mexwell

Hi William, the calibrating process does sound wild but is harmless. Not harmless is the price for the calibrating hardware. I can recommend the Colourvision Spyder: Colourvision Spyder, Amazon [changed from url to link to prevent huge, wide window -admin] Perhabs you find someone who will rent it to you?! Good luck, it makes a big difference.

Hi all, I think of this shoot as one of the best shoots I did until now. I like it mostly because of the depth the picture has, even although it has an centered object. Please note the following and then HAMMER ME! - Picture is UNcropped all composing was done underwater - I used my S40 in Canon housing and did not own an external flash at that time EXIF Data says: F/2.8 and 1/60 Taken at Kas, Turkey Divesite: Canyon (you have to dive this site when you are there!)

William, going to school again would rock alone BUT going to school in Miami AND and beeing able to go to Key Largo whenever I want... man you are in paradise... (well diving wise...) Regarding the brightness. Do you use an hardware calibrated monitor profile? On my systems your version was so dark I couldnt see any structure on the breast (is this word still allowed in public?) of the angel. I know it is really different to compare because of those different colourprofiles.... But if you go after the "dark side" thats fine with me :-))))))

William, is it my turn again? This time it is also late but I wrote all the settings down. Please bare with me as I don´t now the exact terms of the english PS CS Version as I use the german one. But they are listed in the same order as they appear to you from top to bottom. RAW Converter: Temperature 6400 Tonal +76 Exposure +1.70 Depth 5 Brightness 51 Contrast +40 Saturation +20 Settings within PS: Depth 1% Lights 40% (I love it) Umask Sharpening 75 Then I took a slightly tighter crop. Ok, I am by NO WAY a PS guru and constantly learning and these would be my settings if I had shoot that pic. Let me know what you think? BTW I love to play with your RAW files its like diving the florida keys by myself... and it seems like you are able to do it every week.... aaarrgghh... PS: I think that should have considered a wider approach at the lovely angel. The fish looks a little "chopped off" at top and bottom.

Hi Daniel, welcome! And your are living no more than 15km away... that means we should go diving some time... BTW there are several other germans on this forum. Simon and Andi just for example... You will love it here. BTW: Eric do you ever thought about making a statistic available where all the forum menbers are living? I guess the new software should do that within two mouseclicks?! I would love to now how far we are spread around the globe...

Sorry David, you are right the pic of the octopus looks absolutely wrong to me. Magenta is all over the place. The pictures on your homepage instead look very good. But I enlarged only a few... No wrong colours noticeable. I use IE 6

@james ...and done with your "old" 50mm, you remember... @simon I just did it, thanks!

Hi Folks! I am posting some more pics from my short trip to Mallorca. Same for the settings: 1/50 and f/10 on all shots. Please keep in mind that all of the posted med. sea shots are from my very first two dives with this rig. After reviewing the nudi pic over and over again I come to the conclusing that those two nudis are mating and laying eggs. Oh oh perhabs they are showing a blank breast.... :oops: who knows for sure... What do you think?

Hi Folks! I am posting some more pics from my short trip to Mallorca. Same for the settings: 1/50 and f/10 on all shots. Please keep in mind that all of the posted med. sea shots are from my very first two dives with this rig.

Hi Folks! I am posting some more pics from my short trip to Mallorca. Same for the settings: 1/50 and f/10 on all shots. Please keep in mind that all of the posted med. sea shots are from my very first two dives with this rig.

Hi William, oh oh, it was late last night... :-) I played around with mostly all of the RAW Converter settings trying to get a "natural" whitebalance and then (what I think made the difference) improved "shadows/highlights" which is a new function in PS CS. By sliding the tonal curves I corrected the colours to please my eye. Sorry, I can´t give you the specific parameters because I did not save the RAW file. I will remeber to do for the next time... Sorry!

William, I managed to get some more details/structures out of it but you wont get a wow pic out of it. The subject simply wasn't WOW...

@NLVAD Why do you think the 12-24mm will fit and only the zoom gear wont work? If I read the spec right Ike says no lenses bigger then 84mm and the Sigma 12-24 is 87mm "fat". Just wondering if I missunderstood something. I would set the lens to 12mm before the dive and go for it...

@eric I guess there are only few "wow"-clown fish shoots because the Clowns are easy to find and everybody tried it at least one hundred times... What I love about your shot are the theeth of the fish. I never saw that on any other pic. The face might be a bit overexposed but over all its a very good clownie.

