Santa Cruz Island w/ the 20D Gallery

For those that just want to see the pictures - http://www.carbonos.com/gallery/list.php?exhibition=13

Would love to hear comments and criticisms

Drove up to the Truth (Santa Barbara) this last Friday night to discover nothing less than a plethora of photographers, and a few startled hunters . There were at least 8 or 9 cameras - we're talking everything from a Sony or Canon point-and-shoot to Nikonos 5s to D100s in Titan housings to VX200 (?) digital vid-cams in L&M housings as well. We took up the entire galley area, and the "displaced" hunters were wondering wth was going on. "Damn photographers" Notable among them was Ron Lagerlof (recent winner of the Wetpixel POTW with his Mandarin Fish shot) - nice guy. Met a few others on Wetpixel, a good group of people overall.

Either way, we were going to try and make it out to the outer islands...but at 4AM when we started heading out, the forecast changed drastically...from 2-3ft swell to 7-8ft w/ 20-30knot winds. Woken up by the starting of the boat's engines, I nervously think about my camera setup sitting unsecured on the tables in the galley...thankfully everything got through ok. They called off going to the outer islands, and tried to find a spot to dive...we ended up pulling in behind Santa Cruz and didn't start diving until ~9AM.

First dive was critter rich...saw a nudibranch or two I hadn't seen before (will need an ID when I put it up...), a baby octopus, and tons of Spanish Shawls out and about...was shooting 100mm macro of course (sadly, the focus limiter switch got hit when I put the port on, and whenever I wanted to do closer than 1:3 I had to go manual focus - glad I had re-linked the * to AF and the shutter to mere AE)...and everything seemed perfect until I got back onto the boat, downloaded the photos, and started flipping through them...an errant number caught my eye in ACR..."ISO 1600". Oh crap. Every shot of the dive...shot at ISO1600. This is what shooting pictures at the Getty leads me to. Great . LOL. Needless to say, I wrote myself a big note inside my bag reminding me to switch to ISO100. A big note

Either way, the other three dives were somewhat inconsequential...never really saw as much critter life, although there were some very curious Garibaldi that seemed to like staring into my flat port...from 2" away...in some cases, I couldn't take a picture and would have to shoo them off with my hand so that I could try and re-frame the shot as they came back towards me. Funny Garibaldis... Third dive was somewhat barren, a little disappointing, but did see some little sea hares that are always fun to shoot. Fourth dive I made the decision to switch to wide if I saw kelp upon arriving at the location. In my haste (5min gate time) upon seeing it and switching promptly to wide, I forgot to attach the focus gear . So I was stuck at 33mm on the 18-55mm kit lens. Regardless, I'm still very happy with some of my shots from that dive...it was all kelp fun. Oh, and all the dives were cold...but something to deal with I suppose. Worth it.

We ended up getting back around 8PM coming through rough seas. A fitting end to a long day. Despite some of the problems that I had (and they were all my fault of course ), I very much enjoyed shooting the 20D...can't wait to get back out there again. A good learning experience...

~Matt Segal

Great photos Matt!!

Who needs iso100 when you can get such excellent results at 1600. There is nothing there that a little Neat Image/Noise Ninja can't fix!

I'm really impressed by your kelp photos (not just because you were stuck at 33 mm ) - the sun in the frame looks fantastic!

Remarkable results and your nudi macro's are 1st class (especially with a single strobe).

Look forward to seeing more.

A.

By far, my favorite nudibranch! I just got my Subal C20 and will get it wet very soon (will DEPPutize it this week). I'll be shooting the 100 mm macro as well. When you say you re-mapped the "*" button, I am assuming you set the custom function 04 to 1? How hard/easy do you find framing the 100 mm? What strobe position were you using for it?

.mike

Hi Matt and all,

I like the challenge of always trying to get that little eye on the nudibranchs, like you did. Very nice job recooping from pilot error mistakes. I was out at San Clemente Saturday and the swells were a rollin!. We had decent viz but the animal life was practically non existent. I, like you, stuck with basic subjects, in fact the only three things I shot were a sculpin, painted greenling and a small octopus. Looks like you had decent viz on that kelp bed shot. That's a cool pic.

The one thing I tried on this dive was shooting raw. Yes, this was the first time I shot raw underwater. I purchased a 1-gig high speed 80x Lexar CFC. It did pretty well but the camera did lock up a few times when I tried to bang off multiple shots one after another. However, I really liked the post processing advantages. Just about all editing was done in the converter in PS CS, and very little after clicking okay and bringing the image into PS edit mode.

Here are the only two keepers for me, but raw baby, raw!

Joe