Scuba Diving Magazine - Stephen Frink

The Power of a Picture

2008-12-17T22:34:53.0620000-05:00

Last summer I was teaching a photo course in my home waters off Key Largo, visiting one of my traditional favorite sites, Snapper Ledge. There, amid the massive schools of blue-striped grunts and schoolmaster snappers, was a lone nurse shark, curiously lethargic on the bottom. It was not until I got closer that I realized this shark had been stabbed in the head and eviscerated, probably by an unthinking and definitely uncaring fisherman. Tragic as this was, it was actually the second time I'd seen such a thing done to a nurse shark on this same site, and began to feel that something had to be done about it.

A few days later we went back to the same site, and found this same shark, dead and pale on the bottom. I took a picture, thinking at the time people simply had to see what was going on here.

I wrote about the whole event on my personal blog at http://stephenfrink.blogspot.com/2008/08/shark-dead-for-no-reason.html, with the recommendation that Snapper Ledge become a Sanctuary Preservation Area, protected from spearfishing and hook-and-line angling ... a total no-take zone. It is a very special place, it is being abused, and it deserves that level of protection.

It then got picked up by Eric Cheng, who posted it on his wetpixel.com website and authored a compelling and conservation-minded petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/snapledg/petition.html. Dive Photo Guide and other photographic and marine preservation websites linked to the petition as well, and soon the petition became very viral and highly visited. As of this day, 2,528 people have signed this petition to make Snapper Ledge a SPA. It is interesting to see many of the very high-profile people who have signed this petition, and also the level of passion clearly evident in so many of the individual comments. The whole level of response was very heart-warming to me, and reassuring to know so many cared so deeply about the health of our coral reefs in general, and Snapper Ledge in particular.

Scuba Diving Magazine came on-board big time, with space in their reader forums and a generous home page slot linking to a lovely video that underwater videographer Frazier Nivens shot in support of the Snapper Ledge SPA initiative, see www.vimeo.com/1861001

I won't say this project has been without some level of angst and controversy. Some spearfishing enthusiasts thought I was unfairly picking on them. Others felt any regulation was bad regulation. But, my point was always that Snapper Ledge was geologically unique for the massive schools of fish concentrated here, and it had to be protected for future generations.

Fortunately, NOAA agreed with me and the other 2,500+ people who signed the petition and agreed to include SPA designation for Snapper Ledge in their upcoming planning for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. In the words of Commander David Score, director of the FKNMS, "As you know, at the last meeting the Sanctuary Advisory Council discussed Snapper Ledge again and recommended we move forward with a SPA designation alternative for it included in the overall marine zoning update that was recommended as part of the new management plan. They urged me to convey their thanks to you and everyone who took action on this issue. The attached letter is an attempt to do that but will not be able to capture the amount of appreciation we have for your efforts on behalf of the critters of the Keys."

The point is that it Snapper Ledge will become a SPA. It won't happen overnight, as there are governmental protocols that must be satisfied. I knew that when I began the process, but also recognized that NOAA was very sensitive to the desires of their constituency, the various user groups diving and snorkeling and fishing the waters of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Actually, they have been extraordinarily proactive on this issue, which I sincerely appreciate.

I am very gratified that a few photos sparked a firestorm of outrage and that good will ultimately come of it. Such is the power of a photo, coupled with the power of the web.

Dumpster Evolution

2008-12-17T10:12:58.3840000-05:00

Previously unpublished, written in the summer of 2007:

The change has been coming for quite a while, but still, this was a nostalgic week for me. This was the week we scheduled a massive trash bin to be delivered to my photo studio in Key Largo. We had made a decision to change the thrust of the business to fit emerging technology, and that meant discarding remnants of things that were “a good idea at the time”. When I looked at the depth of the dumpster detritus, it struck me how significantly the digital revolution fostered these changes, and as I walked from room to room in our building, I was reminded how each segment of a business devoted to underwater photography has had to adapt.

The Darkroom – I had a plan when I came to Key Largo in 1978. I came as a recreational diver on holiday and heard they had 500,000 divers visiting Pennekamp Park. I figured half of these must take pictures underwater, and half of those shot slides, and half of those would bring it to my shop to be processed at $6 a roll. Well, that would be gross revenues of $375,000, which to a guy making minimum wage as a color lab technician in Denver was HUGE! Of course, my “business plan” was totally bogus, and there were nowhere near that number of people taking underwater photos at the time, let alone walking through my door. But still there were enough shooters having their E-6 film processed, and enough photographers willing to try underwater photography for the first time with my rental Nikonos II, that I was able to make a go of the business.

This was way before I got my first commercial assignment, and way before I’d even heard of “stock” photography. Actually, that E-6 sinkline I built in 1978 was a cornerstone of the business for the next 25 years. I could rent cameras in the morning and then go out on the dive boat in the afternoon to practice my underwater photographic skills. That night I would process the film, mine and whatever customer’s film came in, and by the next morning I’d see the results of what I’d done.

This quasi “immediacy of review” was an extremely important learning tool to me. While a lot of pro photographers were shooting Kodachrome in those days, I was a big fan of the E-6 Ektachromes, not only because it was cheaper to process myself, but because Kodachrome had to be sent out to a big lab somewhere, and in those days before FedEx, it could be more than a week before processed slides made its way back to my post office box. Seeing the results while still fresh in mind was a very powerful learning tool. Later, as I began to teach photo classes on live-aboards and at dive resorts, we wouldn’t even consider them unless they had quality E-6 film processing services.

Then, I went to the first Digital Shootout in Indonesia with the guys from Backscatter and Light and Motion. The month was September of 2001, which we’ll all remember because it put us in Manado watching the 9-11 terrorist attacks on TV at the time. The Digital Shootout staff put an Olympus 3040 in a Tetra housing in my hands for the first time, and “immediacy of review” took on a whole new meaning. Yes, there were issues with digital lag, and it wasn’t as easy to compose and critically focus on a camera’s LCD as it was through the massive viewfinder on my Nikonos RS, but the potential of the technology was irrefutable even then. Instant review, with the ability to change exposure variables for the next shot, not just the next day. That was a “Eureka” moment that changed my life, or at least the picture-taking part of it.

As soon as I came home from that trip I bought a Nikon D1X and a Seacam housing, which was the beginning of the end for my E-6 darkroom. I started shooting more digital images, my clients became more accepting of digital submissions, and dive tourists to Key Largo began shooting more digital as well. By 2004 I had as many digital shooters in my photo classes as I did film enthusiasts, and by 2005 I taught my first digital-only photo seminar.

An E-6 line requires a certain critical mass of use and replenishment or it won’t be of predictably high quality. We simply weren’t using it and we had to shut it down last summer. Yesterday all my stainless steel reels, heater-recirculator pumps, and chemical storage tanks went to the dumpster. While I hate contributing to the landfill overload, I am very pleased I am not consuming and discarding processing chemicals every day. And, even at wholesale, film and processing were very expensive.

Net transition benefit = Two Thumbs Up. Migrating to a digital workflow has made it easier for me to capture images on location, and the quality of the resulting files from my high-end digital SLR are so much better than scanned film I’ll never go back. I may embrace the next greatest technology, but the odds that it will involve an E-6 line are pretty infinitesimal.

Stock Photography – In the early 1980s, as I began to have photos published in national magazines, I got a call from The Image Bank. They were a stock photo agency in New York, and they suggested I send them some of my photos and they would try to sell them too. After all, they were in New York and that’s where all the publishers and ad agencies that really mattered were located. Actually, they did pretty well for me, but not as well as we were doing ourselves. We decided to put a toll-free phone number in so clients could call us for their photo requests, and about then a fledgling courier service called Federal Express was just getting started and finally, even from a remote corner of the Florida Keys a client could be looking at my slides the next day.

Plus, we had a big advantage because our photo researchers were scuba divers. That meant that when they wanted to illustrate an ad for a cruise ship going to Grand Cayman, we would not send them a clownfish from the Red Sea. A client would call with a photo request and we’d pull the right slides and shoot duplicate transparencies. The E-6 film would be processed and mounted in-house, and sent out for review. The client would show their client, and maybe a month or so later we’d get a call again. Yes, they wanted to use the shot, we’d negotiate a use fee, and then the original transparencies they wanted would be FedExed to them, along with a delivery memo specifying they were responsible for loss or damage to the original slide at $1500 a pop.

The dupe was never as good as the original, so they needed the original to have scanned for whatever print medium they had in mind. That meant they had to be willing to accept the liability, as well as pay for the multiple Fed Ex fees. With an 800-phone number and Fed Ex, people with niche coverage, like mine from the underwater realm, could be competitive with the Big Boys in New York.

Then in the mid-1990s, as the Internet began to really rev up, a few visionaries perceived that photography was a commodity that could be viewed online, and then digitized and transmitted over this new pipeline. It should come as no surprise that Bill Gates was one of them, and his privately owned stock photo agency, Corbis, is now the second largest in the world. What was a bit of a surprise was that two investment bankers, Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein, came to a similar epiphany and began to build an empire based on digital transmission of visual content. They bought several existing agencies, including The Image Bank and Tony Stone Images, and invested mightily in the technology that would make the job of finding and licensing the right image far easier. A critical component of their vision was not only finding the right images, but transmitting them over the web. No more duplicate transparencies. No more originals getting sent to the client for scanning. No more liability for $1500 slides lost or damaged. In 1995 Getty Images was founded and today www.gettyimages.com is the world’s largest stock photo agency, serving an average of 2.3 million unique visitors each month with over 2.3 billion thumbnails and 161 million page views.

Somehow, in competition with emerging technology our vis-sheets with duplicate slides were being called for with less frequency. The writing was on the wall regarding digital delivery of visual content, I found a few very good agencies to partner with, and now the business is better than ever. Most of my significant analog images have now been scanned, and all new captures are digital, so the images are all the “language” of the Internet, that being zeros and ones.

A two-terabyte hard drive can hold as much information as this room full of slides.

However, there is a whole new urgency to how images are being transmitted on the Web. To a great extent the technology is so new there is a “Wild West” fervor and stills and even video clips are getting passed around with such frequency it is hard to ever know who authored them or where they came from to begin with. Wikipedia reports on this issue, known as orphan works:

“Orphaned works are, broadly speaking, any copyrighted material where the rights holder is hard to find. Because the cost of finding the owner is so high, creators cannot build on orphan works, even when they would be willing to pay to use them. In many cases the works were abandoned because they no longer produced any income. In most cases, rights holders, once found, are delighted to have their work used with minimal compensation.
In February 2006, the US Copyright Office issued a report on orphaned works, concluding:
•    The orphan works problem is real.
•    The orphan works problem is elusive to quantify and describe comprehensively.
•    Some orphan works situations may be addressed by existing copyright law, but many are not. Legislation is necessary to provide a meaningful solution to the orphan works problem as we know it today.”

Here is a major disconnect … the perception is that cost of finding the owner is significant, so even if fees are willing to be paid to the copyright owner, it is not worth the hassle. So, unless the copyright holder is easy to find, the work may fall into Public Domain and can be used for free. This whole issue is up for legislation in the US Congress at this very moment. Visit www.asmp.org to learn more.

Yikes! That is a scary thought for anyone who licenses visual media. Yet, the same digital technology that threatens our copyright can protect it. Metadata is the information that goes along with an image on a web site. It is the means by which a researcher who types “Carcharodon carcharias” into a search box on a website comes up with pictures of great white sharks. Yet, once the image is downloaded, that information is gone, unless it is embedded in the photo’s IPTC field. If it is, Photoshop and most other browsing programs can reveal who shot it, when it was shot, and caption details; all with a single click of a mouse.

The pending Orphan Works legislation is going to force metadata to be embedded in all digital images to protect photographer’s rights. According to David Riecks, chair of the Stock Artist’s Alliance's Imaging Technology Standards committee, "Photographers need to add metadata to their digital images now, or risk losing future income. Without metadata, they may as well be putting their images in a black hole."

Net transition benefit – One Thumb Up, One Thumb Down. The new technology is liberating in some ways, as it is much easier to have work viewed by a broader universe of potential buyers. But there are so many technology-driven changes that one must be constantly aware. Plus, writing all that information in the IPTC field is BORING! Inputting data into small fields on a computer screen is not what drove me to be a photographer in the first place.

Hey, maybe those days of renting cameras in the morning, diving in the afternoon, and processing the E-6 at night weren’t so bad after all. But, meanwhile the dumpster’s full and the trash truck’s a-comin’.

Jerry Greenberg - Friend, Mentor, and Champion of Photographer's Rights

2008-12-15T22:13:08.6140000-05:00

It is a story I like to tell about a man who has become a very close friend over the years. The year was 1980 and I had just begun to get published in dive magazines when I got a call from Jerry Greenberg saying that he and Rick Frehsee would like to take me to dinner.

Now, this was a big deal for a kid in Key Largo, for I had been highly inspired by the work Rick had been doing with underwater models in Skin Diver and the original Sport Diver magazines, and Jerry was my go-to guy for books and education on underwater photography. When I was living in Kona, fresh out of graduate school and trying to figure out how to make my first underwater photos work, Jerry's post cards showed me what artful application of artificial light should look like.

I wore through the pages of my first copy MANFISH WITH A CAMERA with years of perusal, never imagining that I would end up living and diving in the marine wilderness Jerry first brought to national attention with his many publications about Key Largo and John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. (Fortunately in 2005 Jerry gave me a fresh copy, this on inscribed "To Steve: With best wishes and thanks for all your help these many years. Jerry Greenberg")

But, back to that night at dinner with Rick and Jerry. The point was that I was getting published and they thought maybe I had legs in this business, and as such, maybe I should learn some of the rules, for my own protection and for the betterment of the photo industry. They were incredibly generous that night, explaining the principles of copyrighting one's images (slides, in those days), meeting deadlines, and as Jerry put it, always avoiding the peril of "believing in your own press releases". They also told me to never judge another photographer by their work you see published, as that is as much about design and art direction and the politics of advertising as it is about someone's own personal vision. There were a lot of other nuggets of wisdom that night, things I never forgot. Just as I never forgot their unselfish willingness to share with me.

Thinking of Jerry's early and unswerving belief in the power of copyright and his belief in the legal system, I am greatly saddened to see the final outcome of his long (11 year) battle with National Geographic. It all went back to a CD-ROM collection of all of the back issues of National Geographic called The Complete National Geographic: 108 Years of National Geographic Magazine. National Geographic used new technologies never imagined when Jerry shot his first photos for them, and they created a product that had terrific sales potential. The one issue was that they didn't necessarily own the rights to all the work contained within those 108 years of published pages, and the copyrights to Jerry's in particular were clearly registered to him.

Jim Pickerell, the author of a highly respected newsletter on subjects of interest to stock photographers said it very well in a post today. In his words, "The grim outcome of Greenberg vs. The National Geographic Society should be of deep concern to every photographer who believes copyright offers legal protection. Rather, this case teaches us two things: the law is not always fair or equitable, and those who have deeper pockets tend to win ...

"If there was ever a photographer who dotted all the Is and crossed all the Ts in executing a contract for photographic work, it was Jerry Greenberg. His written agreement with the National Geographic Society said that for the fee he was paid he was licensing only the rights to publish his work in a single edition of the printed magazine. If NGS wanted to use his work in any other way, it would be necessary to compensate him for that use.

"Greenberg also had letters from NGS transferring the copyright back to him. It should be noted that these images were used by NGS before the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act. At that time, copyright rested with the organization paying for the work and not the creator. as it does today. Thus, the formal transfer of copyright back to Greenberg was extremely important.

