I’ve been working with Jenny Collister, Cliff Comfort, and Cheryll Miller at Reef & Rainforest for years to help book dive trips to some of the more exotic places of the world. Chances are, if an airport’s runway has cows and small children on it, you need someone like Reef & Rainforest to help with bookings! (They also work with more traditional locations.)
Fathoms Magazine is probably the highest quality underwater photography magazine on the American market. If you have any interest in underwater photography whatsoever, you should be a subscriber! I managed to catch Chief Editor Ethan Gordon and Publisher David Fishman for a quick photo in between a day full of meetings.
Issue #18 contains digital photography tips by Berkley White, portfolios by Eric Cheng, Brian Skerry, and Ethan Gordon, an interview with Larry Smith, and articles by Tim Rock, Burt Jones & Maurine Shimlock, Diane Richards & Jason Bradley, David Donavel & Andy Martinez.
Fathoms has just re-launched its website at fathomsmagazine.com.
Our good friends at Backscatter had on display at their booth a line of Top Dawg and Light & Motion housings, Macromate accessory diopters for SLRs, and the sexy new Hartenberger Nano modeling and dive light. Berkley White, Jeff Wildermuth, and Sy Harris were behind the booth handling questions and orders.
Covering the floor at DEMA, Drew Wong had the opportunity to check out the new Gates tripod, and he goes so far as to put it in the running for “best video product at DEMA.”
The tripod has extendable legs, and each leg has a full range of motion due to the use of Ultralight Control System ball joints and clamps, allowing a wide range of positions for stabilizing a video housing. Unfortunately, the tripod is currently only available for Gates housings.
Would you use the tripod if it could be adapted to your housing? Weigh in with your thoughts in the tripod discussion...
Sea & Sea is planning to announce a “new flagship strobe model for professionals,” the YS-250PRO.
The YS-250PRO features a guide number of 32, 105˚x 105˚ beam angle, 5600K color temperature, and a recycle time of just 1 second. TTL and a 12-step manual power control complement a model that will fire up to 300 flashes on an included Sea & Sea Ni-MH battery pack.
The strobe will also have a built-in LED target light, and can use either a Nikonos sync-cord or fiber optic cable. Look for the YS-250PRO around spring 2007.
Join Eric Cheng (Wetpixel), Berkley White (Backscatter), Jim Watt, and Dan Baldocchi (Light & Motion) for the Bonaire Digital Shootout 2007! From June 16-23, 2007, we’ll work with you to improve your underwater photo and video skills at the 6th annual Digital Shootout. Learn the latest digital imaging techniques from some of the industries top professionals while diving the rich waters of Bonaire.
Be sure to check out the Wetpixel daily webcast from 2005, and continue reading for full Shootout details.
I’ve made some changes to the back end that have resulted in much shorter page load times. Drive the system for awhile to let your local system’s cache adjust, and then let me know whether the changes have helped!
Long promised, Light & Motion is showing their new Titan underwater housing for the Nikon D200, which looks like a real winner.
A departure from the previous D100 model, all of the Titan D200’s controls are located on the housing body itself. Even though the signature electronic handles are no longer present, all of the controls are still readily accessible while gripping the new handles with both hands…
The Northern California Underwater Photographic Society (NCUPS) will be hosting a talk by Daniel Brown of AdobeEvangelists.com on Friday, November 10th, from 7:15 PM to 9:20 PM in Millbrae, CA.
Daniel’s presentation will detail the use of Adobe Photoshop to improve member-submitted underwater images, with a procedural walk-through, before/after comparison, and question and answer session for each image.
Continue reading for more details…
Wetpixel co-admin, Alex Mustard, recently had the opportunity and honor to show some of his images to the Queen (of England) and the Duke of Edinburgh, and to chat about underwater photography.
“The Queen is a keen photographer herself” Alex said, “and she asked me about the challenges of taking pictures underwater. I actually spoke more about the advantages; underwater we can move in three dimensions and therefore can approach the subject from any direction we choose, I told her. Imagine what land photography would be like if we could fly.”
Alex was unable to persuade the Queen to sign up to Wetpixel, but then maybe she is already a member under an alias? Congratulate Alex and read more about the experience in the discussion...