Manatees 2007

[Clay Coleman]

I made a passing comment in another thread about going to Crystal River/Homosassa, and Tarczy expressed some interest. I will go, probably sometime in late January. I like to go during the week to avoid the super-crush of divers (weekdays still have crowds at the most popular sites), and my plans are usually last-minute depending on weather fronts to try to get a sunny day. I will also bring my little boat (14' aluminum bateau), and it will be full with me, my wife, my regular manatee buddy David Breidenbach, and his wife. However, if anybody is interested in hooking up with us and going out either with a rented boat or with an operator, I'll keep you posted with our plans. I like to stay at the old American River Rendezvous (now called Sea Grass?, I think) on the Homosassa--nice little cottages with 2 bedrooms and a kitchen for cheap. The Homosassa is a beautiful river for cruising and bird shots, and it's only a short drive to Pete's Pier to access 3 Sisters on the Crystal River. -Clay

[tarczy]

Clay-

I can pretty much get to Tampa on a moment's notice, so keep me posted as your travel plans firm up.

I've always wanted to go diving with Manatees. :)

Mark

[Jonathan Bird]

Mark,
It's more like floating with them. Most of the time the water is shallow enough to stand!

I have friends that live right across the canal from 3 Sisters and sometimes swim from their dock. Other times I just rent a little boat. Obviously, I can't go on short notice because I have small children and a 3 hour flight to get there. But if you guys want to plan something in advance, late January is definitely a possibility for me.

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Ok, I've spoken with my "crew". We're looking at the week of Jan. 15 to probably dive Tue., Wed., and Thu. morning. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Hmmm.....I'll have to discuss this with my crew. May be tough for me to escape mid-week, even though I agree its the best time. Stand by.

Jonathan

[tarczy]

Hmmmm . . . let's see . . . get back from T&C on the 8th . . . turn right around and leave for FL on the 14th . . . my employees are gonna think I've gone off the deep end (ha ha ha . . . bad pun). :D :D :D :D

Gotta think of some ridiculous family emergency . . . maybe my Grandmother could fall morbidly ill . . . oh wait . . . she's not around anymore (God rest her soul) . . . hmmmmmm . . . I'll have to think about this one . . . but it DOES sound enticing.

[Clay Coleman]

Can't help with the work absence excuses, but my plans are set. I'll be arriving at the Seagrass in Homosassa on the night of Jan. 15, and I plan to be at 3 Sisters on the Crystal River early on the morning of Jan. 16. We'll probably stay to shoot when the tour boats go to lunch, then go back to the Homosassa for bird photography in the afternoons. If any of you plan to be in the area, PM me and we'll swap contact info. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey Clay,
Sounds like a good time but I won't be able to join you. Just too much going on here this month. You probably have forgotten how much fun it is to have a 5 month old that wakes up 3 times a night! :rolleyes:

Have a great time and be sure to post some pics!!!!!

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

I'm back from the Homosassa/Crystal River, and my eyes are still vibrating from the 12 hour drive pulling my little boat. Conditions were strange this year, with very warm weather on Tuesday, few manatees, and loads of people at every popular spot. The resulting silting was tough on photography, and competition for subjects was a bit crazy. I shouldn't complain (after all, I was one of the crowd) but it was frustrating. A cold front moved through on Tuesday night, and prospects for Wednesday were good. However, the wind blew too much water out of the popular areas and we didn't see a single animal in the water on Wednesday (we saw a few from the boat, but they were inaccessible). So, the trip was a bit of a disappointment for manatee shots. However, here are some shots from the trip.

All underwater shots were with a D80, Ike normal extension, 8" dome, 12-24mm Tokina with +2 diopter, ISO 100, aperture priority @ f8, white balance bright sunshine, exposure compensation of -0.7.

