ThThTh 3/5

[YellowEye]

Hi!
DLH, scubajess, mightymouse, kr2y5 and I dove ThThTh last night. We were also joined by Rooinater and his buddy, who were scootering there.

DLH and I went out separately to try to get some pictures of the octo on eggs. We found the octo -- super beautiful. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to get a photo of in its position. I got nothing! Maybe Dave got something. We will have to try again with a different configuration.

We also saw several squid nests, and even a squid hovering the area! Lots of seastars were to be found, but some were dying. Some alabasters and yellow dorids, but not much else nudi action.

ScubaJess, mightmouse and kr2y5 went separately, I'll have to let them report separately on their *cool* finds.

The helmet crabs were out!

[ScubaJess]

Fantastic Crab shot!

Last night was great with the ThThTh crew, swam all over the place and saw a lot of cool critters.

I saw a Rat Rish, Super cute pink snail fish and a really cool Skate Fish!!! Also tons of hermit crabs, lots of peach colored stars, and some large plumos anemonies, a varity of sculpins & pipe fish... but no shrimp ... I was supposed to lead us to the trailer and boat to find the octo on eggs, but I couldn't find it . Hopefully next time I will have better luck! This dive was 40 min and max depth 71 feet, the viz was ok.

Thanks to the ThThTh crew for diving with me!
I hope you all have a great weekend!

[Rooinater]

We did laps, saw the cabin cruiser, tire reefs, saw some stuff in the junkyard, zoomed in circles, shot back over to the tire reefs, swam near the entrance, and called it a dive. Viz wasn't too terrible near the cruiser, till somewhere between the tire reefs and the junkyard and beyond the junkyard it was a weird haze. Somewhere past 80' and deeper it got really bad viz as well. Great dive though.

[Tom Nic]

Any shots of the dieing seastars?

[YellowEye]

A few, I can send them to you when I get home.

[YellowEye]

Any shots of the dieing seastars?

Hi Tom!

Here's one:

Been diving? We miss you at the ThThTh crew!

[YellowEye]

Fantastic Crab shot!

Last night was great with the ThThTh crew, swam all over the place and saw a lot of cool critters.

I saw a Rat Rish, Super cute pink snail fish and a really cool Skate Fish!!! Also tons of hermit crabs, lots of peach colored stars, and some large plumos anemonies, a varity of sculpins & pipe fish... but no shrimp ... I was supposed to lead us to the trailer and boat to find the octo on eggs, but I couldn't find it . Hopefully next time I will have better luck! This dive was 40 min and max depth 71 feet, the viz was ok.

Thanks to the ThThTh crew for diving with me!
I hope you all have a great weekend!

You were so lucky to see that skate!

You forgot to tell everybody about your "golf ball crab"

ScubaJess was describing to me a crab that looked like it had a golf ball attached to it. Hmm? Golfball crab? I didn't think they had those in these parts! Ah.... turned out it was a hermit with a moon snail on the back which was perfectly golf ball shaped!

[Tom Nic]

Any shots of the dieing seastars?

Hi Tom!

Here's one:

DSC_8003.jpg

Been diving? We miss you at the ThThTh crew!

Bummer.

Hoped we were starting to move past that...

[dlh]

We had a fantastic dive at Three Tree. The GPO on Eggs was a major highlight. Photos and Videos were taken!

This was only my second time at the sight, and the first time I encountered all of the objects. Speedboat, Sat Dish, Boat Trailer, various toilets. I look forward to exploring this site again!

GPO on Eggs:

phpBB [video]

[dlh]

Here are some more photos from the the dive.

[dlh]

Finally, we found several squid egg clusters, but just one very busy squid.

phpBB [video]

[ScubaJess]

Super cool videos & pictures! Me have to go back! I'm so sad I missed the Octo on regs! Also those squid shots are great & I like the ones of YellowEye in action with his camera!
Hope everyone's having a nice weekend! I just got back from a night dive at cove2. It was a lot of fun but I didn't see any seals! But I did see tons of shrimp and hermit crabs! I'm headed to Edmonds UWP in the morning to see big fish!