"Greenberg had the images registered with the Copyright Office years before The Complete National Geographic: 108 Years of National Geographic Magazine CD-ROM discs were created."

Ultimately that was the issue. Jerry owned the copyright to these images and it was up to him to choose how or if they were to be used, and at what rate of compensation. You'd think.

Jerry stops into my studio frequently, an honored guest I am always eager to see. He updates me often about his new photographic missions, now exploring digital imaging in collaboration with his brilliant son Michael. He shows me the beautiful artwork his talented wife Idaz creates for their series of books and waterproof marine ID cards. He also has kept me updated about the National Geographic saga all these years.

It was challenging and expensive and probably more than a little frightening to be one man going against the corporate might of the National Geographic Society. But, he persevered because he believed in copyright, the validity of contractual law, and the honor of a deal made in good faith. He never wanted to be enemies with National Geographic. The work he did for them was the proudest achievements of his career. He never wanted to fight with anyone who misappropriated his work over the years, and there have been many. He just wanted to not be taken advantage of and fairly compensated for his work. A simple enough request from a man of honor.

In this case Jerry carried it all the way to the steps of the US Supreme Court. He won a few rounds in court. National Geographic won a few more. But, these are huge issues of law to every visual artist that were being debated in this particular case, and Jerry felt it had merit to be heard by the highest court in the land. Most in the photographic community shared his belief. I definitely did. But, in the end only about 5% of the cases set before the Supreme Court are actually heard, and Jerry's was not. That was the final shot. Now it is over for Greenberg vs. National Geographic.

It's not over for Jerry Greenberg, of course. He'll close out that chapter of his life and move on with taking more digital photos, enjoying life with his family, and of course scuba diving in these familiar waters off Key Largo. Yet, what he's done will long reverberate in legal and professional circles.

Pickerell closes with these chilling words: "Photographers owe Greenberg a tremendous debt of thanks. Hopefully, they will take the lessons of this case to heart. If the infringer is a small organization without a lot of resources to pursue legal action, and the photographer has the copyright registered, he may get an out-of-court settlement, or at least keep legal costs to a minimum. Infringers with deep pockets will eventually get their way, even if it takes 11 years, regardless of what might be fair or equitable." I'd like to be less pessimistic. But, no one does copyright registration and contracts better than Jerry Greenberg. Clearly, being right does not always guarantee victory.

Scuba Diving Magazine Photo Contest

2008-12-09T21:23:32.4440000-05:00

Each year I travel to Savannah, Georgia to help judge Scuba Diving Magazine's annual photo contest. As a courtesy to my friends and fellow photo enthusiasts, I hereby post the invitation to participate:

"2009 Scuba Diving Magazine Photo Contest
Got a good eye for underwater photography? It could take you to Wakatobi Resort in Indonesia if you are the Grand Prize winner of the 2009 Scuba Diving Magazine Photo Contest. (Grand Prize courtesy of Wakatobi and Reef & Rainforest.) You can compete for prizes in four categories: Macro, Topside, Marine Life and Wide-Angle. Other prizes include a live-aboard trip for two aboard the Caribbean Explorer II, a dive trip for two to Fort Young Hotel in Dominica, a dive trip for one on Aqua Cat Cruises in the Bahamas, a dive trip for two to Habitat Curacao, UWATEC Aladin Tec 2G wrist computer, Atomic Aquatics B2 regulator, Dive Rite 3000 regulator, Spare Air package and cases by Storm Case.

For more information and to enter, go to > www.scubadiving.com/2009photocontest "

Hope to see you there, albeit virtually!

While you are thinking of UW photo concepts related to Scuba Diving magazine, please be aware I was also very involved with the creation of a very tasteful and informative e-zine having to do with underwater imaging. To get it, and to subscribe to the new "Ocean Imaging" monthly newsletter we are now sending out, you need to visit this URL below and register.

"Register for the new Ocean Imaging newsletter and get a free Photo Guide!
Sign up today for Ocean Imaging, the free e-newsletter for underwater photographers and videographers from Scuba Diving magazine. Each month, new photo and video tips, news on the latest equipment, and direct links to exciting new imaging content on ScubaDiving.com will be delivered to your e-mail inbox—free of charge!

To register, simply complete the survey here >
www.scubadiving.com/ocean_imaging "

The Power of RAW ... and Lightroom ... and a Great Photo

2008-12-04T16:15:04.2860000-05:00

I had a photo course over the past couple of days with a friend. We were shooting here in Key Largo, but he brought me some of the images he'd shot in the past including a very nice series from Palau's Jellyfish Lake. There was one particular image that was so striking compositionally I asked to see the RAW file so we could see what we could extract from it using Adobe Lightroom 2.

Actually, everything we did was done in only a few minutes. The original RAW, bottom photo, was very yellow and green. Actually, the water was probably yellow and green, but that doesn't mean that we had to be too literal about it. We tweaked the exposure, boosted the blacks, and then used the eye-dropper tool to select color. The eye-dropper can be used on any area in the photo that is black, 18% gray, or white (white that still has detail, that is) and it will add the color shift that will change the overall tint to achieve what mathematically the program would deduce is black or white or gray. Sometimes, that gets one closer in a single jump than can be done using the color balance sliders. Still, one should rarely trust that is the final color fix, and fine-tune the color balance. Additionally, we spotted a couple of small bits of backscatter, and used the new graduated filter tool, dragging it from the upper right down into the fin area. (The graduated filter and adjustment brush, where you can actually brush exposure variability onto select portions of the photo are reason enough to upgrade from Lightoom 2 from Version 1.0.)

The adjusted color version is in the center. Then with a click on the grayscale button and a couple of slider tweaks the black and white image resulted. All of that is very powerful, but what really rocks is that the images don't exist as megabytes on my harddrive until exported. Before that, they are merely instruction sets that exist on Virtual Copies of the master RAW shot, and these are only a couple of kilobytes. Lightroom presents massive time-saving options to the digital photographer, and keeps the archive mass reasonably manageable as well.

Canon Powershot Brochure in Little Cayman

2008-12-01T11:00:12.4220000-05:00

I had a nice surprise when I received my newest issues of Digital Photo Pro, Photo District News, and Outdoor Photographer magazines. Polybagged with each issue was the new 34-page catalog published by Canon for their advanced amateur photographers. Entitled "Canon EOS PowerShot for Advanced Photographers" this lavish production was anchored by their concept to have their Canon Explorers of Light using advanced consumer cameras. All of which makes sense, because the line between consumer and professional products is blurring all the time ... they are all just so very good these days. Any pro shooter could go out and do their job with almost any of the products featured in the catalog, although the pro versions might be better weather sealed, or have faster motordrive sequencing, or whatever. Still, the consumer products are pretty amazing these days.

Anyway, as a Canon Explorer of Light, http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=ArtistsListAct, my assignment was to shoot the new Canon G10 in the Canon housing. The photos above show the cover (a gorgeous shot by Tyler Stableford), one of my underwater shots taken with the Canon "point-and-shoot", and the promo materials for the G10 camera.

I was meant to be on location in Little Cayman for Scuba Diving Magazine when this project came due, and it proved to be the perfect place to run the G10 through its paces. The shallow reef at the top of Bloody Bay Wall was ideal because the backgrounds for fish photography were so nice, the water so clear, and gratefully the fish were so accustomed to divers it made getting near enough for quality imaging quite easy.

Thanks to Travis Gainsley for taking the portrait of me and assisting the underwater portion of the shoot, and to my friends at Little Cayman Beach Resort for providing the photo-opportunities.

As for the G10, very cool camera. The native lens is 28mm (28-140mm in 35mm equivalents), and therefore a bit wider than the 35mm lens on the G9, and the image quality is superb. I've been shooting a Canon G9 as my family and pocket camera for a while now, and love the logic of the navigation within the various shoot modes. The G10 preserves the ergonomics and RAW capability, and bumps up the megapixel count, and adds the Digic 4 processor.

