Raja Ampat with the Canon S95

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Great photos!! I am looking at strobes right now for my canon s95. Have you had any problems with the YS-01?

No the YS-01 performs very well I definitely recommend it. All strobe shots are in manual with DS-TTL enabled
 
Great photos! Nice photo of the Dewi with her sails up!!

Yep like all the wooden boats in the area you have the moment where they put the sails up for picture taking then take them down and start the engine. It has obviously something to do with the fact that steel is expensive in the area as I would much rather go around a nice steel hull modern boat. In the wood category this boat was impressive for boat accommodation and catering standards as well as ample sun decks really really good
 
Were you on a liveaboard or shore based resort and what time of year were you there? I hear that the weather from June to September isn't so good. True? Thanks.
 
We were on a live aboard 18-29 November. During our trip we had some torrential rains in the North and good weather in Misool the sea was calm.

In Raja Ampat there are rains all year round however May to October it is also windy that creates rough seas in fact during that period resorts in the South close and liveaboards go to Komodo.

The resorts in the North like Kri and Sorido bay stay open instead as the conditions are better there in that part of the season, whilst right now there is heavy rainfall
 
It was a good trip definitely ticked the whole range of Pygmy
I was in a liveaboard 18-29 weather was horrible in the north and better in the south
Visibility is not great in the area and wide angle shots suffered we also saw barracudas sharks including the eupalette but could not take pictures
I am preparing the video clips shot with the Sony rx100 I have already a short clip with seahorses
[youtubehq]vyegzx70EcU[/youtubehq]
 
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I am getting quite a bit of PM traffic with regards to those photos from S90/S95/S100 users so I thought it would be useful to make a few remarks that are specific of this set for the benefit of everybody.

I would like to reaffirm that the pictures themselves were taken by my fiance that is also my buddy and when it comes to photography student. In the past trips we have had several occasions where in order to produce the good shot I had to take the camera and shoot.

Recently I started taking videos with compact camera (see also Sony snappers thread and my blog Interceptor121 Underwater Video so I had to make sure that for the much desired trip to RA everything was running smoothly and there was no need for me to take the shots and my buddy would be 100% on the ball in every occasion. So I develop some workflow and tools in order to ensure she could shoot away without getting too bogged down in settings and the likes

The few things that are essential are:
  • Fisheye lens (Inon UFL165) this lens or another fisheye (Fix UWL28 or Inon UWLH-100 with dome) is essential to take good close focus wide angle shots. A simple wide angle with a field of view of 100 degrees will not give you the possibility of having a diver silhouette in the background, will be sufficient for a portrait of a turtle or large fish but that is it
  • Diopters (we have two Inon UCL165) the performance of the S series in macro without diopters is impressive however without a diopter subject like pygmy seahorses are just too small. Pygmy require two diopter and so bokeh type of shot if you like that sort of composition
  • A good focus light. For things like pygmy or night dives is good to have a focus light around 500 lumens. I bought an Epoque EL-1000 just before the trip and for the price I think this is outstanding value. The only thing it does not have is the ability to work as torch, a Sola 800 (dive version NOT photo) would be perfect choice although more expensive. The focus light becomes essential when using diopters for super macro
  • A good strobe with some form of TTL. We have a Sea and Sea YS-01 this unit does not give any trouble. With DS-TTL you don't waste time bracketing on the strobe which is great
  • Good arms and tray combined with floats. The set up has ultralight 5" arm segments and one handle with two large Stix floats plus two jumbo floats. This is still around 300 grams negative and we had to put floats on the tray and on the locline of the focus light.
  • Lens holder and bayonet mounts. It takes seconds to swap bayonet lenses but much longer for M67 threaded lens. This means less lost opportunities and less risk of dropping lenses.
  • The CHDK TTL script. Without this script the CFWA shots would not be possible and it would make much longer to shoot macro. With the camera operating in manual the standard S series requires you to bracket with strobe this is always tricky as you move the camera angle, exposure changes and so the bracketing required
  • Last but not least the Wiz slate. I created a slate with 4 different shots type with fixed settings so that my buddy could go through a workflow and have a good starting point just by going through the slate

To that regard I am actually thinking to selling the slate with a personalized version depending on the equipment you have, any takers :-D?
 
Interceptor, could you please shed any light on how you stack 2 inon lens with the s95. I use the wp-dc38 canon housing for the s95 and am soon to buy the inon LD28 mount adaptor. The issue is 2 current major suppliers are advising me differently re lens stacking. One is saying I can attach an inon ucl 165LD onto the mount adaptor mentioned above, and then screw on an inon ucl 165M67 onto that. Another supplier is saying the ucl 165 m67 can't be stacked directly onto the ucl 165LD without an additional adaptor ring which causes more vignetting.

Is there any way of getting two inon lens stacked in a way that at least one lens can be easily removed under water.

Any info much appreciated as this is all supposed to be an Xmas present!!
Cheers
 
Pughio83 as mentioned we have a recsea housing with an AD mount so we stack two UCL165AD bayonet
If you have the LD bayonet mount you can attache an Inon UCL165LD to the mount, this lens however cannot be stacked with itself but it has an M67 thread so if you want two diopters you need 1 UCL165LD+ 1 UCL165M67
With this set up the two diopter can be easily removed and put on an LD lens caddy for example however if you wanted to just use one you probably also need some form of neoprene pouch to store the UCL165M67
Two stacked diopters do vignette but you don't care as usually the whole reason to get those is to go to max telephoto
Merry Xmas!
 

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