frogfone

i recently purchased an Olympus TG5 after using a TG1 since its release. I didn't have much time to play with it before our trip so pretty much stuck it in UW wide or UW macro. I use two Hi-max video lights which are very bright (so much so I mostly frighten the fish). Been sitting trying to thin out my videos and really wishing I'd spent some time on holiday looking at the files while we were there. Everything, including the shallow reef stuff is BLUE! Even in 5m of water, it's very blue and when I try to correct I end up with very flat "beige" footage. Here are a few examples: Octopus: shot with video lights, less than 15m and vectorscope of image as shot Fixed image and vectorscope: Turtle shot with video lights at less than 10m. LHS uncorrected; RHS corrected Corrected image and vectorscope: I think I know what has happened, I think my lazy use of the UW mode has pretty much cancelled out my video lights. Or the lights have confused the sensor. I'm not sure what WB mode is best for UW with lights, the old TG1 wasn't quite so sophisticated as the new camera. Any ideas on how to rescue the flat looking footage? Or what is the best setting for UW video with lights on a TG5? Thanks Sharon

i am also considering this as a general purpose lens so any info would be useful. Pachku - the diamater is listed as 84mm and the sigma 10-20mm lens is listed as 83.5mm so the zoom rigs should be the same. the length is only 1cm longer so port configurations should also match. i already have a 10-20mm zoom ring which is why i am looking at it. Roddy

Laudibaby i think your before and after images speak for themselves are they all just exposure corrected as the shark shot looks sharper and the Nudi seems more vibrant. would be wonderful if that was all from just a simple adjustment to how we shoot. i will give it a try this weekend. thank you so much.

Is anyone using this with a canon digic 4 processor? these are 14 bit so even the darkest tone will have 256 levels available. i will still give it a go with some landscape/cloud shots but any feedback from actual underwater would be useful. Roddy

Roddy used to suffer from ear infections on practically every dive trip. He now uses Docs Pro Plugs (vented) and has not had any problems with his ears since using them. Sharon

We have also had this problem. We used the iPad on our recent trip to Fiji and to be honest it was unusable for viewing never mind deleting or editing images. Roddy installed Cool Iris which allowed us to view them ok but it can not do any more than that. It also looks like we have lost images from the iPad, it appears that the iPad has dumped the RAW files if they have been accessed in anyway. The images that Roddy had looked at with a program called photogene appear to have autosaved as jpg and dumped the RAW files. He is not amused. Sorry we haven't been able to help but we share your pain. Also be careful which work-a-round you use - you may end up regretting it. Sharon & Roddy

Roddy used to have a 10bar housing for his canon speedlite 580ex. It was amazing for macro and eTTL but didn't cut the mustard with WA. It did flood in the end but it was only a small leak which only fried the batteries. He sold it with the 10bar housing to a surf photographer as he didn't need it to be submersible, only splash proof. Sharon

Canon 300D and Tokina 12-24mm- Rinse tank after a bumpy trip back to Marsa Shagra on the back of a truck. One of the locking clips on the ikelite front port had come undone. Very old film housing that had been converted with only 2 clips. 10 Bar housing - few minor leaks due to hairs/sand on the o ring. Big housing with absorbent sachet in the bottom saved the day. Sea & Sea strobe - fibre on the o ring seal. Thankfully only the batteries went BANG! Sea & Sea housing (EMPTY). Whole front port fell off just as we were getting into the water. Roddy had used the wrong o ring on the port which meant it twisted off with no effort what so ever. Thankfully another diver who was getting out spotted it in the kelp so he didn't lose a flat port and spotting torch which would have been hard to swallow as well as a totally flooded housing! After that little lot I insisted on having a leak sentinel installed onto his RDX450 housing. We don't tend to dive in places with great camera rooms and lighting is usually very poor in most dive resorts we've been to. That and user error seem to be our main problem. We now have a Olympus TG1 and a housing fitted with a leak sentinel so I should no longer have to worry about flooded cameras any more. Sharon

Not sure what this is, not even sure what type of creature it is. It didn't move, it seems completely stuck to the rock and I have never seen one before or since. The photo was take in Raja Ampat in Feb 2013. Thanks for looking Sharon

We have just returned from our second trip to Kri Eco Resort. Accommodation is basic, wooden huts on stilts over the water and no hot water; doesn't sound all that appealing but the huts are fantastic and we took a £5 solar shower which solved the hot water problem! You can always do a night dive to get a hot mandi at the end of the day. The food and the staff are fantastic. Lots of people commented on how good and how varied the food was compared to other places. The diving was out of this world. We dived with the oceanic mantas on 6 occasions and with the reef mantas twice. We saw everything from tiny pygmy seahorses to huge shoals of bumphead parrot fish. We did some long day trips to Fam and to The Passage and ticked off most of the 20 nearest dive sites to the resort. Maximum is 6 guests to a boat usually with 2 guides and most sites are within 20 minutes. I can get very seasick but didn't need my scopoderm patches at all. As I said, it was our second trip to Kri and things were certainly much slicker this time around. We generally left on time, got to the site and our guides always checked the current prior to jumping in. Boat cover was great and we rarely dived a site with other divers on it. Sharon

yeah i think it looks better without the hood. the corner vignetting would be easily removed with a small crop or a frame effect. my hoods removable and rotatable so i will experiment once the lens arrives and have a play with the toothed ring to see if it can be interfaced with the zoom ring. i think the apeture ring would be easy enough but obviously i would rather get the focus working and just leave the apeture fixed at F8 of F11. Roddy

Hi Chile shots look pretty good to me this is defiantly the kind of effect i'm looking for and should be even more extreme on the SLR due to the 1.6 crop factor rather than 2 on the EPL1. best of all in the coral shots it looks like you are pointing almost directly into the sun with no lens flare which was one of my main concerns with such a wide lens. Roddy

Hi Kiwi i ended up ordering the 8mm samyang with toothed rings from ebay. Just hope it gets here before im of on holiday. Roddy

http://www.samyang.co.uk/samyang-8mm-t38-fisheye-cs-vdslr-lens.html does anyone else think the rings on this version look very familiar? Roddy

Hi Kiwi i have the sigma 10-20 as well and had the old tokina 12-24 is the tokina 10-17 much wider than the sigma? originally wanted the 8mm just to try the full wide angle effect especially for CUWA with diver in background. might just try the samyang 8mm as there's no focus gear to worry about and with manual focus and apature there should be zero shutter lag as well. Roddy