Back to Eastport next weekend.

[adshepard]

I'm headed back to Eastport for the long Columbus Day weekend. The low tides are at inconvenient times so I'll just hit the high tide dives. Here are two shots from earlier this year off the "Old Steamship Pier" site. Both taken with a Nikonos V/35mm with an S&S YS-90 on Velvia 100. The first is 1:2 the second is 2:1.


http://dive.scubadiving.com/members/memberimages/5817_1158668631_basket1a.jpg


http://dive.scubadiving.com/members/memberimages/5817_1157629805_Lebbeus-shrimpWEB.jpg

DSDO

Alan

[Jonathan Bird]

Hey Alan,

That second shot is a shrimp that is all over the place this year and it is a species, or at least a color variation, that I have never seen before. We got any shrimp experts here? I need to figure out what that is! I can post a whole body shot.

On another note, we discovered this past weekend that our "pet" wolf fish Jean is actually a BOY. So we are going to start calling him Gene. For 10 years we have considered it a female, but this past weekend "she" wouldn't come out of her den to play and feed. We peeked in there with a flashlight and guess what...."she" was guarding a huge nest of eggs! Which makes her a him. (The males guard the eggs). Furthermore, another wolf fish has moved in next door, about 4 feet to the left of her den. (The female?)

I'll post a pic shortly....

I was up there diving all last week and we had a beautiful large bright yellow sea raven hanging around the site all week. About 10 different people got shots of it. Maybe it will be there still.

BTW, I'll be up there Columbus Day weekend too, working on the house, not diving. Stop by and say hi.

Jonathan

[Clay Coleman]

I have no idea what kind of shrimp it is. I'm just wondering how Alan got a Nikonos framer around it for that shot. -Clay

[Jonathan Bird]

OK, here are some shots....the yellow sea raven, the funky shrimp and the wolffish with eggs. The Wolffish with eggs is not the best shot in the world...the fish was staying WAY in the hole. I'm amazed I could even get any shot in there to be honest. I had to stuff the rig into a small hole!!

Jonathan

[adshepard]

Well there's some news!

I think the shrimp is some type of Lebbeus species. I had never seen them before in Eastport and they are indeed numerous this year. They aren't too skittish and putting the framer around them was no problem.

Nice sea raven. I shot one with similar coloration last year off Deer Island.

DSDO

Alan

PS - I'll try and stop by to say hello next weekend.

[Sealizard]

Not a fish I've ever seen. Are they found elsewhere? I'll have to google that bird.

Looks like a really striking subject.

[Jonathan Bird]

Sea Ravens as they are called, are one of the most common sculpins in the north Atlantic. They are pretty much guaranteed on many dives around New England. However the most common colors on them are brown, or reddish brown. Once in a blue moon you will come across a bright yellow or orange one. The yellow ones are rare enough that most people haven't seen more than one or two in their lives. That is why we were so excited that one seemed to have taken up residence on our favorite shore dive site and we saw it nearly every dive for over a week.

Here's a couple more common color variations:

http://www.jonathanbird.net/jpegs9/web_uwp0067.jpg

http://www.jonathanbird.net/jpegs9/web_uwp1309.jpg


Jonathan

[Larry Oberlander]

Here's another full body shot of your shrimp. When I was up there in August I saw two wolfish in the same hole as your "house" wolfish. After I feed it a welk it retreated way back in the hole. When I shined my light in the hole I was suprised to see two faces looking back out at me. Maybe I was witnessing the "dirty deed."
http://www.ralphoberlander.com/images2/as1.jpg

[adshepard]

Here's another yellow sea raven. This one was off Deer Island about a year ago.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/adsads/Eastport/yellow_raven.jpg

DSDO

Alan

[Jonathan Bird]

Larry,
What raw converter are you using? Your colors are "pumped up"! (use "Hans and Frans" accent.)

Jonathan

[Larry Oberlander]

Larry,
What raw converter are you using? Your colors are "pumped up"! (use "Hans and Frans" accent.)

Jonathan
I use Nikon Capture 4.4. It's a little slow but I prefer it to the other ones I've tried.
I do a couple of things to enhance the color:
I use a Custom Optimize Image setting on my D200
+2 Image Sharpening
A Tone Compesation
III Color Mode
+ Saturation
0 Hue Adjustment
In Post Processing I convert to LAB Color n Photoshop and then apply curves to tweak the color. LAB Color is a powerful tool.

Some will say that my images look over-saturated but I hate drab color.

[Jonathan Bird]

Larry,
If you shoot raw, none of the in-camera settings are applied to the image, unless those settings are "read" from the raw file data and applied by the raw converter.

Nonetheless, you have a very bright and saturated look that works well with macro. No doubt the colors are much more saturated than in real life, but people who haven't seen those critters in person will probably not notice. It certainly makes them pop! I tend to go for a more realistic color rendition, but then again....what's realistic? It's not like you can compare the actual shrimp to the finished image to figure it out.

Jonathan

[Larry Oberlander]

I use Nikon Capture 4.4 as my RAW converter. The default setting in Capture for these values is "unchanged." Unchanged equates to as set in camera. The camera settings are automatically carried over unless I decide to over-ride.

[Jonathan Bird]

That makes sense. I have never used the Nikon RAW converter. I installed it on my machine and it immediately made the scanner driver for my film scanner inoperative. I had to completely re-install the OS to get rid of whatever it did. (The uninstall didn't remove the offending code!) From that point on, I decided that Nikon should stick to cameras!

I'm using an Adobe raw converter and I'm not sure if it reads the camera settings or not. It probably does as it will carry over the in-camera white balance. But I don't do much else "in camera" as I figure that I can apply any of that stuff later.

But what do I know, I only started shooting "real" digital last month! ;)

Jonathan