Diving, Photography, Software and Things - Ian Brennan's Blog

Got back from a week living onboard the Undersea Explorer. http://www.undersea.com.au/ They visit Australia's best dive sites on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and Osprey Reef - in the Coral Sea. This isn't a day trip to the reef, but a six-day expedition into wilderness. The facilities are top-rate and the food was amazing (thanks Erwann). There were 20-odd explorers and six-or seven crew members. Some of the group were a team doing Reef-Watch work both in the GBR and Osprey reef. Undersea Explorer runs a research programme as well as explorer trips for us divers. We were so far out into the Coral Sea that I'm sure we had 4 days without sighting another ship! That's some wilderness trip. We got to see sharks close up.

You can see photos from some of their recent trips over at http://www.undersea.com.au/index_photographs.htm

 

If you're over this side of the world and dive - this is a must-do trip.

Posted by Ian Bren at 1:44 PM | Permalink | Comments   

The Pentax Optio S5i has a "marine" mode that sets the color balance for underwater photography.

Water filters out red light from the sun and so it leaves a blue cast. Depending on the sunlight, the water clarity, the depth and even which way you're facing impacts the level of blue.

Also, the deeper you go the more the other colours are filtered, until there's just blue.

The Optio has a marine mode that compensates for the reduction of red light - it's in effect a digital filter inside the camera.

It looks like the camera is geared more for shallow diving rather than deep diving. Also in close-up it works very well.

But on images that are a little further away there's still a colour cast. We've tried Video Pilot on some of our movies to reduce the cast. You can see the results here taken at Port Turton, Australia in a before-and after movie (reduced for web download).

One of the good things about this tool is that you can fix the cast up once for a movie, then use the "palette" to fix other movies taken at the same time and depth.

Another cool thing is that it's not just about white balance. Let's say there's a movie with me diving, and my hand is in view. I could find another image that showed my hand (or maybe my face) and take that "above-water" flesh colour as the basis of the balance - basically tell the program that the two images share the same colour palette.

We'll keep you posted on how it works on our upcoming scuba dive holiday.

Posted by Ian Bren at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments   

Over at Steve's Digicams site there's a detailed review of the Optio S5i and a gool shot here

that shows the size of the camera.
This was one of the reasons we chose this camera - not only does it do lots, it's small and has underwater support.

Posted by Ian Bren at 7:51 AM | Permalink | Comments   

One of the most beautiful dives in South Australia. It's also one of the most run down sites.

This was originally a deep sea jetty for the cement works that still stand (disused) on the coast. After it was handed over to the State in the 1980's it fell into disrepair. A storm a few years ago damaged it and since then the powers-that-be have not come up with a plan to maintain it.

Where divers once had to take a 700 meter walk to the end of the jetty, they now have a swim from the shore. This is because the jetty has recently been closed off to both anglers and divers.

Petitions have been raised to try and get it open for recreational use, but to date there's no joy.

The good thing about it is that there's a renewal of growth in sea life, including the dragons, cuttlefish and fish.

I'll post some photos at a later date.

Posted by Ian Bren at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments