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Sorry about previous post....

Still miss the cold water of home, but it was an interesting experience !!

Ciao for now,
Craig

That's better.....

Now to watch the Flames trounce the Sharks.

Ciao
Craig

Wow! Great pictures, thanks for getting them posted.

Flames are up 2 to 1, but I'm still pulling for the Sharks! I mainly just want the maximum # of games in every series

Excellent pictures, Craig.

Thanks, again, Craig...absolutely gorgeous shots! CArole

Craig,

Gorgeous pictures - thanks so much for sharing!

Belinda

Cool Pics! Wondering what kind of camera setup you were using. Thanks.

Great pics Craig!!!!

Thanks for sharing them with us!!!

Nice shots!

Thanks for the kind words !

Pictures all taken with an Olympus 5050Z camera in an Olympus PT015 housing. No external strobe.

Without the external strobe, most pictures required processing to reduce the blue-green tinge from the water, and some needed additional fill-in flash lighting to compensate for darkness.

Strongly recommend the olympus camera, and maybe the housing....but an external strobe is an absolute necessity to get more than scrap-book photos. Having second thoughts now about selling my Ikelite housing and strobe......

Ciao,
Craig

Craig, not helping my PBD at all! Great shots!

Hi Craig,

I'm a novice when it comes to UW pics. The pics you posted have excellent color and lighting. So, when you say, "most pictures required processing...and some needed additional...lighting," did you do those things to your pics with a particular program? How difficult is it to use? What did the picures look like before you made the changes to them? Thanks

Larry, Here are the original images for comparison (other than resized 640x480 and compressed to <50K per image for upload).

You'll notice there is a decidedly blue - turquoise green tinge to the entire image. This is a result of shooting pictures with a digital camera without an external strobe in clear tropical water.

Using a photo editing software package (I use Ulead "PhotoImpact"...many others use Adobe PhotoShop or PhotoShop Elements) you can adjust the saturation of color across the spectrum or only in a select color band. I tell the software to select only the blue/green "water" color and reduce it's intensity. This results in "popping" the natural colors out in an image.

Despite what it sounds like, this is a fairly easy process....most software has an "auto adjust" feature which works some of the time. I prefer the totally manual adjustments as I get a more refined final image.

Here's the originals....









Ciao for now.

Craig

I just bought a c5050z, so I really want to see those originals! Please repost.

oh wait, now they loaded for some reason. never mind...

Ok one q: Do you use any kind of red filter? If so, what kind and where did you get it?

Based on the originals, I'm now feeling a little buyers remorse that I bought the c5050z - the post processing you did is rather signficant. Oh well. I guess it'll still be better than what I had. Though now I'm thinking I needed to spring for the strobe..

Anyone know if I spring for the strobe, is it hard to set up for use with the pt-015?

Cosimo,

No filter on the camera, or housing. I dive 99.9% of the time in British Columbia and a filter is not necessary here.

Don't remorse the 5050 purchase, it is an astounding under water camera....when paired with the correct under water strobe lighting system. The blue tint in the original photos is due to insufficient lighting power from only the built in flash on the 5050 (any small digital camera would suffer the same ills....)

There are many suitable strobes for the PT015...for "automatic" mode many people like the Inon D-180. For more creative control, many like the Ikelite DS125, the Inon Z220-s, or the Sea & Sea YS90-dx. Any of these strobes will work well with the 5050.

For more information about strobe choices, please check www.digitaldiver.net and look in the library section for an excellent (and recent) article on strobe comparison.

Hope this helps...

Craig

Hi Cosimo,

Come join us on the Scuba Board. We have several very experienced 5050 users there. In fact, we have so many 5050 users we actually have our own Oly catagory. There are several good threads on adding strobes to the 5050.
http://www.scubaboard.com/index.php?s=