Fist 100% "made on a Mac" underwater page

[ChrisA]

I just tried out iWeb on a real project. (Well OK this is still a test. Please see the last paragraph below) Man it's easy. From concept to on-line in minutes. I took a housed Canon A80 to a local dive site 15 minutes from my house here in So. California. All shot about 300 yards off the beach in 40 feet of water.

This is actually my first underwater photo web page made with a 100% Apple Macintosh workflow. I've now switched over 100% from Linux based workflow (except that the server is running Linux.)

http://albertson.dyndns.org/~chris/OML42/Photos.html

Could you let me know how the color comes through at your end? I think (maybe) these images have color profiles in them. This should help right? I admit I don't understand how to make color come out right on someone else's monitor.

PS. My server has all of 128Kb/sec upstream bandwidth. In other words "It's d##n slow."

 

[pknz]

Colour seems fine.

It's d##n slow.

, infact 6 images didn't load for me, and the slideshow seems to have stopped, blank.

 

[Pistol Pete]

Colour seems fine.
, infact 6 images didn't load for me, and the slideshow seems to have stopped, blank.

it has to load all the way and than run the slideshow...refresh if necessary and try again...

 

[Abstract]

Wow, love those photos! All done with an A80, too. Just goes to show that you don't really "need" a lot of fancy equipment to get decent underwater photos.

I can't believe you're so close to a place where the diving is so sweet. I live 5 minutes drive from the ocean, and I'd probably see squat if I had a dive in that area. Hell, I'd have a better chance of seeing a shark than some of the things you photographed (although wouldn't a shark make for a wickedly good photo? ).

 

[Peyton]

for some reason I thought you made a website with a computer WHILE underwater from the title. I like some of your pictures tho

 

[simie]

for some reason I thought you made a website with a computer WHILE underwater from the title. I like some of your pictures tho

When I read it, I thought exactly the same thing. The pictures are very colorful and look great.

 

[yoak]

I get very vivid colours on my end, nice shots. It loaded ok for me

 

[jared_kipe]

Wow, love those photos! All done with an A80, too. Just goes to show that you don't really "need" a lot of fancy equipment to get decent underwater photos.

I can't believe you're so close to a place where the diving is so sweet. I live 5 minutes drive from the ocean, and I'd probably see squat if I had a dive in that area. Hell, I'd have a better chance of seeing a shark than some of the things you photographed (although wouldn't a shark make for a wickedly good photo? ).

For under water work little P&S's rule. There are WAY cheaper houses for the small cameras then larger and more complicated DSLRs. Plus you can use the live view off the CCD or CMOS instead of looking through a viewfinder. Someone should make an DSLR quality camera specifically for underwater use. Something like the Olympus E-330 with a fixed lens that is either already waterproof, or has a really cheap house.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

http://albertson.dyndns.org/~chris/OML42/Photos.html

I'd love to check this out, but it's completely offline.

 

[ChrisA]

I'd love to check this out, but it's completely offline.

It's not dead. It's slow/ I have only 128Kbs upstream bandwidth and the site is getting 800+ hits per hour. This thing runs at my house under a desk and is connected to residential DSL line. It's not been down or offline once in weeks.

For under water work little P&S's rule. There are WAY cheaper houses for the small cameras then larger and more complicated DSLRs. Plus you can use the live view off the CCD or CMOS instead of looking through a viewfinder. Someone should make an DSLR quality camera specifically for underwater use. Something like the Olympus E-330 with a fixed lens that is either already waterproof, or has a really cheap house.

A housed E-Volt may be the best way to go. But some housing have a kind of optical exteder built in to them. I know someone with a L&M housing for a D100. The waterproof housing and other associated "stuff" costs about $3,500. Add to that about $3k in Nikon gear and you can see why ther P&S is popular.

Film is not dead either. I'll buy a Nikos next time I see a deal on one. Then scan the film.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

This thing runs at my house under a desk and is connected to residential DSL line.

Do you not have *anywhere* on the 'net that you can post this stuff w/out having us slaughter your home connection?