RED camera - Early Test Observations

2008-11-28T18:30:08.2580000-05:00

I'm not a videographer. But, I am a big fan of any means to get a better still image, and that includes using video to do so. Which these days, includes technology introduced by the RED system. http://www.red.com/

There has been a lot of chatter on various photography user groups about the potential of the RED digital cameras, in their current iteration and in terms of new products predicted. I'd tell you more about it, but truthfully don't know much more than I read on the web. This from RED's website:

Typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors and record with 3:1:1 color sub-sampled video at up to 30fps. RED offers the Mysterium ™ Super 35mm cine sized (24.4×13.7mm) sensor, which provides 4K (up to 30 fps), 3K (up to 60 fps) and 2K (up to 120 fps) capture, and all this with wide dynamic range and color space in 12 bit native RAW. At 4K, that’s more than 5 times the amount of information available every second and a vastly superior recording quality. In addition, you get the same breathtaking Depth of Field and selective focus as found in film cameras using equivalent 35mm P/L mount lenses.

Of course, most are talking about the RED as competition to 35mm film for cinema projects, or video that massively out-resolves existing high definition technology. But, there is also the camp that contends that it won't be long until, for some types of photography, single frames from the RED will be competitive with the capture quality from still cameras. Imagine a sports shooter covering the 100-meter dash at the Olympics. Put the RED on a tripod and let it roll. Send the clip back to an editor and let them decide what the iconic, decisive frozen-moment-in-time might be. At the same time, there is video clip that can be used for the client's website. RED for web is overkill perhaps, but it will be done. As bandwidth and hard-drives increase in speed and capacity, it all seems very plausible.

Given all the excitement and hype, I've been very eager to see the current state of the art in RED image capture, and when my friend George Monteiro (from Sea-Cam video productions) stopped by my studio recently (he was down to do a test shoot underwater in Key Largo), I asked him to e-mail me a few sample JPGs from the day. Obviously, within the context of a blog you'll never be able to decipher image quality variables, but when I dug into the files in Photoshop I made a few basic deductions:

1. RED topside - The shot of the covered bridge is quite impressive. It was transmitted as a small JPG, but opened in Photoshop as a 24MB, 8-bit file. That's about the size file I would expect from a 10-12 megapixel digital still camera. Not necessarily all the detail I'd expect to see from a 12-megapixel camera, but considering this is a still frame from a video, amazing. It held detail quite well in the 100% enlargement. See the screengrab from Actual pixels in Photoshop. Considering the context, stunning really.

2. RED underwater - Here's a few of George's comments in his post to me:

Here are a few test stills I pulled from yesterday's shoot. Please don't judge them for composition most are from the middle or end of a tracking or pan shot. But they will show you the native resolution of the red in 4K mode at 30FPS with a wide open shutter (1/30th of a second) so you will see motion blur in the close fast moving fish. The images have been compressed as Jpegs to about a half meg each. They were shot in natural light with a UR Pro with a dome port using the 18mm setting on the wide angle Red zoom lens ... I color corrected them for maximum dynamic range in RED Cine and used the various white balance features to achieve what I thought was agood balance. They may be a little contrasty and over saturated but this was my first attempt with underwater footage with RED.

He made the other significant comment that it was all shot at 1/30th of a second. I asked why 1/30th, immediately thinking back to the very old analog days when the Pentax 6x7 I bought was essentially DOA for underwater use because it only would synch with strobe at 1/30th second and slower. 1/30th was way too slow for most things I shot on the reef, and only acceptable with wide angle shots with models, or shots in low ambient light. He explained, logically enough, that choosing faster shutter speeds made the video less "fluid" and more choppy. Faster shutter speeds would be better for freezing the action of moving fish in a still frame grab, but may not be the perfect solution for optimizing video. Apparently, that will be a consideration when choosing shoot parameters primarily for video (motion) versus primarily for extracting stills.

George was dialing in a new dome, and in looking at the JPGs I see he probably missed focusing on the virtual image correctly, as the underwater shots aren't as sharp as the topside shots he showed me. However, finding the exact nodal point for a zoom lens is a complicated matter, and getting it right the first time would be a lucky thing indeed. Still, if the camera renders a sharp still frame topside, there is no reason it won't do the same underwater with the right port and port extension. The RED zoom focuses very close, so I doubt that it will need a diopter to focus on the virtual image, once the focus "sweet spot'' is determined for the dome of choice. George already has a plan to improve the result in his next dives.

The same rules that apply to minimizing optical aberrations with a housed still camera will apply to the housings for the RED. For moving pictures there is probably some latitude for smearing corners, but the higher the camera resolution, the more optical flaws will be evident. And, when those optical flaws are frozen, in a still frame, they are ever more obvious.

From this it is clear that RED bears strong potential for use underwater, but the housing manufacturers will have to get very serious about dome performance if these images are to hold up to publishing standards, competitive with existing still technology. Still, there will be some subjects that might never be captured any other way, and for these the RED will be marvelous.

Of course, technological convergence cuts both ways. As RED creates video technology that encroaches on the potential of still imaging, Canon has just introduced their 5DII still digital camera, capable of capturing high definition video, separate or even simultaneous with a 21-megapixel still digital photo. And as RED gets ready to announce their new modular system, you can bet that our traditional camera manufacturers are pursuing revolutionary upgrades of their own.

These are fascinating times to be a shooter, for sure.

Solutions - Tom Kline on photographing salmon in Alaska

2008-11-24T09:21:11.7210000-05:00

I had a phone conversation with photographer Tom Kline recently. He lives in Alaska and does very interesting research and documentary photography with marine life of the region. We had been chatting about a polecam system he was using to photograph herring at night from a boat, which made me think of other photo-ops he might encounter that might be particularly challenging. Like, photographing salmon in local streams, for example.

Aside from the obvious challenge of not wanting to be where a grizzly bear might be working the same salmon, Tom said the biggest problem is light. He said the days are very short in Alaska in the particular season when the salmon are running. The issue is further complicated by the mountainous terrain. The sun drops behind the ridges very early in the day, and even when it is "piercing" the canyons, it is like dusk in the Caribbean. So, Tom decided he needed to take his daylight with him.

To that end, his salmon-shooter involved building an aluminum "sled" that would hold his Seacam housing and Nikon D2X solidly on the stream bed. Then a set of rails held one Inon strobe (chosen for their small weight and easy maneuverability ... a huge issue when schlepping the system back into the woods) hard wired to the housing. That strobe pointed not towards the water, but up to an array of 5 other Inon strobe heads. Each of these strobes are set to slave mode, and would fire when the hard-wired strobe went off. It is these 5 strobes that aim back towards the stream, in front of the lens, at the point where the salmon are meant to swim. At that point, Tom takes a long remote cord, sits on the bank of the river, and fires the camera once the salmon swim into view.

Very clever solution to a unique photographic challenge.

Now for Something Entirely Different - Alaska!

2008-11-22T18:13:21.3807642-05:00

I know this is a bit early to get excited for a trip that is not scheduled until summer 2011, but we did a trip to British Columbia and Alaska several years ago aboard the Nautilus Explorer, and that still remains vivid in my mind as one of my all time favorite live-aboard adventures.

For that one, please see:
http://www.stephenfrink.com/sf-reports/200407alaska/

The summer cruising season to this region is very short, and 2010 and all the rest of 2011 is sold out for the Nautilus Explorer. However, we were fortunate enough to have them hold a charter for us in the very heart of the best-of-the-best time to be there. This time it is a special itinerary to Alaska only. See the letter below from Captain Mike Lever of Nautilus Explorer to know what to expect:

"Our Alaska journeys have continued to evolve and get better and better since you were last onboard. The diving, scenery and experiences up here were always spectacular but with each passing season, we are getting more and more dialed in, discovering more "kick-ass" dive sites, obtaining additional permits and fine tuning the very best places to see the big critters -- humpback whales, sealions, sea otter, grizzly bears, giant pacific octopus and wolfeels. We now have one site with 10 wolfeels and can practically guarantee octopus sightings for example!

