5D in the Red Sea

Hi Guys,

Just back from a trip out to Brothers, Daedalus and Elphinstone. Great trip, saw quite a few sharks & a manta, but none close enough to get good pictures of.

Got some other stuff, though:

Mainly used the 17-40 and sigma 105 macro. Can't wait to try the 15mm FE.

If anyone's interested, I put a load more up on:

http://www.pbase.com/diaspora/redsea06

Overall camera & housing worked very well. Now I just need to hone those artistic skills...........

Fergus

Wow, nice stuff. Great colors and detail. How much Photoshop work did you do to these? It doesn't seem like you sharpened very much, you could probably do a bit more IMO. I love the smooth gradations in the first shot, that is a quality camera and a great capture. Nice composition on the Lionfish, too.

Glad you liked them. I've done a bit of sharpening & some levels, but I agree that they need a bit more work at this size. The photos look better much better on my pbase page:

http://www.pbase.com/diaspora/redsea06

Colours are better and they look sharper. I did quite alot of compression for these ones to get the size down & the quality has suffered a bit.

The first shot was actually a bit of a mistake. I'd left the camera on the settings I'd used for a night shot topside the previous night, so this shot was taken on ISO 1600 and f4.0.

Fergus

I took the Lionfish shot from your page and did 90% unsharp mask, 1.5 pixels, and it looked a lot crisper. I also tried my new favorite trick, removing some cyan from the midtones in Selective Color, which took out the blue cast. I also punched up the yellows and blacks in selective color. I can email or post the result if you're curious to see it.

Jeff,

Thanks for having a play with it. It would be great if you post it, or email it, if that's easier- ferguskennedy@hotmail.com

I look forward to seeing it. I might try to reproduce the look in my RAW processor.

Fergus

Here's the version I ended up with:

I ordered my own 5D yesterday! Anyone want to buy an Aquatica 300D housing?

Looks good, Jeff, definitely an improvement over the one above. I came out with something similar after a bit more playing with WB & sharpening on the RAW file. You'll love the 5D- I had a 10D before & the proper wide angles and bigger viewfinder are great, not to mention the improved image quality.

Fergus