It's not been down or offline once in weeks.

If I can't connect, it's effectively offline. You're essentially being given a DDoS.

 

[dmw007]

for some reason I thought you made a website with a computer WHILE underwater from the title. I like some of your pictures tho

LOL That was my first thought as well.

 

[jared_kipe]

A housed E-Volt may be the best way to go. But some housing have a kind of optical exteder built in to them. I know someone with a L&M housing for a D100. The waterproof housing and other associated "stuff" costs about $3,500. Add to that about $3k in Nikon gear and you can see why ther P&S is popular.

Film is not dead either. I'll buy a Nikos next time I see a deal on one. Then scan the film.

Under water you can use all the sensitivity you can use. Thus I'd take a DSLR at iso 800 or 1600 over iso400 film any day.

Anyway, that is the problem with SLR housing, is the optical things, thats why if they only kept a single lens on it, or at least only let you use a single one in the housing, the housing could be much much cheaper. Lets be honest, you can't zoom, so a prime is all you can use. And a wide angle prime is the most useful. So something like a 24mm or 28mm prime that could do 1:2 or 1:3 would be plenty useful. P&S's have such horrible noise and shutterlag. I cannot bear to use one.

EDIT: Oh and since the water/air transition already brings the plane of focus closer, the lens might not necessarily need to do 1:2 on land to do it in the water.

 

[-hh]

Under water you can use all the sensitivity you can use. Thus I'd take a DSLR at iso 800 or 1600 over iso400 film any day.

The problem isn't that it is "dark", per se: it is that the reduced light results in a low contrast environment, which is then also exasperated by the variable absorption of the color spectrum: by 40fsw, 99% of all red, orange and yellow light have been absorbed, so regardless of your film's ISO speed, you're left with a nearly monochromatic green, blue and black scene.

In other words, "I disagree...I'd say its far more important to take along a strobe"

Anyway, that is the problem with SLR housing, is the optical things,

"optical things"? You mean the lens port?

... thats why if they only kept a single lens on it, or at least only let you use a single one in the housing, the housing could be much much cheaper. Lets be honest, you can't zoom, so a prime is all you can use.

Sorry, but you can use an SLR zoom lens in an Housing. Its pretty simple to do with a flat port, and if you know what you're doing, you can also do it with a dome port.

And a wide angle prime is the most useful. So something like a 24mm or 28mm prime that could do 1:2 or 1:3 would be plenty useful.

You can get away with a 24 or 28 if you're using a dome port. However, most people trying to shoot WA with a housing will opt to go wider. Do keep in mind that the WA benchmark is the venerable Nikkor 15mm. With viewfinder, its around a $2000 lens.

If your interest is macro critters, the general approach is to go to a 100mm+ macro lens. The basic reason for this is because little macro stuff often hides down in the nooks and crannies, and/or is easily scared off, so you need stand-off because you can't get the camera body into position, or scare the tiny fish into hiding.

EDIT: Oh and since the water/air transition already brings the plane of focus closer, the lens might not necessarily need to do 1:2 on land to do it in the water.

IIRC, the general rule of thumb is that a flat port narrows your lenses field of view by 25%. This means that a 24mm lens when put behind a flat port effectively becomes a 30mm. It also means that if you want to duplicate the Nikkor 15mm's FOV without going to a dome port, you need a 12mm prime in 35mm, which on a 1.5x crop factor dSLR would be an 8mm.

Now you know why many UW affectionados of WA are still using the Nikonos/15mm combination, despite it being a 30 year old non-SLR (rangefinder) 35mm dinosaur...the modern alternatives simply aren't up to its performance standard yet, unless you're going to go to a Canon FF dSLR, which still isn't cheap.



-hh

 

[Mr. Jones]

Two words: spelling errors.

 

[iGary]

Two words: spelling errors.

Don't be an ass™.

 

[sjl]

Film is not dead either. I'll buy a Nikos next time I see a deal on one. Then scan the film.

