Thursday, November 15, 2007

Long day for me today....


We had a fun charter with a couple that have been diving with us off and on for several years. I played captain for both dives as I agreed to fill in for a few days at the job I had at the airport last spring as they were shorthanded and I had a light schedule this week. I got off work at the airport just before midnite, so I'm up way past my normal bedtime right now. The biggest highlights of todays dives were dolphins underwater and a good sized Dragon Moray Eel (wish I'd been on the dive with camera in hand for that one). They saw plenty of other great stuff, but those two sightings aren't typical of just any dive day here in Kona.

I've been playing around with the camera trying a few things that wouldn't work with the cameras I've had before this just to see if it could be done with this one. This shot is uncropped, on board flash only, taken from about 20-24 inches away. The fish is maybe an inch long, if that, might be more like 3 quarters of an inch. This camera has a bunch more zoom power than my last one. Purists might cringe, because I went into digital zoom, on top of the regular optical zoom, to get this shot. I tried shooting lots of pics this way, not many of them turned out, so I'll likely keep shooting critters that are more forgiving when it comes to actually getting close. I'm not sure what species this goby is, it's not in Hoover's book.

Good night,

Steve

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve -

I'm pretty sure this little fish is a "Michel's Goby" (Pleurosicya micheli). They're transparent like that, and are about the size you mentioned, AND they're often found on hard corals. Great find!

By the way, that's a really good shot, too. ;-}

Steve said...

Thanks for the ID. With this camera I seem to have a chance to get a passable photo from a distance without spooking things. My next thing I want to try is to get a photo of those little free swimming gold colored gobies that hang out in pukas, I got close the other day but they were too blurry, I've got another idea for the next time I see them.

Steve