One that got away in 2008

OK we've seen some of our favorites; but what about those shots where the idea was there, but either the timing was just a little off, or the execution was not spot on. The shot maybe looked pretty good on the LCD, but you had to groan when downloaded to the laptop. Try as you might, no Photoshop is going to save it. The shot that you have to go back again to make it work this time.

Well of course I had tons of those and many were way off, but this shot I think failed because the topside part, Sipadan Island taken from Barracuda point, was out of focus. Had my 17-35 with a dioptre on. Went back the next day with the 10-17, and of course the little fishies were impatient and did not hang around for a repeat performance.

Let's see some of yours.

OK we've seen some of our favorites; but what about those shots where the idea was there, but either the timing was just a little off, or the execution was not spot on. The shot maybe looked pretty good on the LCD, but you had to groan when downloaded to the laptop. Try as you might, no Photoshop is going to save it. The shot that you have to go back again to make it work this time.

Well of course I had tons of those and many were way off, but this shot I think failed because the topside part, Sipadan Island taken from Barracuda point, was out of focus. Had my 17-35 with a dioptre on. Went back the next day with the 10-17, and of course the little fishies were impatient and did not hang around for a repeat performance.

Let's see some of yours.

Jeff great thread and I think I know which one is the one for me, but it will also provide for another good story without photo

On this one I was closing down the camera and heading up, looked backed to the DM who indicated Grouper and I nodded since I saw the big one a little bit off. So swam towards it and started getting strobes positioned. It turned towards me dead on face forward with its mouth wide open wide. And right there was a lobster perfectly positioned - was the perfect amazing shot but I could not get the camera moving quick enough (part of it was holy s4%t am I seeing what I am seeing as visions of the best photo I would ever take flashed through my mind ) and the grouper turned when I was ready though you can see the lobster still. Hung out a bit more but it moved a bit away and never did the full face wide open straight own pose for me again, The other stayed down longer and the grouper and lobster engaged in a battle for awhile, including the grouper spitting it out and bringing it back in.

The second one was another grouper - no photo available. Was at about 40 feet or so towards the later part of a multi-level dive and came a across a grouper under a ledge and this one was posing, no questions asked. Perfect shot. I started to move a bit to tweak the angle and I felt something strange on my left hand. As I looked I watched as my wedding ring slip off and head towards the bottom and it landed 30 feet or so below me just missing a crevice in the rocks that would have taken it away forever. The whole time I watched it head down I was "Please go left and not right." So I did not get the shot and instead headed down following it and grabbed my ring, slipped it on my finger with a sigh of relief and headed up to where the grouper was. When I got back my hand felt strange again and I looked. When I was down getting my ring I had slipped it on my middle finger and when I tried to take it off and move it to the proper finger, it was stuck. One minor curse later and I headed back down back down to 75 feet or so. Slipped it off the middle finger, back on the ring finger and back up. When I told people the story on the boat (including my wife) they all said they were wondering what I was doing, strangest multi-level diving profile they ever saw.

First time out with 30d. Carpet anemone and clown fish at 22m Naama Bay. Natural light. Was using kit 18-55 lens from my rebel and had to open it upo fairly wide to get the pic. iso 200 f5.6 1/50. Looking through the viewfinder and I noticed him start to yawn , hit the shutter release and bingo!! I would never have got this on the compact. I turned to leave and got a fright as a lionfish spine was about 2 cm from my nose!!!! I had been there for about 20min and this chap was obviously getting jealous and so he came and was actually sat on my elbow!!!!! Took a fewshots of him once I evicted him from his new found home....

Swam back in all pleased with my new 'lightening fast' camera and pulled up the image.........it is then that I realised that to DOF on the slr is much smaller than the compact.....grrrrrrr

Oh well, I will stalk him again once I have the strobes....

Duncan

Finally my kind of a thread...

I did not have the time to do nearly as much diving as I would have liked this year. One of the highlights of the season was a weekend spent anchored over the wreck of the mine frigate Ladoga in the archipelagan sea in the Northern Baltic. This very important milestone design dreadnought is out of bounds for divers except with a special permit from the war museum, the navy and the coastal fortress of Örö - All three of them separately!

The wreck lies in 40-45 meters of water with 32 meters to deck. I was diving with a group I have dived a lot previously, but none of whom I have done any photography with before. Hence, modeling presented some challenges. Either the diver was in the wrong position, his posture was ridiculous or the light was wrong. Or all combined. We spent 4 dives attempting basically two different poses in two different places on the wreck and this one is probably the best picture of the session.

But it was fun in a way. Especially as we had literally thousands of jellyfish floating past us in deco.

Thanks to Joona, Jaska and Merkku for a fun trip despite the lack of presentable photos.

timo

I like this shot but it's just missing that main focal point, center of interest, not sure exactly how to put it...

Great idea for a thread, which I had no trouble fulfilling!

The picture should be self-explanatory. A consequence of my remote release technique (not looking through a finder) is the frequent number of mis-shots. Here the nose is cut off. But the female coho salmon 'cutting the redd' was caught at the right moment!

Happy New year!

Tom

Who knew that if even if you can't see the Woody's dioptre lanyard draped across the middle of the shot through the viewfinder it will come out very clearly in the resulting shot:

So many bad shots...so little time..hehe. I did a great dive in the Philippines and got some really cool macro shots...at least I thought. In camera everything looked spot on but when I got back to the room I noticed this smudged area on all the macro shots. I immediately went to look at my port and the Woody's Diopter had a nice huge thumb print right in the center. It's not so pronounced but just enough to ruin most of the shots

As bad as that experience was, it was nothing compared to my florida experience last year where my housing flooded. Luckily in a rinse tank with no camera as I was testing it but I only got to go diving on two separate occasions last year and I missed out on taking photos on one of those. The consolation prize was seeing absolutely everything underwater I'd never see with a camera in my hand. Including nice reef shark, large Ray, Large Grouper, Jawfish suspended above his hole, feeding barracuda...oh well I snapped away with my imaginary camera and imprinted the images in 1 Gigapixel full frame resolution on my grey matter.

Here's mine.... and ouch, it hurt!

... happily shooting a pod of three humpies swimming by next to the boat in Hervey Bay Marine Park, when one gets interested and decides to come up for a closer look... gotta love AF .....

of course there is a full sequence of 8 frames, all with the waterline sharp as a tack.

EOS1dsmkII | 14mmf2.8L | 1/160th @ f6.3 | 100ISO | AF

Also out of interest: there is no possibility for true in-water interaction with whales in Hervey Bay, so the shoot was conducted in part by hanging over the pontoons of the RIB with my assistant holding my legs and partly with my home-made polecam.

Close ...

My first time out with the D300, just testing in shallow water, no strobes, fiddling with the settings when this guy shows up.

None of my settings was correct, and he was just far enough away with a big enough lead that I couldn't stop to change any settings w/out losing him.

This is the best of 4 or 5 pretty ugly/noisy/poor focus frames Was the only Leopard we saw the entire day.

I like this shot but it's just missing that main focal point, center of interest, not sure exactly how to put it...

That's one of the most "autumn" color palettes I've ever seen underwater!