For underwater photography, I would have thought that digital would be more advantageous than film. After all, with film, you're stuck with however many shots you take down (36 at most, AIUI); you can't change the ISO setting; if you don't expose all the frames, next time you go down you either waste those frames or are stuck with just those frames; ...

Then for the less experienced photographers, you might want to bracket your exposures, which cuts the shots down to a third of what they would have been.

But I freely admit to not being particularly experienced in this area. All I do know is that my digital compact is frustrating the hell out of me underwater; focusing is too slow, and the shutter lag is appalling. Makes getting good shots hard, although there's a fair amount of technique I need to learn, too.

On a tangent, though, I'm wondering what lenses I should be looking at for UW photography. I've tracked down four(!) housings for the 20D, but that doesn't tell me much about glass. 100mm macro (or maybe the Sigma 105mm) is practically a given, but what else? Fisheye? (here's hoping Canon comes out with a fisheye for the crop bodies ...) 10-22? Something else? I'd be looking at dome ports for anything other than the macro, btw.

All I need to do is save the ~$AU3500 for the housing, and the rest for the lens.

 

[ChrisA]

For underwater photography, I would have thought that digital would be more advantageous than film.

Yes. You learn faster with digital and you can take 200+ shots with not need to open the housing. I _hate_ to open the housing in other then a clean, indoor setting. One grain of sand or one hair on the o-ring and the camera will flood. There is a risk every time you take a camera underwater of flooding it with saltwater. and with digital you can see while you are still there if you got the shot. Sometimes I have to shoot "blind" where either (1) the subject is pitch black in a dark hole and you can't see to aim the camera so the only light is the flash or (2) there is simply no way to squeez your head in back of the camera. Lobster, octopus and eels love to hide in crevises.

But film is good. Film can do some things digital can't. It's the best thing for wide angle shots becase it has a wide exposure latitude. Also there are some good film cameras that would cost an arm and a leg in the digital world. For example a nikonos with a 20mm or 15mm lens is still the absolute best wide angle underwater camera. But wide angle requires clear water. We don't have that here. Still I'm looking for a deal on a Nikonos

 

[ChrisA]

Under water you can use all the sensitivity you can use. Thus I'd take a DSLR at iso 800 or 1600 over iso400 film any day.

I shoot digital at 50 ISO and about f/8 or f/5.6 and even at those setting I have to turn the strobe power down or I seriously overexpose. I shoot at about 1 foot distance and have the Sea and sea YS90 strobe. I typically leave the f-stop and ISO alone and adjust the strobe power to get the correct exposure

If I were shooting existing light then I'd want more ISO speed.

 

[ChrisA]

Now you know why many UW affectionados of WA are still using the Nikonos/15mm combination, despite it being a 30 year old non-SLR (rangefinder) 35mm dinosaur...the modern alternatives simply aren't up to its performance standard yet, unless you're going to go to a Canon FF dSLR, which still isn't cheap.
hh

The canon is not close. NOTHING beats those Nikon lens that were designed to be in contact with water. All of the other setup depend on some kind of "port" between the water and the dry lens. The port can be a dome or flat but it's still a port. With the Nikonos system the lens is in direct contact with the water

 

[ChrisA]

Do you not have *anywhere* on the 'net that you can post this stuff w/out having us slaughter your home connection?

If I can't connect, it's effectively offline. You're essentially being given a DDoS.

You might have guessed this was an experiment to see what would happen. The server log says it's actually working rather well.

Also it seems that serving images has no noticable effect on my use of the DSl line for generla web surfing.

Even with the recent activity these kinds of pages are _very_ low volume. I'm talking three hits per hour average but with one hour at 800 hits per hour. But still it worked and actually did do 800/hr over a 128Kbps line.

 

[-hh]

For underwater photography, I would have thought that digital would be more advantageous than film. After all, with film, you're stuck with however many shots you take down (36 at most, AIUI); you can't change the ISO setting; if you don't expose all the frames, next time you go down you either waste those frames or are stuck with just those frames; ...

I do see advantages in digital in having a faster information feedback loop to work from, but I would be inclined to also be concerned that automatic features would have the same negative effect that using print film has, versus the much less exposure lattitude environment of slide film.