[smart aleck ON] ...maybe more like 100MB... [smart aleck OFF]

Hmm, hard to say but I agree that something is wirng. My two cents: - shoot from an (slightly) downward angel - the grunts are to near - the scenary is deep but none the less looks flat to me - the different colours of the same species looks "strange" But I think you couldn´t have made much better on this subject...

I had also quit a struggle until I was set on my port choice. The Canon 50mm macro works in at least three ports (along with the Digital Rebel of course!): Regarding Ikes listing: #5503.50 and #5505 and because of my personal experience and the 1.6 crop factor of the Rebel in the #5505.45 (not stated on Ikes page). I also had some thoughts about the Sigma for wideangle stuff but my guess is that it won´t fit in any Ikelite housing at all because of the big diameter. Here is an exerpt from Ikes page: "Maximum lens diameter is limited to 8.4cm (3.3"). The diameter for attachment of zoom or focus clamps is limited to 7.1cm (2.8")." And here are the dimension as stated on Sigmas page: "Dimensions: 3.4 in. (dia) x 3.9 in. (length) - 87mm (dia) x 100mm (length) " I heard some rumors that Tokina and Tamron are also working on "very wide" zoom lenses but am not sure what specific dimensions they will actually archieve.

@eric Here is the shot right as it came from the camera. Only resized and stripped down to below 65kb with the "save for web" function in PS.

Hi Pierre, I played a bit with your image and went for a less saturated look. It is difficult to work with such a small size and in no way perfect but please let me know what you think. Was it a night dive? What kind of lightning did you use? Flash or torch. When I take pictures with my buddy lightning the object by torch I mostl get very reddish pictures. After all it is just a matter of taste...

Good work! I like the 2nd most. It is a perfect portrait of an amazing animal. Regarding the manata ray I suggest to crop differently with less space on the right.

Hello Marioano, great shot and thank you for the present! I will get to you when I go to Mallorca again....

Hello Pierre, I like em but think that there is too much red. Does this come from the flash or did you manipulated the colours in PS?

@Simon It was very nice. Mallorca was still quite, calm and relaxed. Only few tourist on the island. Diving conditions were perfect if you ignore the cold water. My dives lasted 60 minutes and we went down to 25m at most. Viz was great. Even with an 7mm halfdry suit and gloves it was cold after 30 minutes. Actually I had a hard time finding a base which is already opened. I only found two of em. AquaMarine Dinig in Andratx has a hot shower which was very welcomed after coming home :-) I you find an open base near the place you have on ibiza I would certainly give it a try. I would and will do it again! @Tom Yeah I am climbing the leraning curve... :-) Thats what I like most with digital you get instant feedback and lose no time leraning your system. Regarding the flashes I am actually not sure. I have to decide before my next trip but nothing is set yet. I lean toward an DS-125 because even two DS-50 seem to limited to me. We will see....

@UWphotoNewbie Actually I could only to very few dives so I decided up front that I would only use the 50mm macro and (after some suggestions from this community) go with 1/50 and f/10 as f/8 seemed not to have enough DOF for. I still feel that even at f/10 the DOF is far to narrow and will try it next time with much higher f-settings. No dome port for the macro, I choosed a (quitelong) flat port. I had another thread discussing my port choices to extreme detail :-)) Viewing to the camera is a real pain in "something". But that is not Ikes fault its just the way canon build it and that there is so much room (air/housing/water/mask/air) between your eye and the picture. I am really glad that I choosed Ikes housing and would recommend it to anyone! I just played again with the pic and gave it anarrower crop but I am unsure if I like it more...

Yes, the serrano is very skittich and most pictures just did not came out the way I liked. This one was holding its breath as I approached and allowed me one shoot before he ran. I played again (as with the octopus) with the new PS function "middle tones/light" and cropped it different this time. Do you like it more. I do but it is still a "normal mug shoot" IMHO. BTW this one had no very strong blue spot on his side. It was more neutraly coloured. I dived with Aqua Marine Diving in Port de Andratx and like it a lot! Perfect diving although I was the only diver at the base!!! Thanks again Jens!!! @mariano I plan to go to mallorca again this year but am not decided when (might be autum). When I know more I will contact you in advance. Perhabs we could do some dives together?