Coronado Islands - Dive w/ Sealions

Hi Gang,

Last Saturday, Eric and I did 3 dives at the Coronado Islands on the Lois Ann out of San Diego.

The islands are 18 miles south of the border in Mexican waters and are a short 2 hr boatride from Mission Bay.

For $85, we got in 3 dives, got breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and excellent service!

Eric already posted a short trip report and photos at:

http://echeng.com/output/archives/00000218.shtml

I have some photos online here:

REEFPIX CORONADOS PIX - FUJI S2pro

With some more topsides photos to come. Of course I had to get the UW photos up first, right? :-)

This was my first time shooting all manual everything - strobes and camera, and I'm really pleased with the results.

The dive that we did with the sealions was in the shadow of the island and I was BARELY metering f4@ 1/60th or 1/90th with my Sigma 14mm lens. Eric was smart enough to switch to ISO200 - but it didn't occur to me until later. Maybe next time!

Underwater photography in cold water is much more challenging than in the carribean or indo-pacific, so I have to give Kudos to Herbko and other coldwater shooters (you misfits know who you are!). I find that I'm spending more time trying to stay alive than compose a shot. What with the cold, the surge moving you back and forth, and moving your SUBJECT back and forth too - things can get tricky.

Cheers

James Wiseman

But a good cold water place certainly makes it all worth it.

Yes, I totally agree. But I told Eric before our first dive "Get ready to lower your expectations for how many keeper shots you are going to get." It's just not the same as floating motionless in 82 degree water with 150' viz in the Bahamas.

Cheers

James

1/15 @ f8 - otherwise the 2nd sealion would have been blurred out!

Because of the digital crop factor, you get 1.5x the DOF that you would get with a film camera - which is part of the tradeoff for going digital.

I would have had to shoot at ISO 400 to get good shots at F8 though - the sealions were just too fast.

Cheers

James

James,

DOF is another one of these tricky subjects that should be treated a little more carefully.

The DOF of a 15mm lens is the same independent of whatever media you have at the focal plane. Now you can argue that to get the same field of view a 35mm camera would have had to use a 22mm lens and therefore have less DOF. This line of reasoning works in some cases, but not always.

Right, or you could shoot film with the same 15mm lens and crop the slide to achieve the same field of view and DOF. The DOF "advantage" is artificial.

Yes, this is very confusing. I thought that consumer digicams have 5x the DOF because their sensors are 5x smaller than film.

Since the S2's sensor it 1/1.5 times smaller than film, I thought the DOF would be 1.5x as big.

Sigh.

Cheers

James