Season’s Greetings from all at Wetpixel
Wishing everyone a very happy holiday. We hope that your weekend is full of happiness, good times and merry making! If you are exchanging gifts, may you get all you want!
Articles
Call for entries: Pelagos International Sea Festival
The Pelagos International Festival of the Sea, now in its thirteenth year, will take place at Via Padre Perilli, Rome, Italy from 19 to 27 February 2011. The Festival will host a video competition with categories in: Feature films, short films, début section and life & nature conservation. The photographic competitions also has numerous categories, namely: Macro, digital editing, environment, water and reportage. Both contests are free and open to anyone.
Full competition rules and entry forms are available on the Festival’s website and the closing date for entries is 28 January 2011.
Seacam launches prelude housings
Seacam has announced the launch of a new range of housings: Prelude. Designed to provide full functionality and build quality, but at a lower price, the initial housings are for the Canon EOS60D and Nikon D7000 cameras. The prelude housings are manufactured from CNC machined aluminum and have the ubiquitous Seacam silver external coating. Ports, viewfinders, strobes and connections are interchangeable with the Seacam Silver housings.
The new housings are expected to be priced at around $3,350, including Pro Viewfinder and will be available by the end of February 2011.
Book review: Underwater Photography for Compact Camera Users
A review of Maria Munn’s “Underwater Photography for Compact Camera Users” by Adam Hanlon. With the exponential growth in diver numbers and the availability of housings for compact cameras, together with prices dropping and the cameras becoming easier to use, just about every diver now spends some time with a camera underwater fairly early on in their diving career. Many within this vast group of people are happy to simply record the sights they see underwater, but some wish to expand their horizons and use these amazing tools more creatively. This is exactly where Maria Munn’s book comes in.
Post your favorite/best shot of 2010
Happy Holidays! Over in the forums, Wetpixel member Stew Smith has started the ball rolling with a thread asking you to post your best or favorite shot of 2010. The rules state best single shot, which most people are as usual ignoring!
As in the past few years this thread is producing some amazing imagery, why not take a look or add yours.
Nikon releases D7000 firmware update
As has been widely speculated, Nikon has released a firmware update for the D7000 SLR. The new firmware, v1.01, fixes the issue that:
“Bright spots were sometimes noticeable with live view mode or movie recording of especially dark scenes or subjects. Occurrence of this issue has been reduced”.
The update is available for download from the Nikon site.
Last call for entries: Beneath the Sea 2011
The deadline for submitting entries for the 2011 Beneath the Sea International Imaging Competition is 31 December 2010. The three entry categories are: Underwater photography, underwater videography and creative photography underwater.
The winners will be announced at the Film Festival during the weekend of Beneath the Sea’s Oceans, Dive and Travel Exposition held from 25-27 March at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Shark Conservation Bill sent to Obama for ratification
The Washington Post has reported that the Shark Conservation Bill has passed through the US House of Representatives today, having been passed through Congress on Monday. All that now remains is the President’s signature to ratify it into law. The Bill proposes to force any vessel to land sharks with their fins attached and would prevent non-fishing vessels from transporting shark fins without their carcasses. In addition, the Shark Conservation Bill will improve on the existing law originally intended to prevent shark finning, and it also allows the U.S. to take action against countries whose shark finning restrictions are not as strenuous.
It seems that 2010 may have been a better year for sharks than 2009.
Review: UnderWater Camera Stuff Housing Sentry
Damian Siviero has reviewed the UnderWater Camera Stuff Housing Sentry:
“You’ve just sealed up housing with camera inside – what next? Conventional wisdom would suggest that you either rely on a dunk test in fresh water or simply hope that no seal has been compromised. The dunk test - a procedure that uses water entering a confined space filled with expensive electronics as an alert mechanism, not my idea of common sense. Then there is the hopeful approach, whereby you assume everything is okay either because you’re flawless or your housing was engineered by god and can never fail.”
Larike Village Eels
Tony Wu has added an article and video of a fascinating visit to the village of Larike, Ambon, Indonesia. He managed to get to the village at the end of the Wetpixel Ambon Night safari, and Tony had some very close encounters with the eels which live in a river near the village. He was alerted to the presence of the eels by Hafes Mansur Lausepa, one of the team at Maluku Divers, who also happens to be Raja of Larike village. Hafes describes the eels:
“They are completely harmless and quite curious”.