  Fortunately, I was invited to a wedding this past weekend, and it let me put the camera through the paces.  Unfortunately, I was still too new to SLR photography to figure out how to tweak critical settings such as aperture and shutter speed.  I also lack an external flash at this time. Nevertheless, and for what it may be worth, I was impressed with the camera.  It is by no means magic (i.e., it does not let you shoot in low light on the dance floor, without a flash and get pictures that look well lit), but the 18-200mm lens that I purchased witht he camera had remarkable range, allowing for some excellent portrait shots and a decent telphoto shot (from my eye, I shot the church pipe organ, from the front of the church to the back of the church, on the balcony, and it was only when I “zoomed” in on the picture that I noticed the player was sitting up there behind the organ. I thought what I saw with my naked eye was a photograph of a head, but in the picture it was quite clear that there was a person up there).

Anyhow, while I may not be putting wedding photographers out of business just yet, I think I captured some very nice shots, burried in the hundreds of photographs taken.  I had fun shooting “high speed” which helped make sure that some pictures came out with eyes open rather than blinked closed.  I just learned how to set the aperture and shutter speed, so my next event that I attend I’ll see if I can be a bit more artistic.

A link to the album, for anybody that may be interested, may be found here on Flickr.

Well, my camera arrived yesterday. I managed to get the neck strap attached as well as the 18mm-200mm lens, inserted the battery and set up the time, date, etc. Even managed to snap a few pictures. But its not the sort of thing I can hope to learn in the hours between coming home from work and going to sleep!

I was hoping it would come with the full version of Capture/NX but it only gives a 30 day trial of the program. I am a little disappointed because I’ve heard enough good things about it to believe it would carry me over until the next version of Photoshop CS came out for the Mac, but not enough good things to actually make me think I want to buy it.

Of course, first things first. I haven’t yet shot a RAW photo so the software is not exactly the limiting factor in my workflow. There are great hopes pinned to this camera. Its big. Its heavy. And its going to get “bigger and heavier” with the underwater housing I plan to buy for it (once I am convinced I will learn to use the camera).

For now, I am shooting with the supplied 2GB card. I will probably boost that to an 8GB model before I take it underwater. I figure at 8 GB, I’ll probabyl need to change the battery before I run out of memory. As I understand it, its not a great idea to have to open the underwater housing more than necessary during the dive day, so the less often I need to open it the better.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have loved movies such as August Rush, the Princess Bride, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and the last Batman movie a few  years ago.  I’ve hated at least one of the Spiderman Sequals and thought the various X-men films were okay. The last Superman movie was awful, IMHO.

With that said, Iron Man is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. I highly recommend it! Action-packed adventure the whole way through with a decent story line that holds the movie together. There is very little that seemed “gratuitous” or dumb, although there is of course some need to suspend reality, but that is half the fun of going to the movies!

I have no intention of ruining the movie for anybody. I just wanted to let anybody know who might be interested, that if I had an extra hand, I’d give this film 3 thumbs up.  It was very very enjoyable. Can’t actually say enough good things about it.  You will love the movie if you’ve liked any adventure action movie before.  The theater was filled with little kids as well, and for the most part, they behaved themselves. Whether they loved the movie as much as I did, I cannot say. But I was sure glad they were quiet!

There are very funny moments in the movie, such as… No, I’m not going to say. But you’ll have to trust me on this, you will burst out laughing at least once and probably several times during the film. I guarantee it.