Old School Oly SP-350 can still rock the house - Philippines Muck Macro Heaven!

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RockyHeap

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Thought I'd share a few of my scuba dive adventures in the Underwater Philippines.

The micro scale of some of these critters, is what makes challenging super close up photography. Spot on narrow focus is everything. The black/white shrimp is the size of the Question Mark on your computer Keyboard. The Spiny Ornate pipe fish are mindblowing in texture. The Cuttlefish actively rapidly strobed his ink around and changed his skin color. For most these pics, just think tiny, then 1/2 that size again so then go tiny tiny, other than the 5 foot long sea snake (VERY COOL), everything else in these photos is less than 1-3" long, for reference, that is very fine grain of sands in many of the photo backgrounds.

No photoshop of even brightness or color adjusts on these, only a small crop to trim size. Mass Photoshop and extensive post-processing is for cheaters (grins - some divers rely too much on that, in my humble opinion.)

If one word sums up Philippine Diving, it is Diversity. Sooooooooooo many things that I've never seen before, from Hawaii/Fiji/Caribbean diving.....typically 1-2 new critters popped out on each dive site. I got in 38 dives in 2 weeks of diving. The Sea Snake was awesome, other stuff you stare at through a magnifying glass and say "what the heck is that little orange lump?. The Mantis Shrimp was a major major highlight for me....

Enjoy the pics, and Happy Bubbles to all present and future divers. I appologize in advance for any critter mis-identification or spelling.



TRIPLE Ornate Pipe Fish - awesome shot, rare to see them bunched up this close, and it's one of my favorite shots:

3ornatePipeFish1316727646.jpg



3/8-1/2" long black/white Crichnoid Shrimp

CrichnoidShrimp1316727697.jpg



Cuttlefish was in Disco Mode with ink patterns strobing through his body.

CuttleFish1316727730.jpg



Pretty Rare Green Ornate Pipe Fish. Only one we saw in 3 weeks of diving.

GreenOrnatePipeFish1316727756.jpg



Psychodelic Manderin Fish, they come out at Dusk to mate wiggle wiggle rub rub squirt! ARGGGGG if it would of only been in razor sharp focus! I hated focus and shutter delay on the Manderin Dusk dive and physically "middle finger flipped-off" my camera numerous times! Time for a new faster focus camera with no shutter delay!!!

ManderinMAting1316727777.jpg



Banded Sea Snake, followed him along the bottom for a couple minutes while he was hunting, then he went to the surface to breathe.......I had one shot to get this photo, and I nailed it perfect. Thank you dive gods for the fish-eye wide angle lens, the snake was only about a foot in front of me!


OverheadSeaSnake1316727795.jpg



Nudibranch, mindblowing stunning colors! Photoshop is for cheaters!

P1010042+Copy1316727817.jpg



Another of my top favorite 3 shots, my first free roaming Mantis Shrimp. Stunning Powerful Clubbing front claws. Only saw this one fully out in the open during a zen-moment solo morning dive of just me and the shrimp.

MorningMantis1316728408.jpg



Think Teenier and Tiny Tinyier!!! maybe only 1/4" - 3/8" long body, in 1/2" diameter bubble coral polyps. (crap, polyp isn't the right word, what is the swollen portion of a bubble coral called? not an arm, a bulby thing?........grins)


MicroBubbleShrimp1316728567.jpg



Another Ornate Pipe Fish, youngster with a wine bottle neck/openning for scale...fine fine sand...........cute little fishie wishie.


OrnateWine1316728649.jpg




BTW, these shot were taken with a cheap 8-9 year old point-n-shoot 8 meg-pixel Olympus camera (SP-350) and wet-mount INON AD lens UCL and UWL and Ikelight DS-125 strobe. Nothing fancy or expensive here at all. It's not the equipment or camera, but the person behind the lens that makes the magic happen.

I'd love to get a Oly PEN 4:3rds set-up, but would miss my TTL and Ikelite strobe. Ikelite should reconsider offering a housing!


Hope you enjoyed the virtual dive, Thank you to the Philippine areas of Cebu, Dauin, and Apo Island for showing me a very diverse macro and mind blowing muk diving world.

Diver Dave
 
Awesome shots! No way can I get that clarity with just the camera, what accessories are you using?

FWIW, the seahorse in my avatar was cropped really tight, and about the best I've been able to get.. yeah, I use photoshop for some color correcting and slight exposure increases.
 
Loved your shots. Nice to see a photo on the forum of a sea snake that's really a sea snake, not a misidentified sharp-tail eel!

Richard.
 
See my sig line for all the wet mount lenses I use, and my single Ikelite DS-125. But really, other than the single AD Inon macro lens, I shoot full manual F-stop and Shutter-speed, and leave the strobe in TTL metering.


Shooting in super macro or macro mode in the camera, the closer you get, and lower the ISO speed (50-200) helps alot with initial noise and over-exposure. Also set manual exposure compensation to a minus -1, -2 as it helps with contrast.

As I said, these were all ubber close macro macro shots, so ISO 50 or 100 was a blessing (in 400 or higher ISO you get way too much red push and pixelation for fish eye wide angle big wall shots.


Not too bad or shabby for a ~8 year old SP-350 that I bought close-out at Costco for $169. Grins. Of course, shooting 2000-2500+ photos underwater during our Philippine trip alone, and I dunno, 10,000-15,000 photos before that on other dive trips help.........it's not the camera, it's the person behind the lens 80% of the shots/time...........the rest is luck. Heck all these are JPG photos........yes I sometimes shoot RAW+JPG but it just takes tooo dangg long underwater with a 6-8 second write speed per RAW/JPG shot........I've got 1000's of RAW images, but once again I just don't care for post processing even though I know the 8-9 meg RAW file is uncompressed and I can tweek/cheat exposure in photoshop.

Grab the best best exposure you can on the initial shutter click, then unless in super challenging photo conditions, 90% of the time you don't have to tweek or post process.

I shoot for fun, and love sharing pics...JPG is fine for me for posting on the web, and even prints.


the INON wet mount Bayonet AD mount lenses are great, I carry each of my 3 listed lenses on each dive, 2 mounted on the strobe arm mount(s), and one on the Ikelite camera body. So fish-eye, wide angle, and macro is all available.

thanks for all the warm compliments.............a good photographer is always learning..........shoot shoot shoot.


From the 2500ish photos I took over 38 dives, I cut those down to an awesome slideshow of 150 pics. Edit hard, that's the tough part.

Next trip is Kona Aggressor and most likely more wide angle and fish eye Manta Dives..........but man-o-man was the Philippine Muck Diving and ubber close macro work fun.


cheers and happy bubbles.

diver dave
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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