Insofar as specifics, the comment about ISO setting is an interesting one, as a very old trick on the Nikonos is to use the manual ISO setting control to "fool" (override) the auto-exposure settings. Without getting too far down in the weeds, a highly reflective subject (silver fish) will be underexposed when the system tries to make it 18% gray, so this is a simple & fast way to compensate. Ditto for preventing dark (black) critters from becoming overexposed. Its nothing that a modern camera can't also do - its just not done anymore with the ISO knob.

But I freely admit to not being particularly experienced in this area.

This will be my 17th year carrying a Nikonos on my dives.

All I do know is that my digital compact is frustrating the hell out of me underwater; focusing is too slow, and the shutter lag is appalling. Makes getting good shots hard...

The difficulties in autofocus generally come from the low contrast environment, along with the fact that water absorbs IR "helper" beams. Things have gotten a lot better with the high end systems over the past half decade, but there still is a general tendency to use them more extensively for macro stuff instead of "bluewater" wide angle.

On a tangent, though, I'm wondering what lenses I should be looking at for UW photography. I've tracked down four(!) housings for the 20D, but that doesn't tell me much about glass.

As a general rule of thumb, Ikelite gives you your best bang for the buck, and will be quite sufficient for anything within normal recreational diving depths, and "Ike" has a very good reputation for standing 110% behind his gear. I'm a longtime satisified customer of his strobes (I use dual SS-200's, which unfortunately aren't digital-capable).

All I need to do is save the ~$AU3500 for the housing, and the rest for the lens.

What will hurt your pocketbook just as hard is a pair of good strobes, which I don't see obviously budgeted...hopefully, it already is.

If it isn't already budgeted, if I had to make the jump today, I'd get a pair of Ike's "SubStrobe DS-125", which as per B&H's package (strobe, charger, synch cord &arm) are around US$850 each...US$1700 for a pair.

After currency, importing and misc other pieces are rolled up, I'd expect that your ballpark cost in Oz could approach ~$AU2500 just for this lighting piece, although I am assuming "whole hog" with a dual setup of top of the line strobe heads.

The cheapest strobe onramp would probably be something like a single Ike DS-50, which would kit out at around US$500 (~$AU700), even though this IMO doesn't do a 20D justice.

FWIW, I've been thinking about going to digital video instead of housing my 20D to replace my Nikonos...it would be cheaper, plus it would offer a change in media, while still giving me some "desktop quality" snapshots.

-hh

 

[-hh]

The canon is not close. NOTHING beats those Nikon lens that were designed to be in contact with water. All of the other setup depend on some kind of "port" between the water and the dry lens. The port can be a dome or flat but it's still a port. With the Nikonos system the lens is in direct contact with the water

Exactly.

If this optics shortcoming is ever solved, there's also been some negative comments from the Pro's on poor results when trying to reproduce classical UW wide angle bluewater "sunburst" effect that's been so many Dive Magazine cover shots.

click here for some examples from Google Images search

I haven't really followed the exact specifics of the complaint, but I believe that it has to do with the sensor gets purposesfully oversaturated, which then can get compounded in the 'many shades of blue' when .JPG compression is used...creates the blue sky banding effect right on the image's primary axis of the composition.

Personally I would want to check further into it before pursuing a housed dSLR set up for WA, since 80% of what I like to shoot UW is WA; the good news is that these complaints are a few years old, so it is possible that newer dSLR's no longer manifest this problem...I've just not kept up on the news in this area, but I have noticed that the Dive Magazine cover shots still don't have many "up to light" compositions as they used to have, so I'll play the skeptic for now


-hh

 

[sjl]

The difficulties in autofocus generally come from the low contrast environment, along with the fact that water absorbs IR "helper" beams. Things have gotten a lot better with the high end systems over the past half decade, but there still is a general tendency to use them more extensively for macro stuff instead of "bluewater" wide angle.

Hadn't thought about the IR absorption, but it does make sense, pointed out like that. Thanks.