Sample Itinerary: Departure Date: Wed Jul 6, 2011. The ship will be available for boarding in Juneau at 6:00 pm. The ship is scheduled to sail at 8:00 pm. Disembarking in Ketchikan on Sat Jul 16, 2011 at 9:00 am.

Day 1: Dinner-time board in Juneau. Evening steam and anchor before midnight.

Day 2-4: Wake up at Point Adolphus at the entrance to Glacier Bay for the best humpback whale viewing in southeast Alaska plus eagles and stellar sealions. 3 hour sail to Indian Island at the entrance to Icy Strait where we will anchor for the next 3 days. Excellent invertebrate diving plus stellar sealions on every dive with vis usually 20 - 30 feet. Zodiac tours and kayaking with fantastic photo op's up close with humpback whales, sealions, sea otters, bald eagles, etc. Finish off with an evening visit to the tiny boardwalk community of Elfin Cove.

Day 5: Wake up at Baranoff Warm Springs. 2 great dives with loads of scallops, anemones and kelp plus a visit to the hot-springs.

Day 6: Patterson Point. Reliable octopus sightings. Breathtaking scenery at anchor in a steep sided fjord. This is the most beautiful inlet we have ever seen and we have seen grizzly bears on every visit here.

Day 7 - 8: Port Alexander/Wooden Island. Great place for zodiac tours and kayaking and shore visit to Port Alexander not to mention varied and excellent diving - both invertebrate and critters including 10 wolf eels around a single rock.

Day 9: Le Conte glacier. Iceberg day!!

Day 10: Prince of Wales Island. Steep wall diving, 10,000 swimming
scallops, varied diving, early evening arrival Ketchikan.

Day 11: morning disembark”

I know what some of you may be thinking ... I don't do cold water. I had that thought the first time to British Columbia and Alaska as well, but with modern drysuits the cold is not an issue, and truthfully, I have never seen greater density and diversity of life underwater than beneath these Emerald Seas. Plus, for the most part, things don't move quickly and the photo opportunities are extraordinarily productive. Yet, for all of that, the best of this trip happens above the water. Seeing glaciers calf, watching eagles and grizzly bears and stellar sealions, trying our hand at over/unders with salmon, relaxing in a natural hotspring, and photographing humpback whales are pure phototgrapic inspiration!

My wife Barbara and daughter Alexa were aboard for the last trip and they didn't even go diving. Still, they found this was one of our best family vacations ever. In fact, Barbara just came in and looked over my shoulder as I was looking at photos from the last trip, and she confirmed, emphatically, that she wouldn't be diving this time either! Oh well, her loss, because for sure I'll be diving. You can dress for cold, but you can't experience the magic below without jumping into it.

Even though 2011 is a long way away, this is a very special trip, and I appreciate the cooperation and consideration our friends at Nautilus Explorer have extended in giving us this absolutely perfect seasonal opportunity to visit Alaska.

Pix from the Road - Ambon to Raja Ampat

2008-11-19T09:35:01.4130000-05:00

I just got home from a great trip to Indonesia, beginning in Ambon and cruising to Raja Ampat on the Seven Seas. Terrific boat and crew, and big shout-out to Stew Esposito, cruise director on board, for going the extra mile at every step along charter; but especially for shepherding our bags on board the ExpressAir flight out of Sorong. Nothing worse than getting home without your bags. (Well, plenty things are worse than that, but still, something to be avoided whenever possible).

The trip had very nice diversity, with good wide angle potential in the Banda Sea (although there were plenty of critter options there too) and the wealth of creatures and soft coral backgrounds that make fish and macro photography so interesting in Raja Ampat.

I'll get around to writing a proper article about the trip one day soon, but for now here's a brief glimpse of the kinds of photo-ops we encountered on our 12 days at sea.

Wet diopters

2008-11-15T11:50:35.9271226-05:00

I just came home from 12 days in Indonesia, Ambon to Raja Ampat. One nice thing about having so much luxury of time aboard the boat is that I was able to do some testing and experimenting, something never possible on a commercial shoot that has to get knocked out in a couple of days on location.

Since there was so much macro life to shoot, I was particularly interested in the external wet diopter. I shoot Seacam, so my diopter was the Seacam Wet Two, but there were a couple of Woody's diopters onboard being used on Subal systems, and I found my observations below are generally indicative of their product as well:

1. The magnification difference between no diopter and the Wet Two is significant. To test accurately I shot my 100 macro lens on a Canon 1DsMKIII (full frame) and manually dialed the lens out to minimum focus. The wider shots of the little sea apple and nudibranchs shown here represent full 1:1, lens racked out all the way and then camera moved forward until accurate focus achieved. Then I added the Wet Two (that's the beauty of these close-up lenses, they can be added and removed while underwater) and then moved closer until focus popped. You can see the relative enlargement they actually do provide. Quite impressive really.

2. The position of the front of the lens relative to the rear of the flat port glass is a massive variable. i tried to simulate this topside with shots of my watch face. You'll see the first shot is 1:1, minimum focus no diopter. The second shot is minimum focus with Wet Two and lens right up next to the rear of the macro port glass. The third shot, the one with all the smearing and optical aberrations at the edges, is with the lens maybe 2 inches from the rear of the glass.

It is important to note that macro lenses can be fairly casual about how they fit behind a flat port. They just have to not vignette and they'll work. But, to properly use a wet diopter, the front of the macro lens must be very, very close to the back of the glass on the macro port. Of course, this is easier with an internally focusing lens constantly at one point. But even with an extending lens, like the old style 60mm and 105mm micro Nikkors, the macro port extensions need to be designed so that the maximum lens extension (coincidentally, minimum focus) falls in proximity to the port glass if effective use of wet diopter is a goal.

Shooter Mask

2008-11-15T10:31:22.6430000-05:00

A diver's facemask is their window on the underwater world, but for a photographer it is even more important. If you can't see it you can't shoot it. To that end, there are a number of things I look for in a favorite shooter mask:

1. Black silicone skirt - this is the most important thing for me, and is the first parameter I consider. Silicone because it is more comfortable than the old rubber masks of yesteryear, but black for the same reason Ansel Adams put a black focusing cloth over his head when working with his view camera outside in Yosemite. There is a need to block extraneous light from the groundglass to optimize contrast and resolution, and black does so obviously far better than a clear skirted mask. I like clear skirted masks for my models, because they are more attractive and easier to light, but for me, with my eye to a viewfinder on a housed D-SLR, black always.

2. High light-transmission glass - Some glass has higher miscellaneous mineral content than others and it can affect light transmission. In fact, when I first got my Atomic Ultra-clear I shot a photo through that mask and my old shooter mask as a comparison, just to check out the meter readings with the only variable being type of glass in front of the camera lens. I could actually deduce a significant difference in the histogram of the two shots, with the curve moving more to the right with the Atomic mask, empirically proving greater light transmission with the Ultraclear glass. Better glass is brighter glass, and if more light passes through the mask, my underwater visual acuity is enhanced.

3. Gauge reader - I wear reading glasses, but have perfect distance vision. So, I can pick out any of the big stuff on the reef, but am challenged by the little reef minutia, pygmy seahorses and such. But, the bigger issue was that I had a hard time reading all the digital menus and arcane pathways I had to navigate to change camera custom settings. But, now that I use a ground gauge reader applied to the lower left corner of my shooter mask, that issue is resolved. One is enough for me, and I had it installed in the lower left so it did not interfere with distance view, and did not affect my predominant right eye, the one I put to the viewfinder.

