Another one falls to the siren song of pixels

Blanche Dubois may have had to rely "on the kindness of strangers", I was lucky enough to receive the kindness of James.

When my F100 sheared its film rewind fork the night before departure on a coral spawning research cruise, James was good enough to loan me a d100, 16 mm lens, 105 mm lens, AND a laptop. Given the run of technical issues I had been through in the days prior, I can only say that he is a very brave man :shock:

So, without further ado, here are some quick and dirty conversions of some images from the Flower Gardens Banks National Marine Sanctuary taken over the last weekend and Mon/Tues.

The seas, they were a raging...

Manta, Oh Manta, please come out and play.

Sailfin Blenny, attenHUT!

No shots of the spawning, as we were busy collecting water samples and looking for squid during the spawn events. We saw reasonable amounts on Monastrea cavernosa spawning, quite a lot of Monastrea franksi, and some other species I have momentarily forgotten.

Overall it was an interesting experience, I didn't get as many keepers as I do on a keeper/36 exposure roll of film basis, but I'm going to blame that on unfamiliar equipment and the fact that I have not shot underwater in about 10 months.

Hi Craig,

Good stuff, thanks for sharing some of your shots. I'm really interested to hear your impressions of the digital SLR as compared to your F100 setup. What do you think about "developing" your own shots?

I would encourage you to post something here as I know there are a lot of others here interested in making the switch to DSLR>

On your sailfin blenny shot, try playing with the shadows slider in ACR (if you have it). I think you can bring up the contrast a lot for a more pleasing look - it's worth a try at least.

I really wish I could have gone with you guys - but alas, at least my (or I should say Sarah's) camera setup made the trip...lol

Cheers

James