Well, I had a blast on Bonaire the second week of September. Ellen, Jake, Tim, and Tim's group: enjoyed meeting you all and the night dive. Tim, I hope you got your charger working better for your vid light.

I have a gallery of photographs I took on my dives now posted on my website: http://digitaldiver.net. Follow the link to "Galleries" and Bonaire is the first gallery on the list. I am going to add a slide show and an edited video, too, but those will take a while to get ready.

For those thinking about digital photography, the equipment used for these shots is as follows:

Olympus C-4040Z camera
Olympus PT-010 housing
Sea & Sea YS-90DX Strobes (2)

Absolutely stupendous, Jeff! What a wonderful site and photos. Oh...to be there right now! Carole

What wonderful pics Jeff! Oooooh....PBD...go away!!

Jeff,
Great pictures!! Did you touch any of them up? Just wondering because we are looking at digital cameras for our next Bonaire trip. We use an MX-10 and Nikonos V right now and took 23 rolls of pictures in Bonaire and another 23 rolls in St. Lucia. You had such great colors in your photos. Your french angel and flounder shots were fantastic. Brings back many happy memories. Thanks for sharing with us.
Debbie

Jeff, Your pictures are incredible and I really enjoyed your trip report and great web site!!!! Thanks for sharing with us!!!!

Thanks to all for your kind words.

Deborah, In Photoshop 7 I open the picture, crop a little if I don't like the original composition (maybe about 1/3 of my new gallery has been cropped), then I hit the "Auto Color" button. Most of the time, I get a slight improvement in color, which I accept or if I like the camera's version better I reject it and go to the next step, which is the "Unsharp Mask" filter for a little extra sharpness for web delivery. Then I save the PSD file as my archive. Version 7 has a batch mode for opening each PSD and creating the JPG file for the internet, so that is a semi-automatic function. Then I use a little freeware program called "PhotoPage" to generate the html page with the gallery.

As far as "retouching", you would have to be better with Photoshop than I am to make a bad picture good. I know some people who can, but not me. I can take a good picture and optimize it, but that is about as far as my PS talent goes.

jeff, great pics!

Thanks for the tips, Jeff. Carole

Jeff,
Thanks for the advice.
Debbie

Jeff, I noticed the little crinoid shrimps on your black and white crinoid shot from Bonaire 02 and wondewred if you had noticed them

Honestly, Seb, no I didn't see them until now. I can clearly see them, and sure wish I had seen them when I took the shot. I would have taken some macro shots at the same time. Thanks for pointing them out. From now on, I will give those photogenic crinoids a closer look before I start shooting.

Wish my eyesight was the same as it was when I was 20, too.

I think there is some kind of little shrimp on the sponge in the frogfish shots, too, but it could be just flotsam and jetsom.

Jeff,
Great photos!
Seb and Jeff: where do you see those shrimp? I guess it's time for new glasses - I see nothing but crinoid.

On the branch about in the middle of the right side of the crinoid (I am doing this from memory, so that is "approximately" where it is), there is a white spot right in the middle of the spine of the crinoid arm. There are actually 3 that I can see (again, from memory). Those spots are crinoid shrimp, not backscatter.

I saw an eel in June 2002 that I haven't been able to ID. It was Yellow with black spots about as big as a small to medium spotted eel. Does anyone know what this is?

Here are a couple of cropouts, as good as I could get without a macro lens, they are elusive guys

oops, could be firewall again

That darn firewall again!

Here is a natural light shot with the orange color correction filter


and here is a flash closeup

I took my picture on the highest resolution possible on the 4 Megapixel C-4040. Just for fun, I am going to go into Photoshop and crop down on those little guys and see how much definition that camera has.

A fun project for this evening. If you don't see a post here, you'll know why ;^)

Jeff : Nice pictures. I have a digital photo question for you or anyone else with some digital knowledge...Is there any underwater housings that fit a Toshiba digital camera? My wife can purchase a Toshiba digital camera at cost, but I never heard anyone talking about using a Toshiba camera with an underwater housing.

We were looking to buy one, but if we do I wanted to be able to get a housing for it. Any info from anyone on Toshiba digital cameras and/or housings for them would be greatly appreciated.

Jeff,

Beautiful pictures, was the vis as good as it looks?

if your looking for a site that tells what housing are available for any camera made, the best site i think is http://www.digideep.com/
just look the camera you have and it will tell you (and also show you most) all the housings available

hi jeff
nice pictures as usual. i really don't have a site to post mine yet. maybe i can get going on that soon. had a few turn out pretty good. definetly need to work on more lighting though.
need to save some pennies.

Jeff Raykos: Don't know about the Toshiba, but I am not hopeful. Tim has given you a good lead here. If there is a housing anywhere in the world for your camera, it will be listed on digideep. It's nice to buy at cost, but it's no bargain if it won't do what you want to do.

