The October 3rd meeting will be a little different.  We will have David Lenderman sharing some interesting views of the reef.  He will first present a short music synced show he calls "Textures of the Reef."  This show contains photos of the colors, textures and patterns found on the reef.  The show will feature images from both David and his wife, Sue Watson.  Most of these images are macro images at, near or beyond 1:1 magnification.  All images contain portions of animals found on the reef.  Some you will recognize right off, and some you won’t.  David will then go on to discuss techniques for creating beautiful texture shots.

The second part of David’s program will be a discussion of negative space.  In photography, negative space refers to parts of the image beside the primary subject.

Texture shot by David Lenderman ©2005

He's also dived Bonaire, Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Belize, Bahamas, Cozumel and the good old Gulf of Mexico.  David has been a member of HUPS since 1997.  In that time he has served as Board Member, Vice-President, President and has been Newsletter Editor for the last four years.  He has won HUPS awards for Member of the Year, Novice Photographer of the Year and Advanced Photographer of the Year.

David has been shooting with Nikonos gear and a Sea & Sea housed Nikon N90s all with an Ikelite 200 strobe.  He has recently started shooting with an Aquatica housed Nikon D100.

Don't be late as we will start promptly at 7:00 pm.  As always the meeting will be at the Bayland Community Center on Bissonet.  A map can be found on the back page of this newsletter.  See you there.

David will share ideas on how to use negative space in your images to enhance their impact.  He will show how you can include the beautiful colors,textures and patterns of the reef as negative space to put some WOW into your shots.

Since becoming certified in 1989 David has been fortunate to have dived Komodo, Bali, Wakatobi, Malaysia, Fiji, and Hawaii.

September Meeting Recap -
Thanks James

President's Message
On the Road Again and other Stories

About 2 pm last Thursday, a vision came to me.  It was this gigantic fire ant mound with an equally gigantic foot in the middle of it.  That was my mental image of Houston anywhere north, west, and east of the beltway.  Instead of angry fire ants looking for something to bite, it was native Houstonians looking for a place to hunker down in until Rita was through with her tantrum.  For Martha, my cat, and myself, it was a no-brainer.  We live in Clear Lake and were looking at a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane churning up the Galveston Bay pushing a 20-foot wall of water ahead of it.  We’d made it through Alicia in 1983 and that was a minor irritation in comparison to this monster.  From the looks of the infinite gridlock we were seeing, about half of the inhabitants of Houston were of the same mind.  I remember thinking as we closed the back door, "Will this still be here when we return?"

Jumping back a few days it was heart-warming that no fewer than three HUPS members had offered to put us up for the duration of Rita’s visit.  We figured that David Lenderman in Richmond was still too close for comfort and Pat & Kathy Miller in Austin were too far.  So we took Frank and Joyce Burek up on their kind offer and left at 6 am on Thursday for a nice easy drive to the rolling hills west of Conroe.  Yeah, sure!  Thirteen miserable, hot, frustrating, A/C off to conserve gas hours later, we rolled into our new home-away-from-home.  I’m sure that my cat still hasn’t forgiven me and I think Martha nearly had a heat stroke.  In retrospect, I’m glad I chose not to go to Austin.  We would never have made it on the one tank of gas we had.  Thanks for the invitation anyway, Pat.  The rest of the story was as pleasant and comfortable as the first thirteen were miserable.  Rita turned east, blew itself down to Cat 2, and came ashore with relatively minor consequences.  All we got out of it was some rain and a tree that needed staking back up after it blew over.  Many thanks to everyone for the invitations and to the Bureks for their hospitality.

I’m sure that just about everyone else in HUPS could tell similar stories.  One that I heard about was the saga of Jackie and Mary Lou Reid who were scheduled to leave Saturday morning for a dive trip.  Evidently the handwriting was on the wall about Rita with enough advance notice for them to scramble around and find a solution.  I got an email message from Mary Lou when I returned.  They had managed to get a flight out on Wednesday.  In their case, a desperate situation demanded a desperate solution.

