Day off... Tinker's Butterfly fish... Blabber...

I've got the day off today, which is a good thing at this point. I've tentatively only got 3 days off between now and the 3rd of April, and I'll probably fill those if I can... you gotta work while you can get it. I went to the airport to pick up Pat last night - man is that place dead. I worked out there as a greeter for a shuttle company a couple of years ago during my slow season and the 7PM United SFO flight usually arrived full, last night it was only half full at best and we're hitting spring break.

The picture above is of Tinker's Butterflyfish (Chaetodon tinkeri). They were considered to be "endemic" to Hawaii but they've found them (or something extremely similar) elsewhere in the last few years. They're a deep water fish, at least a 100' for the most part, and that might explain why they're just now finding them elsewhere, not a whole lot of divers doing the deeper reefs in some locations.

An interesting thing happened to the camera at this dive site, and it's happened here before so now I'm thinking it's depth related. The camera (Canon G9) freezes up and shows a line of rotating blocks with numbers on it, looks much like some of the countdown clocks you see on some websites. I'm not sure what it's all about, but it quits when I get shallower. Yesterday it was at about 100', so I could only manage 4-5 shots and couldn't really get underneath the Tinkers without it locking up again. I'm guessing the housing compresses enough at that depth to press a couple of specific buttons at once and causes the screen to default to what it's showing. Guess I'll have to download the CD for the camera to find out what that screen means.... I pretty much read just the quick start manual.

It's been cool and cloudy, wet in the evenings, the last several days. We've missed the flooding that some of the other areas of the state have had, and the only effect on the diving was a swell that came in the last two days limited the sites. Today we've actually got some sun... yahoo! It's actually been foggy up mauka around Honalo to Captain Cook in the afternoons, felt like being back in Oregon... only I'd probably freeze myself numb going back to foggy and 40 degrees for days on end, foggy and 66 is almost too cold anymore.

Whales have been out in force the last few days. We could hear them on all the dives, and two days ago I was diving at "High Rock" and had gone out to the spot called "Lionfish Arch" and another name or two, and a trio of whales swam between our group and the boat - unfortunately we were keeping our eyes out towards deep water. The northwest swell was just coming up that day so viz was lowering, probably in the 60-70 foot range, the whales were probably 60-100 feet the opposite direction of where we were looking.... Man, I WANT TO SEE WHALES UNDERWATER, preferably soon. So close.

Later,

Steve

Kailua's really quiet right now...

Ironman is over and the town emptied out quite quickly. Pat and I were running errands today and drove through town and it was about as empty as you'll see in on a late afternoon.

We had a pretty good swell come in during yesterday's dives. Today it was coming in real good from the north, it's supposed to be coming down tomorrow. We'll just dive some south facing dive sites and stay clear of the north facing ones for an extra day.

I've been trying to get a decent shot of a Flame Angel (Centropyge loriculus) for quite some time. They're really tough to get a photo of because they are very shy and flighty and will dart into the finger corals if you approach them or swim above them. They used to be pretty rarely seen a few years back, but they're seen quite a bit more often these days.

I saw 5 of them on my dive yesterday. I saw this one towards the end of the dive and decided to try something... in underwater photography, the general rule is get as close as possible, get as little water between you and your subject as possible. As this is really really difficult to do with Flame Angels I decided to take a different tack. The Canon G9 camera has a pretty darned powerful flash, and you usually use the diffuser to help it light up your subject as the flash is very directional and won't get good coverage when shooting close. I decided to not use the diffuser and see if the flash was strong enough to light up the Flame Angel at a longer distance with the camera really zoomed in. The first of these pics was taken at the usual distance before removing the diffuser, I was just lucky to see it for a moment and get a shot off. The second one was taken at a distance of about 5 feet without the diffuser on the flash. This is about a 2 and a half inch fish so the camera was really zoomed in for that shot, but it worked OK. I'm thinking Pat actually has some better pictures of one, but these give you a great idea of how colorful this little fish is.

Later,

Steve

Short underwater video of dophins on a dive in Kona Hawaii....

Spinner Dolphins on a dive in Kona Hawaii from Steve on Vimeo.
Here's a quick video clip I took on a dive the other week. We were checking out some pinnacles and a few spinner dolphins swam by.... It's short, I had to change the camera into video mode, but you get the idea. We were probably within aobut 20 feet of them when they went by.

Aloha,

Steve

This is an updated version of the last post...

With new photos.... I saw the tiny nudibranchs again, only this time I had my Inon closeup lenses attached to the camera housing. We dove the site that we were at the other week where I saw these guys. Bob took the divers out and I mentioned to look for these. Only one of the divers noticed them, but as soon as he said they were there I figured I had to hop overboard for a few minutes once Bob was back on board (a USCG Captain must be on board at all times).