Most of the manatees were within restricted areas and required shots at max (24mm) zoom. This, combined with murky water, resulted in low contrast pics.
http://claycoleman.tripod.com/b5bd1bb0.jpg

Here's one of the very few at 12mm.
http://claycoleman.tripod.com/b61bdd50.jpg

We swam through a narrow channel and enjoyed a swim in the crystilline water of the Three Sisters Springs system. Here's Sharon snorkeling:
http://claycoleman.tripod.com/b6abdd50.jpg

And here's a weird one with kaleidoscopic reflections and the trees and sky. I haven't decided if I like this or not, but it does command attention. The disembodied hand at center right is kind of creepy, as is the "joined at the head" illusion.
http://claycoleman.tripod.com/b7abdd50.jpg

We had better luck with the birds. I've posted 2 at http://claycoleman.tripod.com/id365.htm and http://claycoleman.tripod.com/id367.htm I'll probably find a few more keepers after I get a good night's sleep. -Clay

[Sealizard]

[QUOTE
All underwater shots were with a D80, Ike normal extension, 8" dome, 12-24mm Tokina with +2 diopter, ISO 100, aperture priority @ f8, white balance bright sunshine, exposure compensation of -0.7. [/QUOTE]

Clay, you raise an interesting point as to the choice of white balance. HAve you tested the auto WB on your D80? Or do you prefer to set it?

Also, do you remember the explanation for shooting an exposure compensation of -0.7? I read this somewhere a couple years ago and have been setting mine the same way, but can't remember the rationale.

Nice point of view in your shots. Thanks for sharing.

Elizabeth

[Jonathan Bird]

Elizabeth,
I'm sure Clay will have interesting responses for those questions, but I will offer my take on them if you like. (Well, I'm going to.....I HOPE ya like it!) :D

Many people shoot with the exposure compensation slightly negative to be SURE that they do not overexpose the highlights. As you are probably aware, digital cameras have ZERO detail recorded in blown out (overexposed) highlights. So you are better to be a tad underexposed than overexposed. The flip side of that is that digital cameras record the most detail near the top of the exposure range because they have the most bits to work with. So if you underexpose too much in order to prevent overexposure, you reduce the quality of the image. This is why I pay very special attention to my RGB histograms on the camera to be sure I'm near the top of the histograms with exposure, but not overexposed. This technique, called "Shooting to the Right" was discussed in a nice article by Berkeley White in the last issue of FATHOMS Magazine. (The only thing I didn't like about this otherwise well-done article was a lack of illustration of the histograms, both good and bad. It was entirely illustrated with nice pictures showing good exposure, but no bad pictures and no histograms!)

As for White Balance, if you shoot RAW, the white balance is easily tweakable later, so I use Auto, which gets it in the ballpark, then fine tune it in Adobe Lightroom when I dump the pics from the camera. If you shoot jpeg you can still tweak it later, but you don't do it with a color temperature selection, but with the RBG levels. Either way works about as well if you know how to do it. Since just about every digital picture has at least a small amount of tweaking to the levels, getting the white balance perfect in the camera is not really that important as it is with video, where you would prefer not to have to color-correct every shot.

Just my $.02

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Clay, you raise an interesting point as to the choice of white balance. HAve you tested the auto WB on your D80? Or do you prefer to set it?

Also, do you remember the explanation for shooting an exposure compensation of -0.7? I read this somewhere a couple years ago and have been setting mine the same way, but can't remember the rationale.

Nice point of view in your shots. Thanks for sharing.

Elizabeth

Hi Elizabeth. I've fooled around with the auto WB on the D70, D200, and D80, and I haven't been thrilled by any of them. I've also tried to match the WB to strobes with no great results. Maybe it's because I shot daylight film for so long that I developed a decided preference for a 55k "look", but the daylight setting is the only one that looks right to me. I arrived at the exposure compensation by trial and error with the RGB histograms. I started at 0.0 and took test shots, dialing first to -0.3 and then to -0.7 until I got a nice "bell" in the histos. Sunlight patterns on the bottom of Crystal River are prone to blow out, so I wanted to be careful twith it. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Clay,
So you are saying that you set your exposure compensation for that particular sequence of shots and the lighting in them. (i.e. You do not "globally" set exposure compensation like that as a general rule.) Correct?

Sounds like he is doing what I do too. Shoot....look at the histogram....tweak exposure.....shoot, shoot, shoot!

I agree that sometimes auto WB looks a little weird later, but as I get more used to digital and RAW, and I realize how much more neutral I can make the grays than with slide film, I am losing the preference for the blue cast of daylight film underwater! Furthermore, I'm usually fiddling with enough buttons to be fiddling with the WB too!

