Just booked a trip to Coz in August, I want to hang with Whale Sharks!

[mstevens]

I assumed we would be too shallow for filters.

Well, look at the blue pics cvchief posted...

An alternative to a filter would be to adjust your white balance.

 

[cvchief]

Well, look at the blue pics cvchief posted....

Thanks for calling me out there. One the bright side, I think my pics from last week are worse. If anyone finds my camera on the bottom with the door cracked, leave it. I probably left it there. :0

 

[ScubaDoo83]

What kind of camera did you use for your photos Chief?

 

[Skittl1321]

If you don't have filters on your camera, shooting in RAW allows you to do a good bit of adjustment if you do find your white balance wasn't spot on.

 

[cvchief]

What kind of camera did you use for your photos Chief?

Canon G16 with a Fantasea case with a Sealife strobe. I am still learning and am a little lazy on it. I need to buy another white board and try to do more whitebalance at depth.

The missus is using a old Canon point and shoot with a Canon case and no strobe. She gets GOOD shots. and she took my white board. White balancing that camera is SO easy. One button and done.

If you don't have filters on your camera, shooting in RAW allows you to do a good bit of adjustment if you do find your white balance wasn't spot on.

I am shooting RAW and using Lightroom. I get in there and play with the sliders. Some of them come out ok, I guess. Need to get a wet lens adaptor I guess. I used to use a fish eye wet lens on my sealife 1200.

 

[Zeagle Eagle]

Anyone have a good experience they want to share? Any charter recommendations? I don't really care if I snorkel or scuba with them I just want to experience them!

I just got back from COZ last week. I booked through Mike's Dive Shop in Playa Del Carmen. We saw hundreds of whale sharks from the boat. It was a small boat and the waves beat the crap out of us and it was a fairly calm day. My boat had a lot of trouble dropping the divers in front of the sharks. Most of what I saw was the back of the sharks. Lots of other people on other boats got way better views than we did. None of the crew spoke any English. The only entry available was the back roll and sometimes it was an 8 foot drop depending on the rollers. The ladder to get back in the boat was very small and one rung short of being able to get on the boat with out lunging on to it. No crew to help with mask and fins. I only got to snorkel 3 times and then we headed home. Nope, that outfit sucked. I would not do it again with that outfit. Next time I will fly directly to Cancun and do the trip from there rather than from Cozumel to Playa to Cancun and then an hour boat ride. What a waste of over $500 for the two of us.

 

[mstevens]

Thanks for calling me out there.

The intent was to compare, but it sounded more critical than was meant. Mine from that day looked exactly the same until I did some work on them.

 

[ScubaDoo83]

Hmmm, well I'll just be using a GoPro (or two) so I guess I should just play with both filter and no filter to see the results.

 

[Skittl1321]

I am shooting RAW and using Lightroom. I get in there and play with the sliders.

If you are shooting in RAW, there is probably a bit more that could be done to them.
Kevin showed me a nurse shark photo he took- and showed me the original file and it was BLUE, and the one we have on the wall isn't at all. It would have been a lot deeper than a whale shark photo too.

 

[nodakdive]

Hmmm, well I'll just be using a GoPro (or two) so I guess I should just play with both filter and no filter to see the results.

If you're using the go pro for whale sharks, I'd suggest not using a red filter as you'll probably not be very deep. Any adjustments you make when you edit won't need to be drastic, if you need any at all. I made the mistake of buying cheap red filters for my go pro. They go inside the housing. I didn't keep close track, but I think at about 10 feet and shallower the filter became quite apparent. My Sealife camera has two modes for depth, and I use them based on the depth, and it makes a difference. At or near the surface, a red filter will make your picture and videos look red.

Forgot this. There's a mode on the go pro. It's called Pro Tune. I'd use that. If you view the video without the filter that you apply to the footage in the go pro software, it'll look washed out, etc, but when you apply the filter, it makes for some nice video.