Jellyfish and Sunrays 10 Years After...

One of the most successful photos of mine from back in the film days is a rather iconic mastigias jellyfish photo from Jellyfish Lake in Palau taken in 2001. This shot was taken with Fuji 100 ISO film and a Nikonos V camera using a 15mm lens while snorkeling the lake in the early morning sun. I believe the settings on the shot were f11 and 1/250 a second or perhaps 1/500th per second (Note to digital photographers, we didn't have EXIF data back then ) It was one of a series of photos taken with different speeds and fstops in order to line them up side by side and choose the best exposed image. For years, it was one of my most popular images and has certainly been published many times. However, I always knew that I could have done better if I had used an SLR camera with the ability to actually frame the photo properly instead of using the parallax viewfinder of the Nikonos. The problem I always saw with that photo was that it was off centre in the frame, although I guess I could have cropped that in PS, that is not my style. In June 2011, I was finally able to get the chance to revisit the photo and try again. I visited the Jellyfish Lake in Kakaban Island, Kalimantan Province in Indonesia, near the more famous island of Sangalaki. The lake is great as it is much larger than its Palauan counterparts and also seemed somewhat clearer, great photo opportunities abounded! Although there was not the pure density seen at Jellyfish Lake, Palau, the lake was very picturesque and the surrounding mangroves offered great photo opportunities as well. After exploring the lake for a while, I decided it was time to try to recreate my photo from Palau and set about to find a good sized jelly to shoot. Once I found a jelly close to the surface I set my camera (Nikon D90 in an Aquatica housing) to 1/500 and f11 (ISO 200) and fired off a few shots. It was apparent straight away that I had nailed the shot in the compositional sense of jellyfish placement in the photo. Through the lens composing sure is a lot easier than a viewfinder on top of the camera! I stuck around and shot several more photos at different focal lengths and all had the jellyfish placed nicely in the centre, the amount of keepers was almost 100% compared to just a few with the Nikonos. That alone has justified my switch to digital some 7 years ago or so The one thing that I wasn't sure about was what the sunrays would look like compared to the original. Well, as you can see for yourself they look pretty darn good, in fact I would say the photo looks much less muddy than the film version (but that is also partly due to the scanning process). The D90 and other newer DSLR cameras certainly can now rival the sun ray effects of film. Here is a side by side comparison so that you can see for yourself.

Awesome Mike, thanks for the pics and the history lesson!

That's a great story, Mike. Thanks for sharing.

Alex

Still think it would look better cropped.

Great comparison. Looks like the color is better in digital as well, or do you recall that the jellies were more mono chromatic in your first shot/

Loftus.. its tough to get close to those jellies, they move quick! haha..

Yes, the colour is much better on the digital, however, the slide looks better than this scan of the film one, i think the colour renditioning of the scanning process and my lack of skill in post process messed it up a little I do find that the top left in both photos have the same blue but the first image is blue all around whereas the new one is green on the bottom... not sure how that happened..

Thanks for sharing, for me as "modern" photographer it is hard to believe that people were shooting with film in 2001.

As far as the photographs, they are both amazing. I really like the blueness and the composition of the jelly in the 2001 version. The digital has great color in they jelly and the surrounding jellies show up nice.

Very nice contrast, thanks for this.

Derek, i shot film till 2004 thats when the D70 came out, all 6.1mb of it! I know people who are still shooting film!

I did have an Olympus 3040 3.3mb camera in 2001 but those kinds of cameras weren't good enough for commercial sales

Great story! Love the photos too... interesting how the edge of Snell's window is much more apparent in the digital version.

Great story! Love the photos too... interesting how the edge of Snell's window is much more apparent in the digital version.

ahh, thats the fisheye of the 10-17mm, that shot was at 12mm. The film shot was 15mm so not a fisheye so the snells not so apparent

Thanks for sharing, for me as "modern" photographer it is hard to believe that people were shooting with film in 2001.

Hey young fella, I was still shooting with a Nikonos III last year (although I used a V for most WA). I probably would be still if I could get them serviced affordably.

Mind you, I've probably "nailed" more UW photos in the seven months I've had my D90/Aquatica than the I did in the previous 32 years of shooting film...

Mike, I enjoyed your comparison. When I started to read it I was wondering how you were going to (a) find the same jellyfish after 10 years and (b) convince it to pose in the same way. I figured you probably had a laminated print of the first picture to show it...