ATJ

They both are available on the my Ikelite housing for my D7000. Lens release is the knob immediately below the zoom knob. I regularly use the lens release when I dismantle the rig so I can get the lens off the camera before removing the camera from the housing. Depth of field preview is the the left of the on/off knob (when looking from the rear).

I understand that part. So I have to essentially change my whole backup procedure to work around Apple's shortsightedness.

Lightroom 3.6 still has annoyances!

How are you copying the files? Plugging the SD card into the computer or connecting the camera via USB? With the former method, there's no reason for Windows Explorer to do anything but copy the files. If the latter, I suspect the camera may be doing something.

Thanks very much, Nick.

I have done around 145 dives with my D300 housing and it feels no worse than the brand new D7000 housing.

I successfully created a project and shared it. Seems to work OK. I still have a lot to learn, though, but that would be true of any NLE as I'm new to video. Two annoyances, though: 1) I wanted to shared directly to Vimeo. To start the process, I put in my Vimeo ID and password (it doesn't store the password), title, description and tags and kicked it off. I left it running while it built the file. When I came back it had failed because I must have mistyped my password. It still created the file but nothing was uploaded and all the data (title, etc.) were discarded. You'd think it would either verify the ID/password up front or at least let you retry at the point it wants to upload. As I have to enter my password every time, this could become very annoying. 2) I have an external drive which is basically a clone of my second internal drive. When I start FCP it complains because it finds the duplicate events on the external drive. Does anyone know of a way to tell FCP to ignore the volume?

I shot this sea snake off Mabul Island in the Celebes Sea off Sabah, Malaysia. I suspect it is a Hydrophis sp. but which one? H. melanosoma? [vimeo]33640653[/vimeo] Thanks,

Bugger! I didn't know there was a trial program. Oh well. I think I was a little ambitions for my first project. I imported 2 hours of footage from a recent trip to Borneo and I also selected transcoding and analysing. The background tasks of transcoding, analysis and rendering has been going for 8 hours and is only 67% done. It is also taking up 100-150% of the MBPs CPU (dual core). I guess it will be done by morning.

As above, it all depends on the fluorescent pigments you are trying to excite. Different pigments have different excitation wavelengths and you'll need your light source to have sufficient light in the wavelength of the pigment you want to work with. Ideally, you want a light source that has an even spectrum from around 400 to 500nm to cover most pigments, although there are some that have excitation maxima even higher than 550nm. HID is probably going to go close enough. I have used the UK Light Cannons with Charlie's filters on the GBR and they work very well.

Despite the dirty deeds Apple may have done and may still be doing, I have bought FCP X now and it is downloading. I managed to get it for 25% off thanks to the App Store being tied to my Apple ID which is tied to iTunes. The local servo has a 2 x $20 iTunes cards for $30.

Couldn't it simply be getting out of sync because it is playing on YouTube over the 'net?

Thanks, Drew.

Reading through this thread it seems FCP X would be right for me. Before I spend the AU$320, I wanted to make sure I'm not missing something. I'm new to video (had a GoPro for 2 months and housed my D7000 for the first time last weekend) and don't see myself needing to do any professional editing. I plan to use video to capture things that still just doesn't do justice - like a cuttlefish changing colours - and also recording dive trips. I have used iMovie '09 to create some projects and it found it pretty easy to use. One thing that annoys me is I end up with two copies of the captured media files. From what I have read FCP X lets me import the media files, leaving them in place. As both the GoPro and D7000 use H.264 will FCP X still make a(n optimised) copy? I would also like to be able to have more power over colour adjustments. Is FCP X better than iMovie for that? I'm not sure I understand the lack of multi-camera support. Will I still be able to pull in footage from the GoPro and D7000 into the one Event Library and make a project that combines both? For stills, Lightroom gives me all the control I need and it looks like FCP X might be like a AV equivalent of Lightroom. Edit: I should add that I have started looking through the Ken Stone tutorials and it all looks pretty straightforward. Thanks,

I can't explain why you had problems but I know loads of people that have upgraded their MBPs and have had no issues at all. They have also been very pleased with the results. Obviously, you need to ensure that the replacement parts are compatible, and that is the great value from OWC - the let you know exactly which parts can be used with which machine.

It is a tad cheesy, but works (and works well) because the world depicted in the accompanying video (and every other DA doco) is indeed wonderful.

