Some pictures from Saturday.

[Spectre]

So we were planning a couple wreck dives on some fairly small, shallow wrecks, so I decided to take the camera in case we get our fill before our time is up.

But the seas were too rough, so we ended up anchoring at a shore dive site, and diving that. Unfortunately I didn't remember to fully recharge my batteries after the quick charge to get that last picture for my ebay auctions, and so we were cursed starting to get bored after the camera died.

But I did see my first octopus! The octopus was taken with the internal flash on the camera [a Canon A40]. The other two were taken with lighting from HID lights. The first was with both me and my buddy lighting the subject, the second with just her lighting it while I shot the photo. The ones I took with just my HID for lighting didn't really come out [too much over exposure from the spot]. We'll have to try it with the lights on flood rather than spot.

 

[Gilligan]

Nice shots.

 

[justleesa]

Love the ray of light on the last one!

 

[alcina]

I like weird and wonderful octopus shots - very evocative!

 

[Dee]

Not bad!

 

[H2Andy]

wow... love those last two

the first one gives me the creeps

 

[archman]

Spectre, when you use the HID, do you disable the flash?

Just wondering, 'cuz I'm planning on using my light cannon with my S50.

 

[Spectre]

The Canon has a button for flipping through the flash, the red-eye flash, the 'flash if needed' and the 'no flash'. I tend to do a lot of 'no flash' anyway because I don't have a strobe and I tend to dive in locales with lots of particulate [for example, take a close look in the beam coming down on the 3rd picture]. I tried to go back and take a shot of that second thing with the flash, but the flash wouldn't fire; I figured at first it was due to the ambient light, but I later realized it was due to the batteries being low.

I also have a button for macro. I don't actually have the macro lens attachment, I just set it to do the focusing and such on close up subjects... for example the subject on the second photo was only about 2 inches across, if that. The actual uncropped photo is here: http://www.thedecostophosting.com/~spectre/photos/Fort-Pickens/thing1b.jpg

I know there is a lot of stuff I can do by going into manual mode, but.. well... I just carry it for snapshots, I'm not that serious about the photography. I only take the camera when I suspect I might end up getting bored and need something to focus my attention on details.

The biggest disadvantage you're going to get using a light over a flash or strobe is that critters tend to bolt when you hit 'em with the light

 

[Natasha]

Great PICS Jeff! Thanks for sharing them.

 

[archman]

... and gets more use than any other on my S50 (probably flood through the o-ring there eventually), but forgets it's in macro mode following the stupid auto-power-down. Until I get used to re-enabling macro every time it does this, a lot of my close-ups well... aren't.
Maybe I should just disable the auto-power-down... where's my manual...

I'm not clear about what you said regarding the internal flash and HID. You disable the flash, correct?