When you shoot RAW, the WB setting on the camera is passed along to the RAW converter in the file, but it has in no way changed any of the data in the RAW file (that's why they call it a RAW file.) So with an appropriate RAW file reader (Adobe Lightroom, Aperture, Adobe Bridge) you can change the white balance to daylight, or whatever you want later with a click. Leaving it on auto gives you a best guess based on the colors in the image. Even in very blue images, I'm often impressed by how neutral the camera can make them. But if you are used to the look of daylight film, it might be weird looking. With strobe, auto works OK. With ambient light, not always.

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Clay,
So you are saying that you set your exposure compensation for that particular sequence of shots and the lighting in them. (i.e. You do not "globally" set exposure compensation like that as a general rule.) Correct?
Jonathan

Correct. I've only just started this digital stuff, and I have far too little experience to have any rules, general or otherwise. I jump in with no exposure compensation, shoot, check the histograms, and go from there. It takes no time to do, and the test shots are discarded immediately afterward. -Clay

[Sealizard]

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

I, too, have not worried too much about white balance. But, perhaps I'll do a little experiementing to see if it seems to help.

As to the -0.7, I've been happy with it, just didn't know why.

Sounds like the key is to keep an eye on that histogram. Nice, bell-shaped curve.

Next question, where do you want to see the histogram, if you're shooting high contrast subjects? Bright sea-shell against black sand, for example?

Elizabeth

[Clay Coleman]

Next question, where do you want to see the histogram, if you're shooting high contrast subjects? Bright sea-shell against black sand, for example?

Elizabeth

I'm still pretty new at this, Elizabeth, but I would approach a high contrast situation (not digital's forte in my experience) from high value to low. In other words, go for the good exposure on the brightest area and let the dark areas fall where they may. The Nikon matrix is pretty good at averaging values, but I'd still look for a histogram skewed a bit to the left (underexpose) to protect an important highlight. Another way to get the exposure you want on a high contrast subject is to spot-meter the highlight, remember the shutter/ap exposure given, and add one or two stops to get the highlight to its proper brightness. If you're a "zoner" (which I am from my black and white days), consider the 18% gray that your meter will render as zone 5. A bright highlight might be in the range of zone 7, so open either 2 aperture stops or slow the shutter speed 2 stops. Does this make sense? -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

Holy cow, Clay! Zones! You been hanging out with Ansel Adams?

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Holy cow, Clay! Zones! You been hanging out with Ansel Adams?

Jonathan
Oh, yeah. I knew Ansel when he was a kid taking piano lessons. Seriously, his three books, "The Camera", "The Negative", and "The Print" are great and timeless references for photography. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

I completely agree. I am a huge fan of his and I have those books! But very few people these days have a clue about the zone system!

Jonathan

[Sealizard]

I spot metered a bright surface = f10 @ 1/160. Then I shot a sequence, ratcheting shutter speeds from 1/60 to 1/640 all at f10. Then I plotted the histograms on paper so I could compare them.

Thinking of a historgram in quartiles (Q):

For f10 @ 1/60 the graph stretched from the left (1st) Q to the right (4th) Q. At 1/160 (the metered speed/roughly 18% grey), the histogram stretched only from the left Q to the right vertical of the second Q. The shift in the hisotrgam supports Clay's statement of slow the shutter speed (thus adding light) = more centered histogram.

When I changed aperture instead of shutter speed: f16 @ 1/160 spanned the 2 left Qs. f4.8 @1/160 spanned from extreme left on Q1 to just over the left vertical of Q4. (This was actually 3 stops difference from the metered value/suggestion). Again: Add Light to get a more centered histogram - this time by opening the aperture.

After that bit of work, I agreed that I was in sync with your recommendation Clay. However, what boogers it up is the statement "I'd still look for a histogram skewed a bit to the left (underexpose) to protect an important highlight". That seems to clash with the exercise we've just been through of add light. My head hurts! :p

Perhaps what was meant was even after all the metering, you want the histogram to be centered if possible, weighted to the left as needed, NOT to the far right which would put you more in the realm of blown out. Err on the side of underexposure or you get blown out.

