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Islandbound

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Posts posted by Islandbound

  1. Posted

    On a recent dive I came across a trio of seasnakes engaged in mating. The two males were much much briter than the larger female who I believe was probably in the process of shedding due to scale color and the milky eye color. What was interesting was the behaviour of one of the males. He drove off the other suitor despite both being wrapped around the female by positioning his body against the female and pushing the other male off. The 2nd male in the typical sluggish seasnake way moved around the female but couldnt rewrap his body against hers and eventually left.

     

    The reason I am posting was the following activity by the dominant male snake was a behavior I have never seen before despite diving with these animals for years. The male rewrapped his body along the upper portion of her torso and while attempting to engage in coitus he began to tap her head fairly hard. The effect was to keep her head down in the rocks. I can only assume this was a dominance action and kept her head down and prevented her from swimming away.

     

    As I reviewed the picture series last night I saw from this photo that the male is not only butting her head but has his fangs either in her skin or pressed against her head.

     

    Just wanted to share!

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  2. Posted

    I was on a dive yesterday and was able to drift onto a couple of stingrays having sex. The entire event was a first for me and a great experience. The rays danced vertically through the water along the bottom while 4 or 5 more rays swam a perimeter around the couple and me. Eventually the dance stopped and the rays settled to the bottom at 96 feet and stayed their for 4 or 5 minutes.

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    The rays were spinning and fluttering in the water...

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    I am pretty sure the male is on top here...

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    Just about to hit the bottom. The male is holding the female with his mouth in this photo...

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  5. Posted

    While I was looking at a coral this shark swam right next to me, sorry for the photo cutting his tail off (and this was with a FE lens too...) Is this a wobegon shark and does anyone have a resource for what the typical living range is for them? This picture is from yesterday (22nd) from the Keramas Islands near Okinawa Japan.

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  6. Posted

    Check the Ikelite link out that I posted to Scubaborard, they (usually Jean) does respond quickly and resolves known issues -- if they they can't figure it out, they do recommend sending it in for service. they helped me a few times.

     

     

    Sorry for the update, Ikelite as usual comes through! Or at least, is going to come through. I emailed them via their website and I have to send in the strobe and sync cord for a review. This sucks as I dont have any downtime planned. I do have a set of Sea and Sea strobes and a dual sync cord for them as a crutch though. Hopefully they wont have the parts too long or the repair too expensive.

  7. Posted

    I have a D90 in a Ikelite D90 housing and a DS160 on the left and a DS125 on the right with the Red Band going to the DS125 side. I have taken hundreds of photos with both strobes firing correctly up until recently. Recently the left strobe DS160 is the only one being picked up during the exposure. The DS125 is still firing at strength but fires a fraction too late and is not lighting up anything. Almost all my photos are at F8 and shutter speed is 1/200.

     

    Does anyone have any suggestions to help me?

  8. Posted

    My D80 literally fell apart during a dive with buttons coming loose in the housing underwater and the screen quitting too. That night I ordered a new housing from Ikelite for my D90 but still had dives to do with no camera available. So... I found that if I slightly bent the right thumb actuator on the Ikelite I could shoot the D90 in manual mode with no problem! I could not access any menu items or the video portion but all I needed was the ablity to change Fstop and Sshutter so off I went! Anyway, these are some photos from yesterday with the D90 and a Tokina 10-17mmFE in an Ikelite D80 housing.

     

    This is my friend Toyo who sadly is moving from Okinawa to pursue a diving career as an Instructor in Australia in several weeks.

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    Toyo and Mijo, another friend I dive with frequently here in Japan.

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    Checking out the corals!

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    Coral Canyon Wall Dive Site

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    The water is fairly murky as we have had high winds and a strong current surge from a late season typhoon just south or our island.

  9. Posted

    I stuck a D90 all the way into a D80 housing without a lens attached and I could do everything from turn it on to snap the photo button. I could even switch from AF to M focus on the left side. All of the buttons on the top left and right worked fine as well as all the buttons on the left side of the screen on the back. The only conflict I could see was the "OK" button and the four buttons arranged in a circle to the right of the screen. That nice new display button on the bottom right of the screen was also out of reach.

     

    The nice thing would be to be able to buy a new backplate as I could then switch back and forth to the D80 when service or repair was needed.

  10. Posted

    I test fit the D90 into the D80 housing last night and it fit perfectly except for some button misalignment on the back right side and then this morning I see that Ikelite on thier website is now to offer a D90 housing. Ikelite doenst mention on thier website though if just the backhalf of the housing can be purchased, does anyone have info on this?

  13. Posted

    For my two cents, if I were just buying an SLR (as I did in April), and there were a suitable housing for it, I would get this over the D300. Being able to house High Def Video with an SLR is just too sweet a deal. I love my D300. I really do. But I don't think I'll ever NEED the D300, whereas I definitely miss the flexibility of taking video when there is something that is just so cool to include with motion....

     

    From my understanding, the D90 video does not autofocus, you must focus entirely by hand.

  15. Posted

    This is my first large scale panoramic, the ship is just over 100meters long at a depth of 43 meters. I think I finally found the exposure trick to make sure each frame looked fairly similar but I also lucked out that the visiblity remained fairly constant for the photos. There are three divers with doubles near the stern if you can find them that will give you an idea of the scale.

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  17. Posted

    Recently I have been diving a number of wrecks at the 130 to 150 foot range and have been taking some photos with mixed success. What I am trying to do is make some panoramics but the lack of light is killing me and I dont know what to do about it. Because of the size of the ships being photographed I cannot get close enough to use a strobe etc and must shoot ambient. With our normal visibility around 25 meters there is a bit of natural light available but under any overhanging part of the ship there is almost no light penetration.

     

    Any additional remarks on composition or suggestions on a better angle would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks!

     

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  20. Posted

    Do I understand that these were photographed with a fisheye lens and then assembled? How did you deal with the distortion if so?

     

    Took the Tokina 10-17FE lens and shot 5 frames with minimal overlap and used PS Elements to stitch these together. I am not sure what the color differences are between some of the frames. Is there software to smooth out the color and or exposure differences?

     

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  22. Posted

    Are there any special techniques to control lighting on a large scene when its very deep? I was a diving recently with a TV crew (History Channel from the US) and had a chance to take some photos to work out some panorama exercises which seems to have led me to more questions. The ship in question is about 140 deep and the light is very dim with a fairly strong current and silt flow moving across it. Yesterday when I took these 3 photos to make this panorama it was also overcast with lightning splitting the sky and rain. I intend to be much closer to the ship when I actually begin the panorama/mapping project but for these shots I was avoiding the film crew and had to stay high. The 3 divers in the photo were being filmed from slightly behind and overhead for the TV show.

     

    1) Any light suggestions?

    2) Any perspective suggestions?

    3) Any particular lens suggestions? (these were taken with an 18mm at 115 feet or so)

    4) Anything else I forgot to ask about?

     

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  25. Posted

    If you're going to stitch it manually in Photoshop or using Photoshop's Photomerge option I would probably go with a 12-24 rather than using a fisheye lens. It would be easier to stitch. The software I use corrects distortion, but then puts it back in later for the virtual movie, so it may be a less desirable effect than you want. I've done some panoramas completely stitched manually in Photoshop and this is where I got the best results. Most mine were done around 20mm with a 50% overlap.

     

    I realize that the distance to the object will determine some of the answer to the question I am about to ask.. How many photos have you been able to stitch together successfully?

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