Learn from my mistakes... I did!

[RonFrank]

I spent a week in Cozumel, and carried the camera on every dive (D200/Ike housing and strobe). I finally started going through my shots last night, and overall I'm pleased, but when I got to the last days (2 dives) shots I became troubled. Here is what I did wrong.

Rule ~ Check the camera/lens settings BEFORE you load the camera, and UW as well.

On one dive I changed from my WA lens to my macro for a twilight/night shore dive. It was the first dive with Macro, and much to my despair I very quickly discovered that I left the lens in Manual focus mode (older 60mm macro), and I have no manual focus on the port... Did not bother doing one shot, but my housing made for a nice steering wheel!

On the last day I left my camera in AF-C mode. I did not realize this was the case, and spent the dive shooting what appeared to be in focus shots, but for the most part they are soft, or OOF. We were doing drift dives, so I was not spending a lot of time studying the viewfinder on every shot. I kinda remember thinking that the camera was not focusing at some point, and even checked the AF to make sure the lens could focus. But what was happening was that I was aiming, and firing, and in many cases the image was NOT in focus. I always shooting in AF-S mode UW so the camera will not fire unless the image has focus lock. I could have corrected this UW, but it did not occur to me that this was happening as many of the images were in focus.

In any event lesson learned AGAIN. I say again because when I shoot topside, and especially for hire, I constantly check my settings to make sure I have what I want. Now I will do so in the future while UW as some potentially GREAT shots were lost all because they were OOF.

 

[Warren_L]

I always make it a habit of shooting off a couple of shots once the housing's been packed, just to make sure it's all working. One thing that I had to do with the D70 and the D200 is tape down the flash so that if it is accidentally deployed, it won't pop up as you can't obviously push it back down while on a dive.

Also, double check to make sure the lens is clicked in. I once didn't quite turn it all the way and while I could see through the viewfinder, it couldn't take any shots. Just a big paperweight I had to lug around at that point.

On my Ike housing, I've also once had the shutter release lever flipped the wrong way. And when that happens, the camera is pretty well useless.

Learn from your mistakes is right.

 

[Diver Dennis]

Yes Ron, I have made all the same mistakes you have. You also have to make sure when installing the port that you don't click off the auto focus. I, like Warren, always take a couple of shots to make sure that everything is working properly.

Another problem can be not pushing the attachment to the hot shoe on far enough, I did that a couple of times...:shakehead. Or the always favorite, leaving the lens cap on...

 

[Diver Dennis]

One other thing I always check is to make sure the Sync cords are attached properly.

When we were in Bali last November, my sync cord was acting up. One of the wires was separated where it joins to the main body of the camera. We were on Lembongan to shoot the Molas and I just had to get it fixed.

A DM drove my by motorbike up to the only electronics place on the island and what I think might have been the only soldering iron there and I rewired it. Great! I put the cord back on the camera and was ready for the next dive. It worked great and the next morning I went to put the charged strobe batteries on when I noticed that one of the screw in attachments was loose. I unscrewed it and damn! It was filled with blueish, gooey corrosion.... Well, I missed the first dive and flushed the cord out as well as the strobe with alcohol and a toothbrush and let them dry. I put it all back together after a couple of hours and it worked!

In fact it still works, I took some photos in Mexico last week. I attribute this to the Hindu blessing we had gotten in Tulamben for all our cameras and housings during the Mike Veitch photo course a week earlier.

This is a Mike Veitch photo

I have found them loose before but I was in a hurry to make the next dive and didn't check.

 

[Cacia]

How bout those pics Ron?


won't this be the first batch of D-200 ones we will see?

 

[Jcsgt]

I don't feel so badly, now.

I was out photographing in the snow, the other day, really putting forth the effort, getting down on my stomach (our snow is wet as well as cold), feeling pretty proud of myself. I had even remembered to over-expose by a stop and-a-half. I couldn't wait to get home to see the results. They were awful. I thought I was shooting at 200 ISO, but hadn't apparently checked. I was actually shooting at
1600. Every photo was crap. I wasted my day.

 

[RonFrank]

How bout those pics Ron?


won't this be the first batch of D-200 ones we will see?

I'll try and post a few today, or definitely tomorrow. Many came out great out of camera, so I don't have a lot of PS to do, so I will post those JPG's. I have a lot to go through.

As for the First D200 shots, no, you can see D200 shots from FL last summer on my pbase website. They did not come out as well as they could have. We had somewhat poor vis, and my strobe was acting up (now repaired, thanks Ike). So I missed, or could not shoot much on many of the dives. But I did get some good stuff.

I need to go iTTL, and do more macro work. Coz is not great for macro, but I did get some on Paradise reef. Shooting manual flash mode in current when something small comes along results in blown out shots without much chance to shoot them again. iTTL would have saved my tail on several of those types of shots.

 

[RonFrank]

I don't feel so badly, now.

I was out photographing in the snow, the other day, really putting forth the effort, getting down on my stomach (our snow is wet as well as cold), feeling pretty proud of myself. I had even remembered to over-expose by a stop and-a-half. I couldn't wait to get home to see the results. They were awful. I thought I was shooting at 200 ISO, but hadn't apparently checked. I was actually shooting at
1600. Every photo was crap. I wasted my day.

Digital should have solved that or are you shooting film? I chimp a lot, but shooting in current reduces my chimping as I don't want to miss the dive screwing around with settings! One reason this was my strobes (SS200) last dives, off to ebay, and iTTL is next.

Yeah, we all make mistakes. Even after close to three decades of shooting, I make stupid mistakes that I have made before. Just when I thought I had it all down, along came digital, and than UW shooting. I have found more ways to screw up UW than I can remember! :11:

I've left my hotshoe off the camera, left my lenses in M mode, had my flash go south without even realizing it, left my camera in Continous High mode (5 shots a second on every trigger press) and many other things that I can't remember.

 

[Diver Dennis]

The first time I left my lens cap on, I spent almost the entire dive trying to find out what the heck was going on...

 

[Cacia]

"chimp"...(is that what I do?)

I don't use lens caps.

I bought those optical glass covers.---I guess they probably get scratched. I am very hard on my set-up.

I need to figure out what limit/full is used for on my 105. Limit the range? but why? to conserve juice?