vlad

Eric, I am guessing you are thinking abou the SEAS expo in Raleigh. If not they have the same rules and I was thinking the exact same things as you. If you can do whatever you want in a dark room (increase contrast, modify colors) and you can do the Kodak sea processting thingy why don't they let us touch the picture and modify the contrast. On a second thought ... how will they check it? EXIF info? You can modify those very easy. Let me know if you find more about this because I was planning in submiting some pix my self. Thank you Vlad

Hello I shot this picture on the beach in VA at VA Beach and I thought it is a sea weed but a friend of mine said is a shell for sting ray eggs. Is this true? Here is the picture http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/VA_Beach_1...ed/sea_weed.htm Thank you Vlad

Hey, I have the same thing on my camera housing (not being able to open it when travel with it closed) and I came to the conclusion that it is temperature related not pressure related. If you close the camera enclosure in warm temperature and you open it in cold temperature thatn the air inside will contract causing vacuum in your enclosure. Solution? Don't lock your camera box or cool it off although that will not work because the overhead bins are really cold usualy. Solution for not carying shels in camera box Feed female buddy to sharks Vlad

Hey, DAN and DEP have insurance for underwater equipment camera and strobe included and they cover theft also. I heard DAN is really good and the claims are getting through very fast. Oh, by the way, where are you located? Vlad

That's pretty cool, I snorkeled twice late last year with dolphins offshore on the NC coast. It was awesome. I was both time with students so I didn't had my camera ready so no pictures. I am still kicking myself for that though... Vlad

Hey, Craig, I learned a lot from your writing and I am glad to see that the PC are more powerful now tht the macs. I like PC and I don't like macs but I have to admit they are stable and the OSX is great since is based on a BSD kernel. I left the microprocessor world in school about 7 years ago and swithced almost imediatly to embedded design so the CPUs in my world are more like the ones in your dive computer 8 or 16 bits. I write assembler and C on those and I wrote some assembler and a lot of C on PC. I am glad there are bigger geeks than me in this forum :-) Vlad

Hello, Uhhh, geek talk always makes me hot ... :-) Craig, even from the beginning the 8086 and the M6800 the features of the Motorolla chip are SOOOOOO much better than the Intel chip that there is no compare. The architecture of the Motorola chip is modern (even now) and many microcontrollers are based on that architecture. It is awesome to write assembler for the Motorola chip and it is elegant and fun ... Intel on the other side with their stupid dedicates accumulator register and math operations with results only in the accumulator ... it is another srory. With those being said I could never figure out why Mac isn't the PC now and then I got older as somebody said (I am 33) and I realized, features don't always count ... price counts even more and probably my theory is that promotions count even more. Ibm/MIcro$oft had many many many grants, free gifts, "take this truck full of computers and make it your own" things in the beginning toward schools and universities so then when you get out of school and you go to work ... will you ask for a Mac? Nah, you don't know the Mac. Of course C is (almost) C on any CPU/microcontroller/platform you write but there is always that feel that you are not at home when you get on a new system. Linux ... One of you said is for the geek oriented... Well, yes and no. Have you installed RedHat 9 lately? Wow!!! You can make it as geeke as you want from not touch the command line (a la Mac and windows) to manualy recompile the kernell and optimize it as a router or dns server. I installed gimp on the windows (yes, there is a port and if you guys want I can find the link) and it is pretty cool. It is slower than molases (reef :-)) but it works. I never used graphics on my linux box because I use it mostly as my web/ftp/samba server. I don't even have a monitor on it and I use it remotely a lot. One of you was saying that he would need a raw converter for Fuji and he doesn't know if it exist or how much support can he get. ... The people in the linux comunity are amazing! You have NEVER seen tech support like that in your life. Everybody will help you until you will get it right. .... And if something doesn't exist, just go in a linux newsgroup and say "I heard that a Micro$oft programmer can write this filter in 4 days, I am wondering how long it will take for the linux comunity to write it". You will have 3 versions next day! Yeah, I like linux and I am a geek. Vlad

... (not from the article just from me) ...And the MAC was only 2.5 times more expensive and non upgradable... I do like macs lately since they started to use osX but I am still a firm believer in the PCs. Vlad

Hello, I remembered, There are some more shots on the www.discoverydiving.com Here is a link to one of the pages: http://www.discoverydiving.com/ddc_photo_gallery13.htm Tim Poe's pictures are better. Vlad

OK, Here are the pictures of the lion fish. Unfortunately quality is not too good since I had just flooded my digital camera (before my first dive with it ...) so I had to use my Bonica film camera but you can still tell it is a lion fish. The shots were taken on the wreck of Papoose off Beaufort NC. http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1...d/lion_fish.htm http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1.../lion_fish2.htm http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1.../lion_fish3.htm http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1.../lion_fish4.htm http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1.../lion_fish5.htm http://24.74.150.92/all_my_pics/Beaufort_1.../lion_fish6.htm I am looking forward to start going again this year. Vlad

Hello, Yes, we can find now lion fish on the NC wrecks. I haven't seen any this year (about 10 - 15 dives) but I have seen a small one last year. I didn't had a digital camera at the time so I couldn't shoot any macro but I have pictures of them if anybody is intrested. I'll try to go more this year and hopefuly I'll have my digicam and take some good macro. Vlad

