D700 Manatees at Crystal River

My Subal housing arrived yesterday; and I got it wet at Crystal River today. Headed up there with Carol Grant and my wife Michelle.

I wanted to see what available light would do, and shot mostly at ISO 800 and some 1600. Nikon 16mm fisheye. Aperture Priority f8-11. I think the last two I had the Inon Z240's at lowest power.

I'm happy.

My Subal housing arrived yesterday; and I got it wet at Crystal River today. Headed up there with Carol Grant and my wife Michelle.

I wanted to see what available light would do, and shot mostly at ISO 800 and some 1600. Nikon 16mm fisheye. Aperture Priority f8-11.

I'm happy.

As well you should be. How about doing the Rainbow River with a slightly longer lens. Those gar and snapping turtles are awaitin'.

Jeff,

Excellent images, I am envious. Available light and ISO 800, the D700 yields impressive results.

James

Jeff,

 

Excellent images, I am envious. Available light and ISO 800, the D700 yields impressive results.

 

James

Very nice all excellent images. Capturing the babe nursing was pretty cool. Haven't see that in 3 trips.

Hey buddy , impressive quality at such high iso ! . I love the 4th image ... is excelente !

Regards

JA

Stunning photos, love the baby with the mum. Congrats

Those are so wonderful! I love the third one. I definitely want to get down there and see them with Carol sometime.

Linda

Well done!

I hope to do it in February when I am in the area.

Cheers

Todd

Awesome shots Jeff! I too like the baby and mamma shot.

James

My Subal housing arrived yesterday; and I got it wet at Crystal River today. Headed up there with Carol Grant and my wife Michelle.

I wanted to see what available light would do, and shot mostly at ISO 800 and some 1600. Nikon 16mm fisheye. Aperture Priority f8-11. I think the last two I had the Inon Z240's at lowest power.

I'm happy.

One word...wow. Beautiful Jeff....

Wonderful images! You've done a great job with them. If I used that high of an ISO on my camera, well, let's just say the images would be way too noisy. But I see no evidence of noise in your remarkable images. The Nikon 16mm lens is a great lens and you've used it to its full advantage with these images.

Thanks for sharing!

Ellen

Very nice. I can imagine that the high ISO really opened up shooting in the springs.

Alex

Beautiful images and subjects, I love the ambient blues and play of light in some of the images.

Numbers 2 and 4 are stand-outs for me

Cheers,

Jim.

Very nice. I can imagine that the high ISO really opened up shooting in the springs.

Alex

I agree & very nice Jeff!

Alex, I think the high ISO is great for the spring's darker areas; even bumping the ISO a little on my d300 is a relief there on dark ams (over the d200 in the same circumstances). But the d700 has huge possibilities in otherwise tough-to-shoot areas.

Though honestly, yesterday the high ISO wasn't really needed as it was one of the bluest water days I've seen in the last 2 years; blue water with numbers of manatee that is. Yes, I think the high ISO probably helped brighten things up early on, but there was a lot of light and it was very clear; at least as clear as it gets these days with the invasive algae, etc.

I'd like to see the high ISO results when things are stirred up like they were earlier this week. You remember, after a front, when you can't see your hand in front of your face in the same spot that is crystal clear days later.

Anyway, Jeff wonderful photographs and lovely blue!!! I like them all, but I have a penchant for "upside-down" manatee - so I like that one the best.

Best, Carol

Those were damnright incredible!

Amazing use of natural light

Cal

Thank you very much guys for all the compliments. Alex, I do think that high ISO will allow us to do more underwater than we think. It's more than just being able to capture the image without noise, it's also about opening up shadows and midtones. The D700 has changed the way I do topside photography, and I think it may change a lot of what I do underwater.

Carol, you are right, conditions were great, and I suspect high ISO will be even more helpful if used properly, in less ideal conditions. The worse the conditions, the more our strobes degrade the image.

Mauricio Handler, who I think has a great approach to ambient light photography, is all about using using strobes only to paint in the bare minimum of light that we need to add for an effective photograph.

This is why I think we may be deluding ourselves a little when we try to get the best high ISO performance and the highest possible MP at the same time. My approach is actually to use the least number of megapixels to provide the resolution that I need for my final output, this will give me the largest pixels. A landscape photographer I know actually demonstrated this to me once by comparing images from a D40 with a D40x. But thats all for another discussion.

Excellent Photos, great divespot, good camera & good Housing.

I only have three words for it: I am jelous

/Erik

Great!!!

The four is special.

Thank you for share

Best wishes

awesome pics i gotta go do that sometime soon

D700 is really awaken many old Nikkor lenses ! Brilliant shots and thank you for sharing.