I was down at the anchor looking around and I didn't see any and was beginning to wonder if the diver who said he'd seen them all over was just humoring me before I saw the first one, then suddenly I saw them all over. Once you see one, then suddenly you see them easily. I may have been generous in saying they're as large as Roosevelt's ear on a dime, they're probably smaller.

From a distance it looked as though they were on nothing but sand, but when I was taking pictures I kept noticing blurry areas. Turns out there was lots of clear algaes or other stuff layering the sand, the second photo does a good job of showing some of the stuff there.

I've finally got my closeups of these, whoohoo! Now if I really wanna have an interesting time, I'll have to grab my camera and do a night dive and really scrutinize about 1 square foot of sand. I did that one time without a camera years ago and found a scorpionfish and a few other critters that were near the same size as these guys.... there's lots of life we overlook.

Later,

Steve

Here's a nice nudibranch photo...

I liked this photo from today. We had just one diver who's been with us for a couple of weeks, so we decided to do a couple of drift dives. I dove the second dive... lots of cool stuff.... dolphins underwater, a manta ray, a bunch of nudibranchs, a large spiny lobster, an octopus... all around good dive.

We found this Gold Lace Nudibranch towards the end of the dive. I probably took a dozen photos of it before I got this pic... either out of focus, rhinophores tucked in, gills tucked in, ect... it finally spread out and I got an in focus shot at the same time. I took this with my Canon G9 with Inon closeup lens and the Ikelite AF-35strobe. The closeup lens really does a good job of letting you get a decent macro shot, this guy was about an inch and a quarter to inch and a half long and the photo is uncropped. Without the lens I'd have to cut out a lot of the picture in post production to get the nudi to fill this much of the frame.

Aloha,

Steve

Product review: Canon G9 with Canon WP-DC21 housing and Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses and M67 adapter...

Phew, long post title.... Here's the Canon housing for the G9, and the same housing with a Duron M67 adapter and two Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses added on to the housing. Pat and I recently picked up Canon G9 cameras and their associated Canon housings. We really love macro shots and saw some amazing stuff on one of the scuba message boards several months ago and were lusting for whatever allowed those pictures to be taken. After some sleuthing, not all posters want to share for some reason, we found the trick was by adding Inon UCL-165 closeup lenses.

This is a common practice by some people who have housings with threaded ports, you can add "wet" lenses to in effect get either closer or a more wide angle look. The Canon G9 and other simialar series Canons however have an oval port, which requires a 67 millimeter threaded adaptor. The one we found is manufactured in France and is readily available through one or two Japanese mailorder houses (google Yuzo Kanda to find the one we used).

Once the adapter is on you can add the closeup lenses... you can even stack the lenses to get a greater closeup effect. The first picture in this series is of a blue ginger out back of the house. I took it with the camera with the macro lenses from almost as close as it'll go. The second photo is what the camera will do with a single closeup lens added... much enlarged from the original photo in comparison. The third of the series is the same flowers with a second UCL-165 lens stacked on top of the first... much closer yet.

In underwater photography, closer is better... the less water between you and the lens the less to interfere with the image. With this particular camera and housing combo, you can add a single Inon UCL-165 closeup lens and still use the internal flash.
I have yet to try the second lens underwater as of yet, but I suspect it'll require an external strobe as the whole front end of the housing and lenses stick out far enough from the flash and you are close enough to the object that a portion of the internal flash will be blocked by all the add-ons.

The pictures above were quickies just to give you an idea of how much maginifcation the lenses give. I suspect it'll be tricky to get great underwater photos with these, but when everything goes right it might be just quite spectacular. The main reason you want to try to do all the closeup with lenses rather than just blowing it up in post production by cropping with an editor, is that everything you can do optically before working on it will give you a better picture in the end if you try to blow it up to any size.... hard to explain, but if I wanted to take a face photo and blow it up to say (I'll use extremes) 2' by 3' and instead of just taking a face shot I took a shot of the whole person, I'd have to crop out the whole picture except the face and by the time I blew it to umpty-ump times it's original size in post production it'd be very grainy or pixellated... you're better off just shooting the face only.

I've been out of the water with an ear infection for a week and a half... I'll report more soon when I can. I did pick up the external strobe I was looking at and couldn't figure it out underwater... I may have to read the instructions... oh, the horror!! I only had one dive with it before the infection kept me out, so taking the fact that nearly every time I take some new camera underwater I virtually always hate the results, I'm not worried about being able to figure out the flash.

later,

Steve

I picked up a new Inon UCL -165 closeup lens for my camera...