Hey, I like the idea of the fiber optic but I don't think the transmiter or the IR receiver are necessary. The transmitter (I think) is is only an signal-to-light converter and its only purpose is to attach on the hot shue on the camera and sent the ETTL signal through infrared. ... You can do this by simply having a level adapter from the hot shue and a coupple of op amps to boost the signal up for the infrared LEDs. On the other side, same stuff only reversed, get a phototransistor and have an ampliffier to get the infrared signal transformed to signals. I don't know what is the rating on the hot shue (5V TTL - as in transistor transistor logic not through the lens -, 3v CMOS, 12 V serial ????) but it would be easy to build such an adapter. (I am writing firmware in my day job and play a lot with hardware). I think a better idea is to skip the visual signals. We all know that IR is (almost) dead and everything is levitating toward radio. Why not put a pair of radio transceivers (.... by the way, is is a two wais communication or is just camera -> flash) or a transmitter-receiver and do it like this. I don't have any experience with radio vawes underwater but I do have a coupple of radio transmitters/receivers that I bough very cheap and are about 1cm/2cm/.3cm. I tried them out and thye work in analogue mode or in digital mode (as in you can send a voltage level or a TTL signal). If you are intrested I can dig in my reccords to see where I bought those and let you know and I can help with the wiering (it is very easy). Let me know if you need help Vlad

James, You think the slave strobes have IR detectors????? I always thought they are just light intensity driven. If they are IR why don't you think they cover the sensors from the strobe with some IR transparent stuff and they let it to be clear? Now you will make me get home and go flash my slave strobe with my remote! And again if they are IR that would be pretty cool since I have trouble shooting inverted in shallow water with sun so noy I could cover the strobe's sensor with developed film. Vlad

That was a great article Alex. ...I am glad I am not the only one who goes to the tikki bar with his laptop in between dives and downloads photos and change batteries. :-) (Yes, I did get strance looks from everybody around...) Vlad

Simon, I think Ike's TTL controller can't be used on the Canon cameras because of that ETTL. OF course the strobe will fire but the real TTL (set the power of the flash based on the preflash) will not work so that's why your pictures are better when you set your strobe power manualy. I also have a Canon S50 and I am very pleased with it. I use a Bonica slave stroble that can't be set to lower power so it is all or nothing. I have to modify the aperture and the time for the pictures to turn out good. Of course post processing does help. So, Thollida Rent an Ihe DS50 or DS125 with a manual controller, set your camera to no preflash and manual flash and set your camera flash to the lowest power since that is needed only to trip the strobe. Check out my website if you want to see soem results. Vlad

Hello Here are my latest pictures from my trip to Key Largo. The visibility could have been better but it was not too bad. http://www.pambucol.com/trips/Key_Largo_11_27_2003/story.htm Enjoy Vlad

Thank you Tom Found my Wallmart in Raleigh NC and I was using exactly the one it is on that page. I am going to start using their collor profiles. Vlad

Hello, I use Wallmart for the prints and I think they do a great job (probably not pro level but you can't get a better price). I saw that one of you mentioned about the collor profile of the printer at Cosco. Does anibody knows what printer Wallmart uses and where I can get the collor profile ... Not that I had bad collor experiences with them but I did had one shot that I would have liked to be lighter. Thank you Vlad

Hey, You have some wonderfull shots in your galeries. I especialy like your silhouettes and you have one with a garibaldi and a up shot of kelp and sun ... beautiful. Personaly I would have cropped a little bit some of them but I do like them a lot. Vlad

Hello Probably you guys know this but the fish look at their reflection in your camera lense when you are lucky enough to have an eye contact with them. Great pictures! I am (trying) to attach an eye contact of my own. Vlad

Hey, I don't thing it could. I don't know what is the protocol to print through USB but if it is even close with the printing through LPT than you can definitely not store directly the pix on the pen drive. You are right, it would be pretty cool though. (I write firmware too). I think the camera should act as a USB master and identify in its own OS (that by the way should be a full blown OS) the pen drive as another HDD and have a command to transfer the files. It would be pretty cool to start hacking in one of those and write some small firmware to do that. Vlad

Great. I like it! We all are Jake, we all are and it is OK. Vlad the counselor

Yep, I agree with Genesis Virtualy any PCBs are run through a wash test and that is spray the assembled PCb with parts on with water (I am not sure what type - certainly fresh) at a nice preassure and then they are dried out. This is to see if all the solder caught and therea re no loose components. Sea water, as somebody said, if you got power through and it shorted the flash chip inside, you are screwed. If there is something to be saved and if you REALLY can't do anything else, you can open the CF card and clean it like this. As a last sollution, you could probably desolder the flash chip and rig a new PCB to try to retrive the photos. Good luck (I flooded my camera too but with fresh water and then the CF worked without any problem). Vlad

Thank you Eric, It works great. I got some great shots of the moon with a trail and some stars. Vlad

Hello, Yes, this is off topic but I tried yesterday to do some long time exposure photography and since my camera allows 15s I took a series of photos time delayed. I took 20 pix so 5 min. exposure. Now, how can I stack those photos together? Yes, I know you can do it in PS or in any layer enable picture software but I know there is some special software for this. Does anybody know of any of this software? Thank you Vlad