As a general rule of thumb, Ikelite gives you your best bang for the buck, and will be quite sufficient for anything within normal recreational diving depths, and "Ike" has a very good reputation for standing 110% behind his gear. I'm a longtime satisified customer of his strobes (I use dual SS-200's, which unfortunately aren't digital-capable).
[...]
What will hurt your pocketbook just as hard is a pair of good strobes, which I don't see obviously budgeted...hopefully, it already is.

I know that I'm going to need good quality strobes; I'm hoping (hah!) that I can get away without for a little while, and add them later on. Especially for macro shooting, I don't see that as necessarily being a problem; for wider photography, I'll accept that it is likely that it would be.

As for the comments about Ikelite, it's useful. The housing doesn't go as deep as, say, the Subal, but considering that they both go a lot deeper than I can see myself going, that basically ends up being little more than bragging rights, to no good effect.

If it isn't already budgeted, if I had to make the jump today, I'd get a pair of Ike's "SubStrobe DS-125", which as per B&H's package (strobe, charger, synch cord &arm) are around US$850 each...US$1700 for a pair.

After currency, importing and misc other pieces are rolled up, I'd expect that your ballpark cost in Oz could approach ~$AU2500 just for this lighting piece, although I am assuming "whole hog" with a dual setup of top of the line strobe heads.

For a US$1700 package, the current currency conversion is around $AU2400, without shipping. Allow 10% for insurance, $100 for shipping (maybe overkill, but I'd rather overbudget than under), and add on the customs fees and GST, and that would be around $3000 Australian. Eep!

Having said that, though, I'd rather be shooting with my DSLR than a digital compact. It's just going to take me a longer time to get the money together to do that. Mutter.

 

[-hh]

I know that I'm going to need good quality strobes; I'm hoping (hah!) that I can get away without for a little while, and add them later on. Especially for macro shooting, I don't see that as necessarily being a problem; for wider photography, I'll accept that it is likely that it would be.

I'd say that having lighting for macro is generally more important than WA, and generally for macro work, the preference is for a pair of small strobes, since the lens-subject-strobe distances are relatively small, and they're easier to work with in small/tight spaces.

The caveat is that you want to shoot at f/22 to maximize depth of field, which will increase your needed UWGN (Underwater Guide Number).

Personally, I don't do too much true macro with my Nikonos...I'm usually using its "Close-Up Kit", which is around a 1:3. Because of that modest increase in distance, I usually have to pump my SS-200's to close to their full power if I want to shoot f/22 with Fuji Velvia (ISO 50). I expect that to do the same thing with the less powerful DS-125's with digital, I'd have to bump up to ISO100, maybe more.

For a US$1700 package, the current currency conversion is around $AU2400, without shipping. Allow 10% for insurance, $100 for shipping (maybe overkill, but I'd rather overbudget than under), and add on the customs fees and GST, and that would be around $3000 Australian. Eep!

It makes a Nikon Coolscan 5000 with a bulk feeder look like a bargain, doesn't it?

BTW, since we're talking serious dollars, do pay attention to the specifications on strobe recycle times too. For macro work its not that important, but when you start to do WA with big critters, they move a lot faster and as such, their encounters are often quite fleeting.

This is what attracted me to the SS-200's when they first came out: they recycle in 1.6sec from a full dump, which was twice as fast as their nearest competitor in the day. My default is 1/2 power, so they recycle in less than a second, so I can shoot as fast as I can wind, which comes in very handy when I get a nice turtle swmming along, etc...I'll often rip out at least a half dozen shots where othes end up with only 1 or 2.

Having said that, though, I'd rather be shooting with my DSLR than a digital compact. It's just going to take me a longer time to get the money together to do that. Mutter.

Agreed.

And I'm just now sitting here having just gone to Ike's webpages to see how good the recycle time is on the DS-125 that I mentioned yesterday...its 1sec!

While checking that out, I also just found out that "my" SS-200's were superceded over this past winter to become digital-compatible. Now if Ike offers a discounted "electronics upgrade path", I'm in business!


-hh