Bottom line to me: this is counter intuitive. Denise and Larry Tackett addressed this nicely in their book: "The tendency is to add light to a dark subject and reduce light on a white subject, but what you really want is to overexpose a white subject and underexpose a dark subject." They suggest the easy way to remember which way to compensate is to do "the opposite of what you think you should do." Shoot! I can't even remember what it was I wanted to do in the first place. :eek:

So much for manatees! Jonathan, maybe you should move this thread! Oh, and did you Zoners know that Ansel had a three-legged dog named Tripod? One last thing, maybe we should start a thread on UW pinhole cameras. Mine was made by Sealizard. ;)

[Clay Coleman]

After that bit of work, I agreed that I was in sync with your recommendation Clay. However, what boogers it up is the statement "I'd still look for a histogram skewed a bit to the left (underexpose) to protect an important highlight". That seems to clash with the exercise we've just been through of add light. My head hurts! :p

Uh oh. Let me try to be more clear. The histogram is an exposure indicator for the entire scene. The spot metering and adding light was a way to get an exposure on the highlight only. Remember that your meter is trying to render whatever it reads as 18% gray. The histograms are also displaying exposure as it relates to 18% gray. When I said that I'd look for a historgram skewed to the left (underexpose), I was referring back to your original scenario of a bright shell on black sand. If the sand is a dominant portion of the frame (as I assumed), the meter will try to lighten the black sand to 18% gray and will overexpose the highlight. If the histogram is a nice bell, it will confirm that the overall 18% gray exposure was achieved, which means that the sand is gray and the highlight would be overexposed. A histrogram skewed to the left would indicate that the sand was exposed at a value lower than 18% gray and that the highlight would hopefully be appropriately exposed. If the bright shell was the dominant part of the frame, the histogram would need to be skewed right to show that the shell was exposed at a value greater than 18% gray (overexposed as it relates to 18% gray). Remember that as far as your camera or meter knows, the "correct" exposure is 18% gray and that a lifelike rendering of subjects with reflectivity significantly different than 18% gray will not produce the coveted bell histo.

Manatees, of course, are the model of 18% gray, which puts us back on track. I hope your headache is better. -Clay

[Sealizard]

I think I got it and thanks for the detailed response, Clay.

Grasping the 18% grey concept is fundamental to anticipating the camera's output. If you're metering white sand or a light sea shell with a spot meter, the meter will give you an exposure that would make the output a lovely shade of approximately 18% grey ... in essence underexposing the sand or shell. That is precisely why you do the counter-intuitive weirdness of opening the lens up a stop or two.

And the opposite is true that if you wanted to keep the detail in the dark area of an image, let's say black sand in this case, when you spot meter the sand, the meter will give you the settings for turning that sand to a nice 18% grey. Thus, you'd close the lens down a stop or two or cut your shutter speed appropriately to reduce the light.

If you keep the highlights (blinkies, I think someone called them) option on, you can easily tell when you over expose. Then adjust the histogram until you have it where you want it. And if all else fails, bracket!

For anyone else who may be following this thread, please note that matrix or center metering will behave somewhat differently than spot metering in terms of the how those metering modes evaluate the input from the image area.

[Sealizard]

Last week I made the trek to Florida to visit the manatees. Timing was good - weather was a nippy 22 degrees the day we left to come home and not much warmer the two days we were in the water. There must have been close to forty manatees crowded in the spring when we arrived. Needless to say, we spent about seven hours each day in the water. There's no excuse for me not to have some decent results!

I just wanted to thank you both for the feedback on WB, exposure, and an earlier thread on diopters. Before I left, I purchased a +2 diopter to go with my 12-24mm. One pool test and I couldn't believe what I'd been missing. The crispness was unbelievable. I also leaned heavily on the histogram for exposure and got the results I was looking for.

I used the 12-24mm with the diopter the first day and then shot with a 10.5 the second day. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to do more than download the images, but as my buddy would say, there's no excuse for not coming home with the goods. And I thought I saw some pretty nice images with excellent exposure.

Thanks again for making this a successful venture. I've learned a lot here on Photo Chat, so keep up the good work.