"Bang for the Buck" probably goes to Sony DSC series with its housing or Olympus C-X0X0 with its housing. Sony is smaller, Oly has more control features and is easier to get a strobe for. That's the digital camera for diving market summary in 25 words or less. Tim has a beautiful camera (Sony 707) in an equally beautiful housing (Amphibico), but is struggling with lighting issues. You have just opened a huge can of worms and you'll never get the lid back on, but it's also a can full of fun. Make a choice and dive in.

Scott: I was a little disappointed in the visibility compared to September last year. It was good this year -- maybe 60 to 70 feet, but last year we had 80 to 100 every day. It also looked to me like the locals need to back off the fishing a little and let some of the large predatory fish come in and clean up the brown chromis. Saw very few barracuda, very few tarpon, and the largest grouper I saw was barely 18 inches.

Tim: Thanks for the kind words. Maybe your ISP has a homepage option? Most do. When you start shopping for a strobe for your 707, let me know and I will see what info I can dig up.

hi jeff
already looking for light. trying to make this not very painful, but it doesn't look good. sent the housing to amphibico with my concerns, we'll see how they address them. all in all i was very happy with the first time out. some turned out well. amphibico also reccomends that i get a hid light rather than a strobe setup. it looks a little cheaper because of the ttl sensor option, but we'll see. if you have any imput it would be greatly appreciated, as well as anyone else out there.

oh jeff,

we'll be heading to cozumel in january or february
for a long weekend. if you have any interest, your welcome to join. not really the photo paradise because of the current, but vis is always incredible.

Digital camera experts,
We are in the market for a digital camera before our next Bonaire excursion in May and need some hands-on advice. We are leaning towards the Sony F707 but there seems to be a problem with wide angle shots and the Ikelite housing. Does anyone have experience with this problem and are you having to crop the picture much? How much?

As a general question for all digital cameras why would an external macro lens be needed if the camera already has a macro mode? What are the pros and cons to having an external macro lens?

We are currently using a Nikonos V and a Sea & Sea MX10 which take excellent pictures but we want to expand to digital that we can use on land and underwater.

Any comments will be greatly appreciated, either first hand or hearsay.

Jake - If this needs to be moved to another topic I know you will take care of it for me, thanks.

Debbie

Debbie,

This appears to be a fine place to post the question. As far as digicams go - I love my new Sony F707, but am still having housing problems (can't figure out what I want vs. what I can finanicially justify). I spoke with Tim about his Amphibico housing and that's now off the list.

Ikelite seems to be the best bang for the back, with the most access to the controls. Size is a big drawback if one were to travel with this housing - I hadn't heard about wide angle problems, though. Can you tell me more?

If money were no object, then Gates' Pro housing might be an option - they also have a number of external add-on lenses.

Jake

Jake,

The 707 is our first choice but since we will use it as much underwater as on land we want to make sure we are as happy with the housing and add-on options as with the camera itself.

The Gates is definitely the way to be the happiest, except for the cost.

Check out this website and read the note at the bottom of the page concerning some of the wide angle lenses.

www.marinecamera.com/ikelite_sony707.html

When you get your housing and have played with it some we would definitely like some feedback.

Thanks as usual for all your help.

We need to make you a t-shirt that says:
WILL WORK FOR KRISPY KREMES.

Have a great day!
Debbie

hi debbie

i have the amphibico housing, and have had some problems of which i am dealing with amphibico as we speak. it was my first time with the camera underwater when i dove with jake, jeff and ellen a few weeks back and i found a few things out about the housing. the camera is great by the way. if you were going to shoot only on auto mode, or at least set your parameters before you closed the box, the amphibico works well. its very comfortable to carry and shoot with. but if you like to tweak the settings, its doesn't offer enough freedom there. i shot with my video light attached which worked at night, but not well during the day. i am now looking into alternatives in lighting. i did not have a color correcting lense at the time and have one now. the macro setting on the camera worked really well. it has to be set before you dive, but thats ok with me. i only shoot macro anyway. hope this helps.

jake if you could tell me how to attach pictures i could post a few here.

i second jeff farris 's comment about the sony dsc series being a great cam for the buck. ellen shoots some great pictures with it and i dove with guy from atlanta a few weeks back in bonaire and he will be sendng me some of his pictures soon. if he doesn't mind i'll post some here. they looked pretty good what i saw

OK, so in addition to the digital stills I took, I shot some video, too.

I apologize for the file sizes, but if I compress them more, it's not worth bothering.

http://www.digitaldiver.net
Hit the link for Bonaire September 2002 then, at the top of the page is the link for the video. It's available in two sizes, one for broadband and one for dial-up. Please right click and download to your harddrive, instead of just clicking and locking up my server.

Hope you enjoy.

jeff, tried to run the video, but my pc doesn't recognize the format. is that for mac only? or am i out of date.

It's a Quick-time movie. Http://www.quicktime.com.

Jeff, the site (and the pictures) look great!

Tim, Martin is right, it is QuickTime. You can download the program free from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qt/

After you install they will try to get you to upgrade to the pro version, but that is not necessary to watch (only to create).

Sorry, probably should have made a notation of that on the movie's web page.