Diving photos and a wreck history

[AndieMac]

I went to Australia in Feb 2010 planing different locations, one of which was Brisbane for a week so I could go further north and do some diving. I booked hotels and flights with Quantas six months before I went, but one of my wife's cousins was discovered living in Sydney. I could not amend my flights bearing in my mind we were flying all over the place ten flights in all. So we arranged a internal flight down from Brisbane to Sydney.This altered my plans as you cannot take a flight safely until 24 hours after you last dive. So I went to a dive shop in Brisbane, and said can you take me to the Barrier Reef and they replied that we can take you to the fringes. So I went in a large boat from Scarborough harbour with about twenty divers. The location of my two dives was Flinders Reef. The water temp was 27c same as Barbados.

The interstate, multi-flight thing is a chore in itself, after long-haul flying. Hoped you enjoyed your time out here, but it can be a long way between population centres.
There are as many Flinders Reefs in Queensland as there are Tarberts on the West Coast of Scotland but understand where you were.
Incidently about the same time as your Oz visit, we were further up the coast with our cousins from Dunblane (Scotland), at the Whitsundays Islands. Only snorkling, but yes that water temperature is rather easy to take.

 

[MapisM]

I've only seen this thread now.
Some great pics indeed, thanks for sharing them with us.

Didn't dive the Thistlegorm as we were staying at Sharm, and from memory due to the distance it was an all day trip so didn't go. Would like to go back again but SWMBO didn't like it.

Just curious, what didn't your wife like, the city of Sharm rather than the sea, I suppose?
Because I've been there (back in 1999, coming to think of it. Geez, time flies!) for a week, on a liveaboard diving boat, and we made indeed some great dives.
We made also the Thistlegorm in fact, and at that time it wasn't yet as crowded as Bart described.
Shame that I didn't have any u/w camera at that time. The motorbikes, airplane engines, etc. onboard that ship were indeed impressive!
We also made another wreck, the Dunraven IIRC, but not as interesting as the Thistlegorm.

Incidentally, when posting a sequence of pics, you should put only one of them in each line of your post.
Otherwise, the post gets spread horizontally, and difficult to read.
If you just edit your previous posts and insert a carriage return between each "IMG" tag, the whole thread will be displayed much more conveniently.

 

[MapisM]

I have always wondered, when at depth and you come across something like a ray, is there not a risk of getting a fright and surfacing too quickly?

Nah, you get used to that, and it's actually not so difficult to control yourself, when you're aware that popping out of the water is much more dangerous than staying put.
Btw, even if the worst comes to the worst - e.g. a sharks attack - you wouldn't stand a chance of swimming faster than the beasts.
It occurred to me only once to get a bit scared during a dive.
In a Maldives pass, we were attached to the bottom to resist the strong current, looking at the fishes flying around us.
After a while, we got surrounded by a dozen or so of sharks, which looked worringly interested to our group of divers, and kept swimming around us in circle for some minutes.
Trust me, I never thought for a second of leaving the rock I was grabbing.
Wouldn't they have gone away after some time, I guess I would still be there...

 

[Harry25]

MapisM You are correct my wife didn't like Sharm because the street vendors just continually pester you, and having had experiences like that in the past she didn't want to go in the first place. She doesn't dive and therefore has to fend for herself whilst I'm away which meant she didn't leave the hotel.

Bojangles You are correct it is hard to spot some sealife. Funnily enough I have been amazed that when I dive with a divemaster/leader they sometimes get really excited when they see a nudibranch (sea snail) they haven't seen before. I am now back from Barbados and have brought my war wounds with me i.e. scratches on my legs from kneeling or brushing the coral whilst taking a photo. They were quite itchy. Taking photos underwater is not easy because you are moving, and the fish are moving so its easy to get blurred photos. Also as you have probably noticed as you go deeper underwater the colour red disappears.

 

[Harry25]

Bojangles I didn't answer your query about what happens if you get a fright. I have never been in that position. I did whilst diving in Gozo knowingly go down with a potentially jamming inflator on my BCD (we test these before we dive) and sure enough it jammed, and I could have shot to the surface but I immediately pressed the deflator streams of air were coming out but my buddy was quickly across and we managed to unjam it, and then I didn't use it again on the dive. Funnily enough same as MapisM we saw sharks lurking below us in the Maldives, but the biggest problem we had was that in our group one of the divers was continually being attacked by trigger fish and biting him. I think that it was the colour of his fins, which were yellow.

 

[MapisM]

as you go deeper underwater the colour red disappears.

Actually, that is true only for pics where you rely on natural light.
Whenever you're near enough to the subject to make the flash effective (which of course depends on how powerful the flash is), the depth is not relevant anymore. As it isn't in night dives, obviously.
For natural lighting, the traditional solution was using filters, but with digital pics, I find it more effective to correct them with post-processing.
Just as an example, below I played a bit with a few of your previous pics.
And I actually used just some pre-defined automatic corrections, which are very quick and easy to apply.
If your camera allows shooting in RAW format, and if you're willing to spend a bit of time in post-processing, you can improve them even more.
The following are shown in a "before" and "after" sequence, just as an example.

 

[Harry25]

Terrific improvement MapisM thanks. As you guessed all of the photos came straight from the camera without any tweeking apart from the large grouper photo by Tero. Maybe I should learn more about add this and it to my list of hobbies. My sony camera is about ten years old and I am due to replace it soon. What would you recommend? My budget is about £600 including housings. I have looked online at Canon Poweshot S100and Fuji finepix f550 both of which I can get housings for.

Harry

 

[MapisM]

My sony camera is about ten years old and I am due to replace it soon. What would you recommend? My budget is about £600 including housings. I have looked online at Canon Poweshot S100and Fuji finepix f550 both of which I can get housings for.

I'm afraid I've not looked in detail at the specs of digital cameras/cases lately.
Actually, I've just bought a GoPro Hero2, which comes with a 60m u/w case, but I was more interested in the convenience of a small kit, and I had mostly video in mind, rather than pics.
I think that for 600 quids you should find a good camera/case combination, though.
A couple of things I would recommend, if you're interested mainly in pics, are A) the capability to save images in RAW format, provided that you're interested in post-processing (because other than that it's useless), and B) a powerful flash.
Some compact cameras have a better flash than others, and that is indeed very important to achieve a good saturation.
Take the pic below for instance: the decent colours are mostly due to the flash, rather than the camera.
And It's still a compact camera with its integrated flash, anyway.
A further jump in quality would require a DSLr with external flash(es), but aside from higher cost, that's too much of a hassle for my tastes.
There's already enough equipment to deal with, when diving...

 

[Bojangles]

Thanks MapisM & Harry for your replies to my queries on getting frights, very interesting. When you look at some of the images you guys have taken I think many peeps may feel a bit intimidated.. There was a diving accident at Wemyss Bay last year when a diver lost his life after surfacing too quickly and I have wondered since what would have caused this? Anyway, thanks again for the images, I feel a diving lesson coming on...

 

[davo99]

Don't know how I missed this thread

Bart (any anyone else who's interested) there's a few Lanzarote pics at http://www.sdconsulting.co.uk/scubapics

Only a few from Lanz tho, day after I took what's there I tore all the ligaments in my foot on a shore dive and spent the rest of my Hols on crutches , much to SWMBO's displeasure