Daniel Botelho: Sharks of Cat Island
The Sea Save Foundation has launched its annual charity auction. Now in its second year, the online event has increased in size with over 40 items up for grabs, including dive trips, insightful lunches with Hollywood producers, underwater imaging equipment, books and art. All the items have been donated to generate funds for Sea Save’s conservation and environmental education projects.
For a full list of the items and to place your bids, please see the auction’s page on Charitybuzz. This is a great way to help the oceans and get some great deals.
Newmediasoup, in conjunction with photographers David Fleetham and Marty Snyderman, has released a new app which aims to explain how a camera’s histogram works and can be used to gauge correct exposures underwater. Entitled “Histograms Explained”, the app has eight sections of tips, with photographic examples accompanying the text and explanations. Suitable for iPad and iPhone, it is fully narrate and has quizzes to reinforce the learning.
“Histograms Explained” is available now in the App Store at $4.99.
Wetpixel Publisher Eric Cheng has started the trip report of the 2012 Wetpixel Ultimate Indonesia Expedition in the Wetpixel forum. The entire trip is aboard the Damai II and Eric was leading the first leg, which consisted of 12 nights journeying from Ambon to Kaiman, taking in the diving at Ambon, Banda, Momon, and Triton Bay. Eric has also posted a slideshow of stunning imagery and video from the trip. Douglas Seifert is currently leading the remaining two legs, the first from Kaimana to Sorong and the second from Sorong to Sorong. We hope that there will be more participant contributions to the forum thread about the trip over the next few weeks.
Howard Hall has released a short film about humpback whales called Leviathan. It consists of footage shot during his August 2012 Tonga Expedition during which he spent a total of over 8 weeks in Tonga, shooting 5K digital cinema catalog footage, as well as 70mm film and Epic 5K digital for the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX feature, Humpback Whales. The music is by Alan Williams.
The December issue of African Diver magazine is now available to download. Featured in issue number 25 are articles about diving in Zimbabwe’s Chinhoyi caves, Zavora in Mozambique and Madeira as well as the cichlids of Lake Malawi. Vickie Collins talks about her experiences as a Cove guardian in Taji, Japan, and the featured photographer is Christopher Bartlett.
African Diver magazine is free to download in pdf format.
In common with the stories about a new Nikon DX camera scheduled for 2013 release, there are also rumors surfacing about a replacement for the Canon EOS 7D. Petapixel list the specifications for the new camera as having a 24.2 megapixel APS-C sensor, dual DIGIC V processors, dual memory card slots, a new ergonomic design, a new type of battery, and 10.2 frame per second burst mode. Northlight Images claim the new camera will be aimed at:
“The sports and nature market, with a lot of features based on feedback from “pro” users. The 10 fps rate is seen as an important feature, along with many features derived from 1DX developments, particularly AF and lower light performance. Sensor size would be advertised as 21MP, but faster and less noisy than the 7D (25MP was apparently seen as not offering enough image quality).”
Release date is predicted to be February 2013. Please bear in mind that the above are rumors which may or may not be true!
Canon USA has announced a product advisory for the EOS 6D SLR. It identifies a problem that occurs when trying to playback videos shot with the camera on YouTube. Canon suggests a temporary fix of using the ImageBrowser EX application that is bundled with the camera to save the video and then to upload it. They also state that they are working towards a more complete fix.
Doug and Lorenza Sloss have released the latest in their series of photo editing tutorials. Uniquely, Lightroom 4 for the Underwater Photographer is supplied in a USB stick, making it considerably more portable than the previous DVD versions. The new tutorials run for 13 hours and cover all aspects of using Lightroom 4 including catalogs, the library, map, develop, book, slideshow, print and web modules, exporting and Photoshop and Photmatix Pro integration.
Lightroom 4 for the Underwater Photographer is available now for pre-order with a despatch date of 8 December. It sells for $108.00.