Conning Tower of the Yukon

12-24DX ISO200 f5.6 @ 1/45th Strobes on TTL

What looks like backscatter on the right is mostly juvenile rockfish that clutter the shot a bit...

Here's another shot, same settings:

Absolutely perfect conditions for that dive - or as good as they get in San Diego.

Cheers

James

Hi James,

I hope you won’t take offence, I don’t like criticizing but rather complementing you on your work

I find these pictures rather soft with little contrast, which leaves them looking flat.

Marc

Thanks for the feedback Marc.

FWIW, I think they are flat too so I need to go back and re-assess the Camera Raw settings again...ugh.

Cheers

James

I think the other aspect is that as good as the conditions may have been, cold water diving at depth makes for very difficult wideangle shooting of subjects like this.

A valiant effort but, I would have expected similiar results given the depth and place and lack of available ambient light for the background. (I am basing this on my BC diving experience on the cold water artificial reefs there)

IMHO

Todd is correct. Folks who have dove cold and deep will appreciate that it was not easy to get these shots. Mostly when you see shots like these, they are converted to black and white. I'm trying to keep the color, rather than take the easy way out...:-) Still needs some work though...

Depth was 100' at the bow. Low light, low viz, and temps in the low 50's.

Cheers

James

Hey James, wish I could have met you this trip but my dive buddy died (not dive related, but a heart attack at 39yo) and have been helping his family with everything.

I was looking at your gallery on Reefpix and was thinking how nice it would be to have descriptions and exif data. I hate to compare but I really like that about Eric's site.

Hi Bob,

Sorry to hear about your dive buddy. My condolences :-(

I'll be back out there for Christmas and might go diving again if you'll be around.

As for the EXIF info, Gallery supports it, but my workflow doesn't. It would add some time to copy the EXIF info over into the JPEG's, so I just haven't done it.

I've seen Eric copy all the exif info over for his photos and his fingers fly all over the keyboard, back and forth from one window to another - it's pretty impressive. But for a luddite like me, it would probably add a half hour to an hour of work for each gallery.

Unless there is a "trick" that I don't know about.

Cheers

James

I had another whack at my favorite photo from this dive:

I think the default brightness value of 50 in Photoshop CS is too high, so I went with 25 for this one.

Cheers

James

I like this one much more (better contrast and saturation). Because of the holidays, I don't think I'll be diving until January. Are you doing the Yukon again. If so, try to get some good shots of the stern. The training props are supposed to be a nice subject.

I agree about the challenge in contrast with deep coldwater dives. Here is one of my "best attempts" from the Saskatchewan in B.C. at 100fsw.

And another...

You had better vis than I did. Also taken with the 12 - 24

Nah, you had better viz Dave - I just have the "Channel Mixer" :-)

Cheers

James

Here's the JPEG that came embedded w/ the RAW file:

And here's my edit:

BIG difference. Ah, the power of RAW.

Cheers

James