MikeVeitch

Derek, i shot film till 2004 thats when the D70 came out, all 6.1mb of it! I know people who are still shooting film! I did have an Olympus 3040 3.3mb camera in 2001 but those kinds of cameras weren't good enough for commercial sales

Loftus.. its tough to get close to those jellies, they move quick! haha.. Yes, the colour is much better on the digital, however, the slide looks better than this scan of the film one, i think the colour renditioning of the scanning process and my lack of skill in post process messed it up a little I do find that the top left in both photos have the same blue but the first image is blue all around whereas the new one is green on the bottom... not sure how that happened..

actually, if you cut a potato in half and buff the dome with the exposed inner part that works great and it won't harm your dome. Works far better than spit and it is what the surf photographers do

Missed this thread.. am interested in these lights actually, i like your idea of 3...I would need 3 for sure, good thinking. I would definitely go through 1000 cycles though, i dive a lot and am very cheap.. i don't upgrade more than once every 10 years or so The new Gates are also intriguing but these may be more my style.. hmmm.. decisions

quite like #2. how big are these ones? they look like orange tubastrea but i have the feeling more like the size of a carpet anemone or something?

One of the most successful photos of mine from back in the film days is a rather iconic mastigias jellyfish photo from Jellyfish Lake in Palau taken in 2001. This shot was taken with Fuji 100 ISO film and a Nikonos V camera using a 15mm lens while snorkeling the lake in the early morning sun. I believe the settings on the shot were f11 and 1/250 a second or perhaps 1/500th per second (Note to digital photographers, we didn't have EXIF data back then ) It was one of a series of photos taken with different speeds and fstops in order to line them up side by side and choose the best exposed image. For years, it was one of my most popular images and has certainly been published many times. However, I always knew that I could have done better if I had used an SLR camera with the ability to actually frame the photo properly instead of using the parallax viewfinder of the Nikonos. The problem I always saw with that photo was that it was off centre in the frame, although I guess I could have cropped that in PS, that is not my style. In June 2011, I was finally able to get the chance to revisit the photo and try again. I visited the Jellyfish Lake in Kakaban Island, Kalimantan Province in Indonesia, near the more famous island of Sangalaki. The lake is great as it is much larger than its Palauan counterparts and also seemed somewhat clearer, great photo opportunities abounded! Although there was not the pure density seen at Jellyfish Lake, Palau, the lake was very picturesque and the surrounding mangroves offered great photo opportunities as well. After exploring the lake for a while, I decided it was time to try to recreate my photo from Palau and set about to find a good sized jelly to shoot. Once I found a jelly close to the surface I set my camera (Nikon D90 in an Aquatica housing) to 1/500 and f11 (ISO 200) and fired off a few shots. It was apparent straight away that I had nailed the shot in the compositional sense of jellyfish placement in the photo. Through the lens composing sure is a lot easier than a viewfinder on top of the camera! I stuck around and shot several more photos at different focal lengths and all had the jellyfish placed nicely in the centre, the amount of keepers was almost 100% compared to just a few with the Nikonos. That alone has justified my switch to digital some 7 years ago or so The one thing that I wasn't sure about was what the sunrays would look like compared to the original. Well, as you can see for yourself they look pretty darn good, in fact I would say the photo looks much less muddy than the film version (but that is also partly due to the scanning process). The D90 and other newer DSLR cameras certainly can now rival the sun ray effects of film. Here is a side by side comparison so that you can see for yourself.

ya, Hasselbad haha

haha, i am same as him then.. crop with your fins That last pic with the 2 remoras shows the size of these guys. what was an average length shark? The ones we have in Indo are only about 18ft (5-6m) sort of teenagers i suppose

was there a seminar/workshop/presentation from Mauricio about shooting big animals?

great stuff! love whale sharks

the 24s, one of my guests had a demo set. Really bright!

This is now sold out, I will post if I have any cancellations.

I saw those new gates lights in action a while back, very nice lights! Very powerful and nice wide beam. I want them too

In Cendrawasih that is the best time of year because prevailing winds come from the south. Misool area of RA is not so good at that time but north RA is protected as is the whole north coast.

Updated Availability: only 1 cabin left, a double cabin that comes with its own private balcony

ah, well that is good to know. Thanks for being the tester noo.. i don't take that many photos! haha, just two backups, one goes in carry on luggage and the other in the laptop bag in case something happens to one of them

Can you export to a USB or other hard drive from the ipad? How big is the storage on your ipad? IE: can you leave the laptop at home and bring the ipad plus 2 usb 1 tb drives with you on a trip to store all your photos from a 12 night liveaboard? I usually don't bother editing when i am on a liveaboard trip other than import-rename photos, i would prefer to talk to others rather than stare at my computer so as long as it can do the above then it would be useful for me as the manipulation software is not something i would really need...

are those shark teeth? huh, i always thought they were a swimming ray... hahah yes, the more posts you have the larger your marine critter, i think a newbie starts with starfish?

Yes, we stock 3 sizes of tanks: 63 (10L), 80 (12 L) and 100 (15L). Nitrox is free

Update on availability: One double cabin remaining and 2 singles cabins remaining.

I stock scuba pro regs and bcds on the damai 1. Along with scubapro twin jet fins and all ranges of 3mm and 5mm wetsuits, computers are suunto and uwatec. I think the new boat will have same, it will all be brand new then

What was the itinerary on the tropic dancer? Same as the aggressor or did it go north to kayangel etc?

Dave and Chris don't sound like portugese names Sounds like an interesting one, will check it out when I reach civilization

Hmm, I am typing this from my blackberry now.. Why do we need an extra application? Just bookmark in the browser no!?!

What? They let you out of aljui sometimes!?! . Good shots, glad you enjoyed lembeh. See you later in the year