4. Anti-fog - Even the best mask is horrible if you can't get it to clear. Which is a fairly massive problem with many masks thee days. The release agent used to pop the skirts off the mold in manufacture seems to stay on there forever, sloughing off at the most inopportune times to make the mask continually fog. I've tried all the tricks ... softscrub, toothpaste, even using a lighter to burn the goop off the rubber and glass. But, the only thing that absolutely/positively works for me is "500 psi" mask scrub. It costs a buck and you can usually find it by the check out counter at you local dive store. Once the mask is adequately scrubbed, and good mask-clear works wonders. But, rinse thoroughly before putting on for the dive, because some of the mask clear solutions can irritate the eye.

DAN to the Rescue (Again)

2008-11-11T23:31:23.4950000-05:00

It was the start of an 11-day trip, November 2008, on one of my photo tours, this time running from Ambon to Raja Ampat in the far reaches of Indonesia. Pretty remote regions, a fact I learned all too well Valentine’s Day of 2007 when the live-aboard dive boat we were on in the Misool region made a strategic error running at night and ran smack-dab into an island. The island won. The bowsprit on the wooden boat was pushed back into the mast, dislodging it and causing the base of the mast to smash through crew quarters. No one was hurt, amazingly really, but we arranged to be evacuated by Indonesian Search-and-Rescue to Sorong and then we flew back to Bali where we finished off our dive holiday.

It could have been a lot worse, but just being back in that part of the world left me feeling a little paranoid. So, when on the first day out a guest began to complain of possible cardiac symptoms after the very first dive, I began to consider where we were going, how primitive health care services were, all the things that could go wrong and how far we were from critical-care health services. We had a couple of doctors on board (also guests) and their collective concern made me decide to talk to the experts. From anywhere in the world, for any diving related emergency, my go-to guys are the Diver’s Alert Network.

The first thing I did was to pick up a sat phone and call DAN in Durham, North Carolina. It was two in the morning there, but the on-call physician Dan Nord (sorry to wake you Dan) talked to my guest, and then went the extra mile to seek out a cardiac consultation from his network of specialists. He called back in less than 20-minutes and we had reassurance that this was not a life-threatening cardiac event, and so long as he took it a little easy we could carry-on with the trip.

That particular event, albeit rather inconsequential, reminded me how very important the DAN organization has become for the growth of global dive travel. A fact I know all too well from personal experience.

Divers Alert Network has bailed me out of jams several times in the past. The first time I got bent was in Vanuatu, back when Vanuatu was REALLY remote. There were no chambers there, and at the time there wasn’t even a decompression chamber in Fiji, the next stop along the way. There weren’t satellite phones then either, but through a combination of single-sideband radios back to a shore base and a long distance phone call to DAN headquarters, they decided the nearest deco treatment was in Hawaii. So, I boarded on the 747 I was scheduled to fly anyway, and Qantas dropped an O2 bib just for me. I sucked oxygen, watched movies, and stepped off our jetliner in Waikiki to be whisked away to the Navy’s recompression chamber for an 8-hour treatment. That was the first time I really got a glimpse of the efficient global network that DAN had become, and how absolutely integral they are to the growth of international dive travel. For without the DAN safety net, people could not afford to go to the places we go for fear of being bankrupted by the very real possibility that something, dive-related or not, could go wrong and they’d have to be evacuated.

That episode along cost DAN insurance providers over $50,000, and that was back in mid-eighties dollars. I can easily envision a $200,000 tab for evacuation and treatment these days, and without that kind of an upper limit on a personal credit card, there is the very real possibility the airplane and doctors and chambers would simply not be available if they weren’t certain they would be paid. That’s the power of deep pockets and serious insurance. That’s the power of DAN.

So, I knew DAN from my own experiences, but later in the week, over a few post-dive beers, other DAN stories popped up. One guest had her brakes give out on her bicycle as she was racing down a steep incline. She fell off the bike, smashed into a tree, and had massive facial injuries. DAN to the rescue in terms of prompt evacuation. Her husband, also a DAN member, suffered a heart attack while on a cruise ship in Jamaica. He got off the ship in Cayman and was stabilized in the local hospital and then airlifted home. DAN to the rescue. It was interesting to me to note how broad the coverage was in these cases, even though not directly dive related accidents. Insurance and assistance for evacuation back to proper health care facilities is a big part of the DAN mission.

As further illustration, another bad accident happened to a close friend of mine on one of our trips to Thailand. He got hit by the hull and propeller of the dive dinghy, resulting in some very nasty contusions and deep lacerations to his foot. He had to get evacuated from the Myanmar border back to Phuket to be hospitalized, and following treatment needed assistance to get back home. Once more it was DAN to the rescue, although by then we had satellite phones and could talk to DAN directly (24/7 by the way). His issue had nothing to do with decompression sickness, but all to do with being in a remote region with serious need for medical care. DAN was there for him. By coincidence, that friend of mine, Dennis Liberson, is now Chairman of the Board of DAN, and I am proudly now a member of the board of directors as well. For us, it is a small way to give back to an organization that means so much to the global support of destination diving.

For others who may ever have had need for emergency treatment, or even the reassurance of a free phone consultation far from home, the importance of DAN may not be readily apparent. But, of all the things we do as recreational divers, the small cost of DAN membership and insurance is the best bargain in our industry. Some may take it for granted, but not me. We require DAN insurance for all participants in our photo-tours, and most live-aboards worldwide want that same proof of recompression treatment and evacuation insurance for all their guests. Really, don’t leave home without it. Don’t even think about it. By the way, this year's trip was aboard the Seven Seas, and it was awesome. Great boat, and great crew, with diverse and spectacular photo opportunities. In the end we had nothing to worry about, nothing worth being insured for. That's the very best kind of insurance ... the kind you don't need.

Travel Tribulations - How to get 140 pounds of checked baggage to Indonesia

2008-10-28T04:52:33.8617231-04:00

There used to be 2 magic numbers in travel: 50 for domestic air and 70 for international. Those were the weight in pounds that one could check without incurring overweight charges. We all know the formula is changing, but without checking the airline’s website it seems one can never predict from one trip to the next what rules apply.

Case in point … my trip to Indonesia at the moment. When I checked in at my US gateway, in this case Las Vegas, with a bag full of camera gear at 67 pounds and a clothing/dive gear combo at 70 pounds, I assumed I would be OK. Not! If it was a US destination and I was flying American, for example, I would now expect to pay $15 for the first bag + $50 since it was 50-70 pounds + $25 for the second bag + $50 since it was 50-70 pounds. $65 for the first bag and $75 for the second bag = $140. Not perfect, but a new reality I can accept. After all, diving and underwater photography are heavy past-times and I expect to pay.

But, here was the new and quite unpleasant new parameter. American, or any US carrier, has to play by the rules of the international carrier they connect to. In this case Singapore Air, and Singapore Air expected to be paid 3 times the overweight charge for the 50-70 pound limit PER BAG. $150 per bag in overweight x 2 bags. $600 in overweight each way. $1200 in overweight just getting to and from Bali, let alone whatever I was likely to incur in overweight with the domestic carriers within Indonesia. Probably $1500 in overweight to get to Raja Ampat. Yikes!!! This is getting a bit silly.

However, I lucked out with a helpful ticket agent at the American counter, and she told me it was cheaper to pay for a third bag if I could get them all under 50 pounds. So, I raced to a nearby shop at the airport and bought a particularly ugly $50 suitcase patterned like a giraffe. I redistributed the weight between the 3 bags, and now each was less than 50 pounds, yielding new math that worked out to be $109. I can’t tell you what the formula was that she used to come up with that, but I wasn’t arguing!

The new magic number appears to be 50, whether for international or domestic. Hopefully, armed with that knowledge I can make the next trip with 2 bags at 50 pounds each, but if not possible, it is nice to know the better option is a third bag. Well, at least for now, until they change the rules again.

