Photos from Little Cayman HUPS Trip - Wideangle

[jamesw]

Hi Gang,

Sarah and I just returned from a trip with the Houston Underwater Photo Society to Little Cayman. We had 6 days diving there with reasonable weather (rained most of the time) but great viz underwater.

I decided that for this trip I was going to shoot lots of wideangle and that I was going to follow Craig Jones's recommendation to use complementary filters to improve the color in my images. It worked!!! I shot the Tokina 17mm lens on a FF camera.

Here are a few wideangle photos (kinda big to show the detail):









My impression from working on the photos in CS3 is that the color is a lot richer than when I shoot without filters. It creates a lot more of a "provia" look is how I'd describe it. It also helps control the sunball a LOT better. I did one day's diving w/ the fisheye with no filter and had a lot of "sunball blowouts" - which were not a problem when I used the filter on the lens. With the green filters on the flashes I did have to increase their power to full - but that was OK as I was using Ike DS200's which have a lot of power.

Just for fun, here's a photo of Bloody Bay Wall taken w/ the fisheye - which shows just how dramatic of a drop-off it is. 10m down to 2000m!!



Let me know what you think. I also shot some Macro but I'll post that in a different thread.

If you're interested in seeing the EXIF and the rest of the photos check out my gallery. I've upgraded to Gallery2 and I really like the features:

http://www.reefpix.org/gallery2/v/underwat...yman+HUPS+Trip/

Cheers
James

[dsjsws]

Stunning!

Donna

[srwatters]

Thanks for showing these. I was spoiled for life on Little Cayman. My very first open water dive after certification was on the Bloody Bay Wall. Truly a 'must see' for all divers.

Great images! I like the WA look and the colors pop nicely.

[jamesw]

Thanks for the Kudos guys. I'll post some macro photos soon. I'm using Gallery2 now and it's not easy to hotlink from there (right click protection has its pros and cons eh?)

Cheers
James

[TimIng]

Hi James,

Do you have any more info on the filters that you are using? Also, is the filter choice based on blue water or could you use the same in green?

Nice gallery site. Can I ask where you obtained the theme for it? I've been searching for a nice G2 theme for ages but haven't had any luck.

Cheers,


Tim

[jamesw]

Hi,

All ocean water has a green cast to it caused by the living organisms - no matter how clear it looks. At a friend's recommendation I used a CC30m Magenta filter on the lens. It removes green and some blue light. I used a CC30g on the flashes. These totally cancel out so that if you take a photo in a dark room it looks "normal." So in otherwords, the foreground exposure will look normal.

Thanks for your comments on my theme. It's X_treme with the X_black colorpack by pedrogilberto.net

Cheers
James

[Abel]

very cool james... that last shot is amazing!!!! nicely done.

Gallery2 comment: theres a module you can install which will list copy and paste friend URLs and BBCode with the photo location in the link. The module is located here:
http://gallery.menalto.com/node/28154#comment-132024

I use that on one of my gallery2 sites in order to get links in order to post here on the forum etc

[gwndwn]

Great shot of bloody bay wall

[TimIng]

Thanks for the info James.

Tim