Elizabeth

[Jonathan Bird]

We Need Pics! :)

[Jonathan Bird]

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to do more than download the images, but as my buddy would say, there's no excuse for not coming home with the goods.

Hey Elizabeth,
Don't you have a laptop? At the very least I spend my flight home picking out my favorite images and tweaking a few of them within the limits of the accuracy of the lousy calibration of my laptop screen. I like to arrive home with the best shots of the trip ready to be exported to my website!

Maybe I'll start a workflow thread and see what other people do.

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Thrilled to hear of your good luck, Elizabeth. Looking forward to seeing some pics. -Clay

[Sealizard]

I'll share some photos when I get caught up on two jobs, free-lance work, elder care, and young pups...:eek:

And you're right Jonathan, a laptop is indispensable - especially, as I found, for sleeping on, during your flight home.

Usually, on a long trip, I have time to get acclimated, and I look forward to the editing time on the way back.

But on a 3.5 day trip from San Diego to Florida, the time change, then spending close to 7 hours in the water for 2 days - you know what that produces in terms of time to download, fix, cleanup, help others, back up, eat, oh, and did I mention sleep? Then haul what's left of you out of the sack at 5:30 AM the fourth day to drive to Tampa, turn the car in and jump back on the plane. I have to confess, I strapped myself in and was asleep before the plane began taxiing down the runway.

Re-counting this excursion reminds me of a column for Ms. Manners that you might consider adding to the forum. How do folks handle requests while traveling with groups and/or friends, for requests like these:

1) Will you download my photos on your computer and make me a CD so I can back up/empty my media card?
2) Will you send me photos (or give me a CD) of myself doing xyz?
3) Will you send me photos so I can share them with my family, class, church group, local zoo, etc?
4) "Look at my photos of animal a, b, c...." - this only happens when you're in the midst of an irritating software glitch while trying to download your own work.

I look forward to hearing about everyone's experiences and perspectives on this - whether you are the provider or the requestor. :)

Kindest Regards,

Elizabeth

[tarczy]

How do folks handle requests while traveling with groups and/or friends, for requests like these:

1) Will you download my photos on your computer and make me a CD so I can back up/empty my media card?
2) Will you send me photos (or give me a CD) of myself doing xyz?
3) Will you send me photos so I can share them with my family, class, church group, local zoo, etc?
4) "Look at my photos of animal a, b, c...." - this only happens when you're in the midst of an irritating software glitch while trying to download your own work.

I look forward to hearing about everyone's experiences and perspectives on this - whether you are the provider or the requestor. :)


Well . . . being that I'm a self-described lecherous fool, girls requesting any of the above are usually helped expeditiously. Guys' requests are ignored. :p

[Jonathan Bird]

Robyn,
OK, you are excused for sleeping on the way home! :D

As for your questions....In the days of film I would try not to get committed to send people pics because it was such a pain to scan them. In the days before scanners I would put print film in my slide duplicator and send prints to people, but it often took me months to get around to it.

1) Will you download my photos on your computer and make me a CD so I can back up/empty my media card?

Hell yeah!!! If your pics are better than mine I'll keep them!! :D Seriously, I don't mind doing this for people if they have CDs with them. I rarely have any with me.

2) Will you send me photos (or give me a CD) of myself doing xyz?

If I get a good shot of someone underwater that they might like, I am more than happy to send it. In fact, I usually do it without being asked. I just make it a reasonable size to e-mail (maybe 1024x768) and e-mail them out when I get home. Digital makes this easy.

3) Will you send me photos so I can share them with my family, class, church group, local zoo, etc?

I'm not going to send someone a hundred of my best pictures to show to thir friends, but I'll make a selection for them. I always emphasize that they are for personal use. They are not to be posted on the internet.

4) "Look at my photos of animal a, b, c...." - this only happens when you're in the midst of an irritating software glitch while trying to download your own work.

Anyone stupid enough to ask me to critique their work is asking for trouble!! ;) :D

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

Whenever I'm asked to send pics, I give the asker my address and tell them to send me a disk plus a note about what they want and I'll happily put the photos on it and send it back. I can remember only one instance when they actually sent a disk. Hey, if I'm going to go to work for them, they have to do something first. -Clay