SMILE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am. I picked up an Olympus sp-350 and it's housing for use underwater, with hopes of renting it out if I had good results. Today I did a short dive (my first with this camera) during our surface interval and took several shots... I was quite happy with the results.
We had some pretty Kona experienced divers today and took them up to a spot north of the northernmost Kona day use mooring to do a live boat dive. It was a very nice dive, lots of canyons and topography. They apparently saw 2-3 mantas (daytime), depending on who's counting, and one diver swore they saw a marlin off the dropoff.
After the dive we moved down to "Hoover's" and I took a "Captain's dive" during the surface interval to see if I could find that frogfish from last week. Bob described the location and off I went. No luck. I decided to play with the camera using the "underwater macro" setting. This setting is really nice. I have to figure out exactly what it is and try it manually. I figure they bump up the shutter speed to stop motion, bump up the f-stop to give a bit of depth of field, and fire the flash most of the time depending on lighting. Only one of the shots didn't have a flash fire, most of the shots were quite workable.
Here's a shot, probably one of the best teethy shots I've taken yet, of a Whitemouth moray (Gymnothorax meleagris) taken with the camera. I took two others that showed the eel better, but this one was great for showing off the teeth.
Later,
Steve
We do have spots where we have a decent shot at finding sleeping sharks, but running across them in the general course of diving is fairly uncommon. I'm pushing 2000 dives here and I've probably come across sharks on a dive, outside of the ones we expect in the holes they sleep in, maybe 12-15 or so times.
ReplyDeleteNot a lot of people inquire... if they do it's practically a guarantee they will run into one (just kidding). Back the first year I was teaching here I had some students inquire right before their last certification dive. I told them it was rare to run into them on a dive and they said that's just fine for them. We went to the final site, did the last skills and suddenly two nine foot hammerheads swam by... I had them settle down on the bottom and two more swam by. Needless to say they spent the rest of the dive looking over their shoulders... they did think it was cool afterwards though. That was 7 years ago or so, I think I've seen one with a student one other time in all that time.
Aloha,
Steve
Lovely photos!
ReplyDeleteI haven't been scuba diving in ages, but I used to work in the carribean for a couple of different dive companies - I hope you're one of the photographers who is as respectful of the ocean in front of his camera as he is of what's behind and below him. ^_^
The close up of the Moray "smile" is quite... intimidating, Steve.
ReplyDeleteI just got the SP-350 and PT-030 for an upcoming dive trip... How is it?
ReplyDelete