Gates Housing for RED video

2008-10-26T01:58:26.0678773-04:00

Today at the DEMA show I had a chance to talk to John Ellerbrock about the new Gates housing for the RED video camera. The RED is an almost mythical camera that will push the envelope of high definition video far beyond anything available previously in the digital realm. See http://www.red.com, or in their words: "Typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors and record with 3:1:1 color sub-sampled video at up to 30fps. RED offers the Mysterium ™ Super 35mm cine sized (24.4×13.7mm) sensor, which provides 4K (up to 30 fps), 3K (up to 60 fps) and 2K (up to 120 fps) capture, and all this with wide dynamic range and color space in 12 bit native RAW. At 4K, that’s more than 5 times the amount of information available every second and a vastly superior recording quality."

But, for an underwater shooter, what good is the very best camera without a stellar housing, and that's what the Gates team has achieved. Working in close collaboration with IMAX film-maker Howard Hall, John Ellerbrock of Gates has created some breakthough innovations in housing design, including using the reverse polarity of magnets to actually operate mechanical controls without the necessity of through-housing shafts, and a unique toggle shaft for the housing that is a clever solution to what must have been a very challenging (but crucial) camera control.

I'm not a videographer, but I do appreciate brilliance in mechanical design and machining excellence. Very nicely done!

Loving those high-res files!

2008-10-24T11:03:26.9790000-04:00

As I walk around the floor of the DEMA show I see several of my photos that have been used in displays and ad campaigns. That's a good thing ... I love to be part of some art director's creative vision in promoting a dive destinations or a live-aboard or a bit of dive gear. But, it also reminds me of how easy the whole process has become.

The shot of the dolphin used on the Bay Islands banner was shot as a slide, then a duplicate transparency was sent to the ad agency for review. Once the decision was made they called for the original slide, which was then Fed Exed to the production house, scanned, and printed. All told, the slide was gone for a couple of weeks and two Fed Exes necessary to get the slide to the client and then back home.

By contrast, the shots for Henderson were shot this summer on a Canon 1DSMKIII (21MP) in the Red Sea. I sent some thumbnail JPGs to Joe Polak at Henderson so he could see how this new H2 suits looked in the water. In anticipation of the DEMA show he called for 2 files (by file number), I processed as high res TIF and uploaded via FTP (lots of acronyms in this new workflow). No originals floating around by courier, no chance they would be lost or damaged. Quick and efficient.

And truthfully, the quality on these new digital files is SO very much better than my old slides. Seeing the Henderson wetsuits blown up to the size they are in real-life, and reading the detail in the logo is a testament to the incredible image quality these new cameras deliver.

Random thoughts from DEMA

2008-10-23T11:29:43.3120000-04:00

I'm at the DEMA (Dive Equipment Manufacturers Association) show in Las Vegas this week, and then off to Indonesia from here, Ambon to Raja Ampat on the Seven Seas. Anyway, we are exhibiting the Seacam line as I am North and South American distributor for this line of digital SLR housings made in Austria (among myriad other things to do at the DEMA show).

The manufacturer, Harald Hordosch showed us some pretty significant surprises on the housing for the Nikon D3. There is a new port to accommodate the 14-24 Nikkor zoom lens and the latching system is brand new, and will replace conventional latches and registration pins for all housings moving forward. Other new things included a special handle part of the polecam that integrates a means to hook up cyberglasses independent of the remote monitor, Seaflash 150 strobe for both Nikon and Canon TTL (along with a diffuser for same)

One bit of big news was that Chuckie Luzier from Canon was there at our booth showing a lot of Canon product, but the one everyone migrated to was the 5DMKII. There are only 20 of these in the US at the moment, so getting one at DEMA was a huge coup, especially since Photo Expo is going on in New York at this exact same time. This camera not only shoots 21 PM still images, but integrates at high definition video capability.

Some video guy covering the show and schlepping a rolling cart-full of video gear picked up the camera and walked around the booth doing video kind of stuff ... he was blown away. I'm not a video person (not yet anyway, but with the convergence of stills and video in the new cameras I expect to learn) but Chuckie made the logical statement that the guy's imager was 3/4", while the 5DMII imager is 1.5 inches. That seemed to particularly resonate and he was obviously quite impressed with the output.

Seacam, and presumably all other high end housing manufacturers, will obviously do a 5DMKII housing, probably first quarter 2009.

But, not all DEMA is work of course, and here I am with my friends from Scuba Diving Magazine, obviously having a very important business meeting ;)

More from DEMA coming soon.

Hard to Imagine, but I'd Never Been There

2008-10-16T09:52:39.6399382-04:00

Last year I was working on a project, creating huge murals for a new Visitor Center being built in Key West for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It involves shooting specific habitats, some topside (Ft. Jefferson, as well as Pinelands and Wetlands in the Lower Keys) and specific underwater topography to include bank reefs, patch reefs, hard bottom, and a historical shipwreck (the Civil War Wreck off the Elbow). Saturday was my day to shoot the Patch Reef, and my friends at Quiescence recommended a site in behind Molasses that they dive quite often called “Brody’s”.

Now, I’ve lived in Key Largo since 1978, and it is hard to imagine a site that’s good for photography has escaped me. But, I’d never dived this one. I was diving with John Halas, manager for the Key Largo region of the Sanctuary, and one who actually predates me in the dive industry here in Key Largo. John agreed this was the best of the best for local Patch Reef habitat. So based on his stellar recommendation, Brody’s was our destination.

From the surface I could see the circular sand halo surrounding a more or less circular reef, maybe a little longer than the length of a football field. That is part of the classic definition of “patch” reef … so far so good. But, dropping beneath the surface I was amazed at how pristine the hard corals and gorgonia were. The schools of fish were impressive, especially near the south end of the reef where the prevailing current built up large filter feeding sponge and gorgonia. Here was a large congregate of Atlantic spadefish, as well as mangrove snapper, hogfish, porkfish, and of course the omnipresent grunts that so define Keys diving.

I spent 65 minutes no deeper than 28 feet, on this my first dive at Brody’s, and then only came up because my 8 GB card was spent. It is not marked by a mooring buoy, which probably explains, in a way, why it remains so nice. It is not one of the “iconic” sites that everyone knows here, like Molasses or French Reef, and the fringing reef probably shelters it from big waves. It is a place of pristine and quiet beauty, and a comfort to know there are places unexplored and special, even in my own backyard. Maybe I should spend a little less time on a 747 bound for some exotic sea, and a little more time discovering the wonders closer to home.

More on Snapper Ledge Protection Petition

2008-10-12T10:13:15.1710127-04:00

The Sunday, October 12th, edition of the Key West Citizen had a very nice article about the move to have Snapper Ledge off Key Largo declared a Sanctuary Preservation Area. That means spearfishing and hook-and-line fishing would be illegal there. To learn more about the specific initiative, please visit http://fw_scuba.permissiontv.com/index.html?showid=1013390 to view a lovely video that explains the concept.

While the intention of the article in the newspaper was noble, it further exacerbates a perception that this is about underwater photographers or marine environmentalists versus spearfishing enthusiasts. This IS NOT the case. Please see my response to Tim after seeing the article for the first time:

"Tim - Thanks for your efforts to bring public awareness to our request to make Snapper Ledge a conservation area, a "no-take" zone by means of a Sanctuary preservation Area. But, I am concerned that your front page article in The Key West Citizen implies an antagonism towards spearfishing, which is clearly not the intent of this iniative. Please allow me to address a few key points that are likely to be misinterpreted based on your article:

1. Headline - "Divers Want Ban on Reef" may be accurate in specific, I don't see it as totally accurate in spirit. Yes, SPA designation would make a very small area known as Snapper Ledge off-limits for spearfishing or hook-and-line, if I were writing the headline according to my personal intentions I would have said "Divers Want Protection for a Reef". I realize it is a small matter of semantics, but this is not about taking away rights from people, it is about bringing rights to a very specific and carefully designated marine ecosystem.

