Pretty good vis off Wailea Beach

[MauiScubaSteve]

Scootered Wailea Point Sunday afternoon (4:20) and found vis suprisingly good. Didn't see any turtles. Below are a few pics from that dive.

Today I took guests off the north end of the beach (Three Sisters) and the vis was just as good, if not a little better. One turtle swam by. The 13 year old boy said it was the coolest thing he'd ever done!

Small cloud overhead

The camera is horizontal

F#@king shutter lag

Hawaii mooring ball (submerged)

Begin elkhorn parade

Scooter skeer-da fish away

Different rule of thirds

No need strobe; real, not un-real​

 

[howard4113]

Dude - thanks for the report. Nice pix too. You might want to try manually setting the white balance. Easy to do on a 5050 - just use the sand.
M

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Thanks Mark, I stopped by Stairways this morning to check out the nearby whale watch boats and while there is not much sand on the beach, the water looked ok there too.

When I first started out with the 5050 I played with the white balance, but I am addicted to raw now. For my ambient images, I shoot in full auto (P - flash off), then sort the WB out with Bridge bringing them into Elements. Particularly usefull when supermanning all over the place!

It would be interesting to shoot side by side with a proficient manual WB shooter and compare the final product. My goal is to make it look like it looked to my eyes, or at least like my rose tinted memory remembers it, and for the most part the images I post fullfill that goal.

 

[ScubaSeanMaui]

RAW is definitely the best way to shoot IMHO... the only issue with older cameras is the throughput for the data (takes a long time to write to the card). I love being able to tweek with RAW!!!

We also saw a whale out there yesterday from a distance from the 5 graves area (topside). We saw his fin and large tail going under... I heard 1 cry underwater but not sure if it was a whale

I also got a Magic Filter for my Fuji F11 which allows you to shoot without a flash 50 feet and above... I'll post some pics when I try it out!

Sean

 

[howard4113]

RAW doesn't provide any more ability to correct color balance than JPG or other formats. RAW simply allows more latitude because you're getting more bits per pixel. With my 5050 I found that I didn't have to do nearly as much correction (if at all) using RAW with manual white balance. This applies to my D70 as well. PS applies the WB settings you set when recording the reference frame. Don't believe that RAW is a replacement for MWB. Go ahead and shoot RAW with AWB if you want to spend a lot of time correcting EVERY image. Or set the MWB and get great results right out of the camera. Now having said that, I just wish that the D70 would allow me to set the MWB at depths greater than 25' or so. Darned thing will not grab a "good" frame. 5050 was never a problem.
BTW I always shoot RAW with a JPG chaser. I use MWB as often as possible except when using a strobe - and sometimes then as well.
Magic filter is great - but only if you can remove it when using the strobe. Not possible with my Ikelite housing. We're plannning on doing Makena in the (Wed) morning. Let me know if you want to join us.

M

 

[howard4113]

BTW the neatest thing about the 5050 is the ability to store user modes. I had 4 or so modes in my 5050 and set the custom button so that I could spin in the right one depending on the conditions.

First one was for macro shots -- internal flash on fill flash - macro focus mode - f8 and 1/250 --- AWB.

Second was for close fish with a dark far background -- macro focus on - f8 1/500 with a slave setting of 3 to fire the external Nikon SB105 - AWB.

Third was for reef shots fish ... with a light background but a fill flash on close coral-- Normal focus on - f8 1/125 with a slave setting of 3 to fire the external Nikon SB105 - AWB.

Fourth was natural light mode -- f5.6 1/125 flash OFF with MWB.

I had all these modes drawn in on a tape overlay on my strobe with icons for each mode.

In addition to these modes, you could always use P,A,or M.

What a great camera. Only drawback to the thing is no TTL.

M