[YellowEye]

Nice pics/video Dave!
How'd the sunset video turn out on the bigscreen? That looked pretty cool too!

[dlh]

Nice pics/video Dave!
How'd the sunset video turn out on the bigscreen? That looked pretty cool too!

Crank up the volume for this one...

phpBB [video]

[ScubaJess]

Sooooo beautiful!!!!
Can't wait to go back!

[Tom Nic]

Very nice!

[Scubie Doo]

Dave,

Very nice WA shots. Can I ask what settings and lens you use to get such even lighting? I always seem to have light/dark areas when shooting wa. It maybe be due to my fisheye lens. But not 100% sure. Thanks

Jesse

[YellowEye]

+1
The lighting you got on that whole satellite dish was quite impressive!

[dlh]

Dave,

Very nice WA shots. Can I ask what settings and lens you use to get such even lighting? I always seem to have light/dark areas when shooting wa. It maybe be due to my fisheye lens. But not 100% sure. Thanks

Jesse

Hey Jesse,

I used a 16-35mm in an 8.5" dome on a Nikon D800 for this dive. I have a pair of Ikelite DS-161 strobes. Everything was shot at ISO 250 (camera base is 100) & 1/60th shutter. The aperture ranged from f6.3 on the super wide Satellite dish to f14 on some of the macro squid shots. I tend to keep the strobe power as low as possible and keep the strobes angled a few degree outside on fully extended arms to avoid backscatter. I bump the ISO to 250 to compensate for keeping the strobe power low.

For the satellite dish, I turned up the strobe power from 25% to about 75%. I only needed to pump up the Exposure & Highlights by a bit less than 1 stop in Lightroom to get decent brightness, and the image didn't need shadow recovery at all.

Cheers,
Dave

[Scubie Doo]

Dave,

Awesome info, thank you. I suspect my 15mm fisheye is grabbing a little "extra" strobe light since it is so wide. I'm going to try my 17-40mm and see what kind of results I can get. Thanks again for the info.

Jesse

[dlh]

Dave,

Awesome info, thank you. I suspect my 15mm fisheye is grabbing a little "extra" strobe light since it is so wide. I'm going to try my 17-40mm and see what kind of results I can get. Thanks again for the info.

Jesse

I have the Sigma 15mm lens and love it in clear tropical water. It focuses really fast and gets sharper edges than anything else. But it is definitely a challenge to use it in the normally "less the ideal" conditions of the PNW... Are you using it with a full frame camera?

[YellowEye]

Cool info, I'm going to have to try lowering power more often. Your camera's better high iso behavior probably helps you a bit though?

Here's an example shot of the same satellite dish I had:

This was just one crappy quick shot but shows a couple problems, I think: (and I think I have these problems often)
+ Right strobe shining into the scene. Probably just a nudge outward and away would help (reducing backscatter too)
+ Right-most anemone not lit up. Hmm??
+ Left strobe underpowered. I have a ds125 on that side, it was likely not able to match the power of the 161 on the right.
+ Dropping the teleconverter off my setup could help reduce subject-lens difference?

Let me know what you think

[dlh]

Cool info, I'm going to have to try lowering power more often. Your camera's better high iso behavior probably helps you a bit though?

Here's an example shot of the same satellite dish I had:


This was just one crappy quick shot but shows a couple problems, I think: (and I think I have these problems often)
+ Right strobe shining into the scene. Probably just a nudge outward and away would help (reducing backscatter too)
+ Right-most anemone not lit up. Hmm??
+ Left strobe underpowered. I have a ds125 on that side, it was likely not able to match the power of the 161 on the right.
+ Dropping the teleconverter off my setup could help reduce subject-lens difference?

Let me know what you think

The ISO is not a factor, all of these camera can easily give a good image well upto 1600 or more. 100-400 is good for almost any purpose with little sacrifice in quality.

I think you teleconverter is ok too.

What was your aperture on this shot? It looks pretty dim, it should f8 or wider (lower #) for best results. I took a close up photo of the top of dome and it was quite bright and well exposed. If you are using the TTL feature of your housing, be sure to switch to manual power settings when doing wide angle. The TTL circuit does not do a good job with WA in my experience.