2. Original Motivation - I never said that particular shark that motivated my petition was a spearfishing incident. In fact, it almost certainly was not. If you look at my personal blog, which was the first public discussion of this incident, you'll see I did not lay the blame on spearfishing. Please see http://stephenfrink.blogspot.com/2008/08/shark-dead-for-no-reason.html
Which is not to say spearfishing does not go on at Snapper Ledge. Obviously it does. But my strong motivation here is not any anti-spearfishing bias, a fact I address later in the comments section in that same blog:

The reality is that it is not meant to be a rant about spearfishing. Actually, most spearfishers are responsible, and truth be known, selective harvest by spearfishing is probably less destructive than hook-and-line. Combine that with the athleticism of those who spearfish as freedivers, and you have a sport that commands respect. It is not for me ... I don’t even eat reef fish because I don’t think there are enough reef fish anymore. I don't eat them and I don't kill them. But, again my argument is not with spearfishing per se.

I do, however, have a big argument with wanton massacre of our marine life. The shark that precipitated this petition was probably from a hook-and-line angler, as I mention in my blog. But, this is not the first time I’ve seen a nurse shark dead on the bottom at Snapper Ledge, and the other time was almost certainly a spearfishing incident. This reef is an absolute aquarium, unique throughout the Caribbean and Western Atlantic, and there is no “sport” to using scuba and a pneumatic speargun to shoot fish that are essentially puppy-dogs. Most places in the civilized world don’t even allow spearfishing on scuba, let alone in a place where the fish are so docile and plentiful like Snapper Ledge. Plus, the carnage brought on by the hook-and-line anglers here is rampant as well.

One brilliant concept of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is “zonation”. They have established specific zones of use for specific recreational groups. There are areas for hook-and-line and spearfishing, but there also needs to be Sanctuary Preservation Areas (SPA).

The SPAs allow for a critical fish nursery, and actually help distribute fish to other nearby reefs, where spearfishing and angling is allowed. It is simply good stewardship of our reef to allow a safe haven for fish to become sexually mature and procreate.

A SPA does not discriminate between spearfishing, hook-and-line, and lobstering. It simply means “no-take”. I don’t want the entire Florida Keys to be a SPA, but I do absolutely endorse the concept of a few well-managed refuges for our fish, so we can visit in a benign, non-consumptive, role and get a sense of what our reefs could be like if left to their own means of balance, without human interference."

SEPTEMBER 17, 2008

3. The unique attributes of Snapper Ledge - If none of the points above resonate, here is what really matters:

For whatever reason Snapper Ledge is unique and spectacular. Not only by the context of the Florida Keys, but by comparison with other places throughout the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Western Atlantic. It deserves to be a "no-take" zone, to protect the marine life there, and as significantly, to create a marine nursery that may help populate nearby reefs that are not use-restricted by SPA designation. The dense and prolific marine life are spectacular here, more so than anywhere else in the Florida Keys. If we have a provision in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to create Sanctuary Preservation Areas, this one is particularly deserving. This too is an important distinction, because it is not a part of a broader plan to create more no-take zones. For me, this is about Snapper Ledge, a very small reef area; and I’d hate to have it get sidetracked with a perceived attack on spearfishing. That was never my intent and I regret it has morphed in that direction.

This is not about the desires of a photographer versus the desires of a spearfisherman or hook-and-line angler. This is about one specific place that for whatever reason is a rich and diverse marine habitat, and one which will further flourish under greater protection.

Thanks for your attention and understanding."

SeaLife DC800 in the Red Sea

2008-10-10T13:43:53.1890000-04:00

SeaLife DC800 tutorial, by Liz Johnson, Stephen Frink Photographic
Additional comments by Bjorn Harms, SeaLife

In an effort to learn more about the variety of very capable compact cameras there are now available for underwater photographers, I took one of the most popular with me on a recent trip to the Red Sea, SeaLife's DC800. However, to save me the trouble of reading the owner's manual, and because my retail manager at our Key Largo studio, Liz Johnson, had already done the research, I asked her to prepare me a cheat-sheet for operating the DC800 and the new SeaLife digital strobe. Her suggestions, and those additionally provided by SeaLife's very own Bjorn Harms, helped me in my underwater tests, so I share them here:

Both camera and strobe – clean and inspect gaskets/orings
DO NOT LUBE any of the orings or gaskets

Strobe:
Takes 4 AA batteries

Unlock lock before lifting latch - Be sure and relock latch so that back door of strobe case does not catch on hose/cable or divemaster’s finger and open by itself.

Set pre-flash setting to 0 (for SeaLife camera)
Auto bright setting should be #1 (for SeaLife camera)
Set flash control on back door of flash to “A”

* Note: Easier to open and close back door of strobe than in older SeaLife strobe models. Battery compartment definitely more stable
* Bjorn - Optical cable connection is super easy and cannot be misaligned.

Camera settings:

Top of camera:
Set mode to camera to “camera” for stills of “video” to shoot movies. This control is not accessible through housing! Must be set in camera mode before dive

* Bjorn - You can switch between playback, video and still pictures by pushing the LCD Display button, so you don’t need the slide switch when the camera is in the housing.

Using menu button to immediate right of LCD: SeaLife doesn't advise messing with the ISO setting.

* Bjorn - Just set the camera to Ext Flash mode and the ISO will automatically range between 50 and 100 for sharp Images without the graininess you get from higher ISO.

Set Camera scene to External flash mode

Set WB to Auto

*Bjorn - We don’t suggest fiddling with WB when in Ext Flash mode. The WB Is pre-calibrated to match the color temperature of the flash. In reality, once you set the camera to the external flash mode, the camera sets the iso and wb. If you set the camera scene to ext flash MNL the camera aperture and shutter settings must be manually set to achieve the desired effect.

Lower right of camera back:
Control dial
At top of dial, you can change the focus mode:
To macro (displays flower) 2in to 2ft
* Or infinity setting (displays mountain) 2ft to Infinity
Or standard AF (focus 1 ft to infinity, it says) Does not display an icon – will be blank

*To minimize shutter lag, they suggest setting to infinity. Everything from 1.5 feet will be in focus

On right side of the dial you can also change the flash mode:
*Automatic exposure control with external flash– suggested default for most us pictures - no icon displayed – will be blank

To flash macro (3 ft or less) – flash with flower displayed
Or flash far (beyond 6 ft) flash with mountains displayed
Can set to MNL – press the set button and you get aperture (adjust right or left)
Press set button again and get ss (adjust to the right or left)
Press set again to exit
Aperture only goes 2.7 and 5.3

* Note from Bjorn Harms - The "Macro" flash and "Far" setting will decrease (darken) or Increase (brighten) the camera's onboard exposure program. In other words, you don’t have to select Macro Flash for close-ups - you can keep it in macro flash for the whole dive if you like a slightly darker exposure. This is a short cut to controlling the cameras exposure.

To charge battery:
Leave battery in camera and plug in ac adapter to side of camera.
You should get at least 3 dives, 300 pics/videos, or 3 hours of operation with the long-life battery fully charged. Never change batteries between dives.

A lot more intuitive to change camera settings and easier to work your way around the camera as well for underwater. Easier for the person that wants to point and shoot – set and ignore other than flash control

Note: I left the digital zoom turned off – but you can change it through the menu.

*Bjorn: A few more things to consider.

1) Video: Push one button to switch to video. Take continuous video for as long as you want depending in the memory card. When camera is in Ext Flash mode, and you switch to video, the underwater color correction is automatic, so you don’t need to mess with the WB setting.

2) 3 built-in color correction filters: For non-strobe divers (which represents about 60% of all underwater photographers), the DC800 offers 3 built in color correction filters - Blue Ocean, Green Ocean and Lakes/Rivers.

3) Use up to 16GB SDHC memory card: The DC800 specifications suggest up to 4GB, but we just completed tests with popular brands of SD and SDHC memory cards and that 8GB and 16GB work fine.

4) Big shutter button for easy grip and shooting.