The Diveblog

Boston Blogging

Blogging has been light lately because my work travel is in high gear in the spring.  Boston today, New York (again) tomorrow.  Got a chance yesterday to take a walk along the Freedom Trail and the Boston Common/Public Garden.  The temps seemed to fluctuate minute-by-minute, depending on whether the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds.

So here are a few photos (click on "continue reading" to see more):

Taking the Digital SLR Plunge

OK, I've finally done it.  After significant research and staying on the sidelines during the 6MP Canon Digital Rebel/Nikon D70 battle, I've purchased the 8MP Canon Digital Rebel XT for my land photography.  I'm not getting the 18-55mm kit lens, which has been roundly criticized.  Rather, I am going to outfit it with this Tamron 18-200mm lens.  Picked up some high capacity, high speed memory, too. 

Although I have a huge amount of respect for Nikon's products, I think they'll always be a step behind Canon in the digital arena. Its a question of scale.  Canon just has significantly greater resources to dedicate to R&D.  In addition, this recent development regarding Nikon's plans for RAW file encryption has not made me feel all warm and fuzzy and probably helped push me towards Canon. 

Future wish list:

Canon 10-22mm wide angle zoom

Tokina 80-400mm telephoto zoom

Canon 420EX Speedlight

And someday, maybe I'll put it in a housing and take it underwater (although travelling with underwater SLR gear just sucks!).

I'm Back...Again

Okay, I really don't know how these guys do it.  Career and life have kept me from blogging the last couple of weeks, yet Lileks seems to be able to write a friggin book and play Mr. Mom......and keep blogging!

I was in New York last week and the weather was beautiful!  Between meetings I got a couple of hours in Central Park with the camera (I carry around a Canon Powershot S70).  Here's a sample and I put a few more shots in the extended post (click on "continue reading") below.

Roatan Photos

Here are the few decent shots I got on a recent trip to Roatan.  I forgot the sync cord at home and was limited to silhouette shots and topside photos.

Underwater Camera Rig

I've gotten a couple of questions on my underwater camera equipment.

I currently use an Olympus C-4040z housed in a Light & Motion Tetra housing with two Sea & Sea YS-90DX strobes.  I utilize the wetmate wide angle and macro lenses for the housing.

The 3030, 4040 and 5050 series Olympus cameras are blessed with a wonderfully bright f1.8 lens.  This makes them ideal for underwater photography and other low light situations.  The beauty of the prosumer digital cameras is they allow you to compose the photos on the LCD screen, rather than having to use the viewfinder.  The drawbacks to the prosumer cameras are write speed and shutter lag.

I selected the housing because of its depth rating into technical depths.  However, I have not utilized this very much, to date.  There is no TTL capability with this housing, so the strobes need to be set manually.

The ONLY major problem I have with this camera setup is that it uses the SmartMedia storage cards, which are limited to 128MB.  I'd like to upgrade, but have yet to find a prosumer model I'm happy with underwater and don't feel like dealing with a housed SLR at this point.  Although I'm on the cusp of buying a Rebel XT for land use.

Unfortunately for underwater photographers, Olympus took a step backwards with the C-5060 (like downgrading to a f2.8 lens).  I was hoping the C-7070 would address the problems that arose from the C-5060, but alas, after looking at the reviews (here and here) it seems that all they did was stuff more pixels on a 5060 sensor.  Sigh.  Last week Light & Motion announced the Tetra housing for the C-7070.  However, just as with the 5060, my wide angle wetmate lens can't be used with the 7070 either.  This is purportedly due to the fact that the lens moves when zooming (something the 3030, 4040 and 5050 did not do!).  While I would think of upgrading the camera and housing, I definitely don't feel like springing for a new wide angle lens ($700!).....and its not a wetmate either.  I've grown very used to switching lenses underwater.

So now I'm spending time on eBay trying to pick up one or two additional c4040 camera bodies (just in case!)

Cayman Photos

Last night I uploaded a bunch of photos from the Cayman Islands (pre-hurricane).  This was my first photographic dive trip a couple of years ago.  I rented a housed Olympus 4040z from the Cayman Aggressor.  This is the camera rig I eventually purchased.  I haven't put up any captions yet.  Here's the link.

Happy Presidents' Day

The bad thing about having an extra day off is that you put off all the chores until Monday!  So no blogging today, but I have been testing out the photo album functionailty on Typepad.  So here's a link to a few photos from Bonaire.  I'll be adding more shots as I get the time.