They aren't as limited as you might think. Other World Computing is a fantastic source for Mac upgrades and you can pretty much upgrade anything you can on a Windows PC. I bought a MacBook Pro around 12 months ago (my first ever Mac). It came with 4GB RAM and a 320GB HDD (the smallest I could get). I immediately replaced the 4GB RAM with 8GB and the 320GB HDD with a 500GB HDD at much less than what Apple would have charged to provide the MBP with 8GB and 500GB. I have since replaced the optical drive (which I was rarely using) with a 750GB drive to beef up my storage capabilities. I you really wanted to beef up the speed, you could replace the primary drive with an SSD and have a standard HDD in the second bay. Of course, that's if you want to go down the Mac route. I'm very happy with my decision and much prefer the Mac over Windows (although I do have some minor gripes).

I took the D7000 for it's first underwater excursion yesterday and I must say it was very easy to use. Stills was no different than the D300. Switching to video was easy - switch mode from M to A, turn on liveview, focus and start video. I used a VR lens (which you can hear most of the time) and I can only imagine how shaky it will be if I use my 60mm f/2.8D. The footage is noting earth shattering but I'm pleased with a first effort. Stills are still my thing but being able to shoot video will be fun. I realise now that I'll have to get a proper video light if I want to get serious. [vimeo]33458790[/vimeo] Note I also had my GoPro mounted on the rig. During the dive I got buzzed by a large school of 60cm+ yellow-tail kingfish. In the excitement, I completely failed to get any footage - even though they were rushing around me for over a minute.

Can't say I have experienced the same thing with my 3 Ikelite housings I have owned and used. I have a brand new D7000 housing and the controls feel just the same as my two year old D300 housing. No sloppiness at all.

If the shot was well exposed, etc., in the first place. If it wasn't, JPEG can be quite limiting. Raw gives you much better capabilities if the original shot was less than ideal.

Actually, I do agree with what your saying, to a point. If Stoo isn't going to make use of the raw files he may as well shoot JPEG. It will be simpler, quicker and also save space. The only reason I didn't recommend it is that down the track when Stoo becomes proficient at processing raw files, there won;t be the opportunity to go back and reprocess some of the early shots which might include some gems that had some wrong settings and so the best can't be got out of them. For the first month or so after I got my first DSLR (a D70 in 2005) I shot JPEG. I really regret it now as there are some shots (pets when they were young) that I'd really like to be able to get more out of.

It is a brilliant photo and it is not surprising it was featured. Well done!

What exactly are you trying to do? NEF files are a Nikon raw format and as such there is no direct conversion to JPEG. The raw format stores the data pretty much directly from the sensor and it would have to be interpreted. However, Nikon nicely stores a JPEG inside the NEF file based on the camera settings at the time the photo was taken. That's basically what gets displayed on the LCD. ExifTool can extract the JPEG so you can save it as a .JPG. While that will give you a file as a JPEG, you really want to process the file as a raw otherwise there's little point to shooting raw. When you process a raw file you have a lot more options available to you. For example (and this is just the tip of the iceberg), white balance. A raw file knows nothing of white balance. It can store what the camera was set to when the photo was taken but it does not at all change the raw image. This means if you set the wrong white balance on the camera when you took the photo and you shot raw, you can set the white balance of the processed image to whatever you like. If you had the JPEG (including what is stored inside the raw file) the set white balance has already been applied and you are limited in how much you can adjust the image. Best to shoot raw and process with something that can understand raw and give you the full value of raw. If your processing tool doesn't support raw, does it support DNG? Adobe have a free converter from raw to DNG.

It is very easy to remove the drive from a MacBook Pro and mount into an enclosure. You could then copy the data off it. Other World Computing has videos and other guides that will help.

I was at Kapalai for a week in October and we dived 3 days (10 dives) at Sipadan, 4 dives at Mabul (2 on the house reefs), 2 dives off Siamil, one dive at Kapalai that wasn't in the house reef and then one afternoon dive (just after we arrived) and 4 night dives on the house reef. (Sipadan Water Village is on Mabul Island.) I think the house reef at Kapalai was slightly better - I only saw two flamboyant cuttlefish on the whole trip and both were at Kapalai and one of the house reef there, but there is certainly nothing wrong with the house reefs off Mabul. No matter where you stay, they have boats and will take you just about anywhere. You can see my photos from the trip in my dive log in my signature.