Boston Sea Rovers

Boston hosted the 51st annual Sea Rovers underwater Clinic. It's similar to beneath the Sea, but a little more intimate. There were various speakers, a Saturday night film festival and a few seminars (including our very own Eric Cheng).

Unfortunately I missed the film festival. This year's festival had presentations by Al Giddings, Norbert Wu, Stan Waterman and Mike DeGruy and Ernest Brooks. What a shame I wasn't able to attend.

My favorite daytime speaker was Mauricio Handler, who used to be David Doubilet's assistant. In short words, his work is outstanding. Mauricio did two slide shows. The first was a collection of images starting with macro and progressing to wide angle. The second was truly unique. He slowes the shutter down enough to capture a whole different mood. This isn't just slow flash synch. In one photo a reef shark was hunting. The shark is clear, but the fish around it are blurred, in a state of mayhem.

The other presentation that I enjoyed the most was Brian Skerry and Nigel Motyer's show about diving the Irish Isles. I've had the pleasure to dive with Brian in the past. Now he's a National Geographic contract photographer with several stories to his credit.

Light & Motion and Aquatica each had a booth at the show:

Aquatica had the new D70 housing which looked pretty nice. I use an older Aquatica film housing so I really drooled when I saw the new housings. Honestly, I liked their 20D housing better. The controls are simpler.

Light & Motion had a lot of video products on display. The D100 housing isn't new anymore so I hope they will come out with a D70 or 20D housing. Video is getting more difficult due to the various camera sizes.

Underwater PhotoTech had an assortment of Subal, Sea & Sea and Fantasea products on display. I've used them for over 10 years to service my gear. This was my first chance to see the new Fantasea D70 housing. The cost is only $999 including a "standard" flat port. Frank Fennell from Fantasea gave me a quick demonstration. The sealing system is a gasket that sticks out like an o-ring. There are indeed three clamps to clos

Thanks for the write-up!

I'm still here in Boston. The two workshops went very well and were packed just about full -- great audience here at Sea Rovers.

I will do a write up tomorrow and post some photos. (waaay too tired at the moment. more tired than i've been in a long, long time...)

I wasn't able to scour the floor nor workshops because I was so busy preparing for 6 hours of blabbing about digital photography. Had a great time, though!

Eric, you got an honorable mention from Mauricio. He told a story about spending an hour to capture a reef scene in Fiji. It's the photo that Aquatica uses in their poster. When he tried to download the images, the card didn't cooperate. He was about to re-format it when he came to you. According to Mauricio, you salvaged the images.

hehehe. I remember that card, and salvaging the images from it. Mauricio gave it to Craig, and Craig gave it to me, and I happened to have the right software.

Catching up, catching up, catching up...

http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/boston-sea-...st-clinic-2005/