This is one of the early shots with the new closeup lens. I did crop some of the image, but not a whole lot. Inon, as well as other manufacturers, makes "wet" attachment lenses that you can add to the exterior of your underwater housing to acheive closeup or wide angle shots the camera can't normally do. The Canon G9 housing needs a special adapter (the one I found was manufactured by a french company, but only available through Japanese mailorder companies) to accept the lens, and with the adapter the wide angle lens apparently does little, but the closeup lens can do great things.

The lens allows you to get closer to the subject while in maximum zoom, so in my case instead of being 19 or more inches away from the subject in full zoom, I can shoot from roughly 6 inches instead while still fully zoomed in. Many animals can tolerate you being 6 inches away, but to do that normally you wouldn't be able to zoom in and still focus.

I'll do a more thorough review later, including where to find the adapters for the G9 housing and similar housings.

US economic stimulus package = Ikelite AF35 strobe???

So far, every picture that Pat or I have taken since we started going the digital route underwater has been with the onboard flash or with available light. We both now have Canon G9 camera setups and decided that we'll take the opportunity of the stimulus windfall to pick up the Ikelite strobe package linked here:

This strobe isn't a high end strobe package, but it packs a fair punch for the price and might be ideal for our use. I'd been curious about it, as it offers a decent amount of power for macro and nearby pictures, say to about 3-4 feet, for the price. It just came out in the last couple of months so there's not a lot of them out there just yet, but a customer the other week had one and is quite happy with it so far. It's made to be compatible with most of the point and shoot camera setups currently available and has a sensor to make it more or less automatic once you get settings that give you an exposure you are comfortable with. Few, if any, strobe packages give you this much strobe, along with a tray and sensors, for the price.

We'll probably take the plunge in the next few days, then have it by the end of next week and be mad we even bought it after the first use or two or three.... unfortunately, with new cameras and such, it takes a while to actually figure out how best to use what you just picked up. I've "upgraded" 4 times now since getting into the underwater photography thing and each time I wonder if I hadn't made a mistake at first, only to figure out what I'm doing wrong and ending up happy after all. I'll let you know how it turns out.

It's not the photographer... it's the camera....

Well in general it's usually the photographer, not the camera, that makes for a good photo... but a good camera doesn't hurt. I lent out my camera to Cathy under the boat and without any practice she got some good pictures of that puffer several posts back. I lent my camera (Canon G-9) out to my wife after her batteries pooped out on the first dive and she comes up with this right off the bat. Oooh, I've been trying to get a good shot of a Hawaiian Flame Angel for a long time and she gets it five minutes into the dive with an unfamiliar camera. OK, it wasn't the camera... it was her... and some luck - these fish are very flighty and usually dive into the coral the moment you get close enough to get a shot. Anyway, Pat really liked the camera (largely because of the large 3" LCD screen) and I wouldn't be surprised if we have a second Canon G9 in the household soon.

We've got a ton of diving coming up for about a month straight because of spring break stuff. It pretty much starts tonight for me and then I'll be quite busy for a while. On Sunday evening we're doing something that really isn't done all that often here... just a regular night dive. I had some people who wanted to skip the manta thing and just get out on the reef. Few operators here actually offer that as the manta dive is what Kona's known for even though the traditional night diving can be awesome here. I'm looking forward to it.

Later,

Steve

Whoohoo!! The power's on this evening.... also.... Time lapse photography with the Canon G9

Aloha,

We've had a heck of a week here. Following the floods of last week, we had a single decent diving day and then things started to go downhill. By earlier this week, pretty much every boat in Kona was off the water due to a cold front that brought in strong southwest winds to do battle with the northwest surf. The winds started getting fairly strong over land a couple of days ago and we've had a bunch of power outages. We've spent most of the last 2 days without power at home.

Yesterday brought in another freak rain. I'd heard last week we had something in the neighborhood of 7.5 inches of rain in a few hours. Last night it was close. It didn't seem like it rained that hard for that long, but our neighbor's 4 inch rain gauge was overflowing after he emptied it yesterday morning. Pat talked to someone locally at her work that had a 6 inch gauge overflow yesterday. At any rate we had rivers in the yard again just 20 minutes into the rain, at least they didn't take more of the yard with them. We've been sort of lucky compared to some, the South Kona Fruit stand was basically oblitterated by a rockslide... they cleaned it up and Tuesday afternoon looked as though they could open later this week... today it was full of rock again, water was still running in the non-stream next to the stand earlier today.

I wanted to try the time lapse function on the camera. I got home a bit late to get the front end of the sunset but got the tail end. We're entering the season of spectacular sunsets. This is the tail end of the cold front, about 58 seconds into the video you can see some rain falling. Apparently the cold front is beginning to wrap around and threaten Kauai again so we may be seeing more rain soon - it's rare that we get more than 2-3 days of poor weather in a streak.

later,

Steve