On Saturday 10th December, researchers onboard Undersea Explorer tagged a 2.8m male Tiger Shark (“Adam”) near Raine Island in Far North Queensland. The shark was the seventh Tiger shark tagged during the project, which is a collaboration between Digital Dimensions, CSIRO, and Undersea Explorer. And—very exciting: for all of us out here on the web, Adam’s movements can be tracked online.
Our new, interactive Picture of the Week area is going strong! Congratulations to Wetpixel staff member Luiz Rocha for winning the staff POTW competition, which we used as a test of the new system. Our first general POTW competition has just entered its voting phase, and a new POTW has been kicked off with the theme, “Sharks and Rays”.
New POTW competitions will begin every Sunday night at midnight. Prizes are being organized, and will be retroactively awarded starting from POTW #110.
Hands-on news about the Nikon D200 has started to appear in the forums, along with speculation about how it might be taken underwater. The D200 will surely be a welcome—and very much needed—addition to Nikon’s line of digital SLRs commonly used underwater.
Interesting threads: [d200 arrives] [d200 vs 5d]
Wetpixel moderator Luiz Rocha has put together an article explaining how to modify the Subal D2x hotshoe in order to eliminate erratic camera behavior. According to Luiz: “The problem: The D2x in Subal housings would erratically not fire the strobes or not save random images to the memory card. This is true for Subtronics and Sea&Sea strobes, but appears to not happen with Ikelite strobes.” The solution is removal of one of the hot-shoe pins - follow the link to find out how.
Wetpixel is proud to announce the return to an interactive Picture of the Week contest, with public, member submissions and voting. As before, members may enter up to 2 images per week, and each weekly contest will enter a voting period for a week before the results are tallied and presented. It’s the perfect opportunity to enter some of your hard-earned images into a friendly, public contest.
During testing of the system last week, your tireless staff uploaded some beautiful images for you to vote on. There is already a new POTW contest accepting entries, so ... go show off! The contest can be found at http://wetpixel.com/competition/
And don’t forget about our official, international photo contest, which has over $25,000 in prizes!
December 31st, 2005 is the last day for submitting entries to the 2006 Beneath the Sea Worldwide Underwater Photo/Video Competition. The winners of the Beneath the Sea 2006 Worldwide Photo/Video Competition are announced at the Film Festival the weekend of Beneath the Sea’s Dive and Travel Exposition, March 24th, 25th, and 26th, 2006, at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey. In addition to the awards that the Grand Prize winners of each category will receive, there will be prizes for all First, Second and Third place winners…
With the right flash, filters, and digital camera with manual controls you can take fluorescence photographs underwater or outdoors in the daytime or with the lights on indoors. NightSea founder Charles Mazel has just published a paper in the online journal, Limnology & Oceanography: Methods, describing the method for underwater use, its limitations, and strategies for making the most of the technique. You can download the paper directly, or read about it on the NightSea web site. The paper describes how the technique can be applied in a typical laboratory or home environment, and contains example images.
The winners of the 9th International Underwater Film Festival in Belgrade have been announced. Although the festival looks to be primarily film and video oriented, they also have a special award for underwater still photography.
Florida dive show was a complete success. I spoke to many of the exhibitors, and all were pleased with the turnout for a first show—and with the new Palm Beach County Convention Center as the venue. For the photography crowd, speakers like Cathy Church, Mauricio Handler and Paul Humann were well worth the price of admission. The latest and greatest U/W photography gear, both still and video, were also on display.
Several Wetpixel members were in attendance including Dave Haas, Laz Ruda, Ryan Canon and more…
I received an e-mail from Stephen Frink (Seacam USA) today about a new, more powerful wet diopter from Seacam, called the Wet Two. Continue reading for test shots underwater, and first impressions.