In the "it’s all a matter of timing" category, we have the tale of Sue Watson and her flight to Waco.  On Saturday morning I called David Lenderman to see how they had fared.  As you can imagine, everything was fine and his houseguests from League City were already home cleaning up.  Sue had taken the kids to Waco on Friday morning and made it up there in about the normal time of 3+ hours.  The evacuation was like a fire hose. . . on full blast as long as imminent disaster was staring us in the face and totally off when the storm track moved east along the coast.  Sue and the kids left after the spigot was turned off.  I’ll try not to be envious.

What’s this all have to do about HUPS you ask?  Well, I think that it has a lot to do about the type of people we have and how they will band together when needed.  We’re a good organization with a lot of good people.  That’s why I like being a member.  The chance to rub elbows with people like this makes life a joy.  We all love to dive and we enjoy bringing how images that let us relive our underwater adventures.  But that’s only a part of the story.  It’s really the people that count.

Right now, it’s time to get back to normalcy.  I hear that David Lenderman has prepared a great program for the October 3rd meeting.  Don’t miss it.  Bring your storm stories and we’ll all swap tall tales and have a few chuckles.  Try to get there earlier this time.  We really need to get started by 7:00 at the latest.

Dennis

Check It Out on the Web

What Makes a Good Photo?
Part One - Sharpness
By David Lenderman

We have all seen underwater images that we really like.  Viewers are attracted to images for different reasons.  Some may like the subject, some may admire the difficulty of the shot, some like the pleasing composition.  So there are tons of reasons to like a particular image.  In this series of articles I plan to discuss several traits of an attractive underwater image.  These are things I feel an image has to have to be considered a "good" image.  This month I will discuss Sharpness.

An underwater image should be sharp.  When we talk about a sharp image the first thing most people thing of is focus.  Focus is very important to get right, but it is not the only factor that contributes to a sharp underwater image.  In addition to focus a big factor in creating a sharp image is the amount of and quality of the water between camera and subject.  Some other things can also cause your images to be soft.  Things like dirty or fogged up lenses or ports will create soft images.  And of course high quality optics (lens/port) will also help ensure sharp images.

Let’s start with focus.  The critical area of the image must be in sharp focus.  I didn’t say the whole image must be in focus, just the critical area.  So what is the critical area?  Well, for most images of fish or shrimp or other animals this would be the eyes.  Another critical area could be the teeth if that is what is being emphasized in the image.  I have seen numerous shots of eels and sharks where the sharpest focus is on the teeth and not the eyes.  In these cases the eyes become secondary to the teeth.  This can work.  For most images it is best to maximize depth of field by selecting a smaller aperture.  This will help get more of the subject in focus.  For more information on depth of field see article on page 3.  There are exceptions, sometimes minimal depth of field, focused on the subject’s eyes, can create a very pleasing image.  In a wide angle scene, the focus needs to be sharp on the primary subject.

Most modern cameras have very good auto-focus.  The trick is to be sure the camera is focusing on the critical area and not the background, the nose of the fish instead of the eye or even a particle in the water.  If your camera has different auto-focus zones or points available select a narrow point.  This way you can better control what the auto-focus focuses on.  This is an area where SLRs (film or digital) win out over compact cameras.  Being able to confirm focus through the viewfinder is a big advantage.  If your auto-focus is having difficulty with a particular subject try focusing on a fixed contrasty object (like a rock or your fingers) about the same distance from the camera as the subject.  Then lock the focus and move in on the subject.  Move the camera in and out until the critical area is in focus and then shoot.  If you are struggling with your focus, adding a focus light can help.  This light will help you and the camera see the image better to determine if it is in focus.  This can be as simple as a flashlight mounted on the camera or using a strobe with a built in modeling light.

So, what about dealing with sharpness lost by shooting through our preferred medium - water?  Even in very clear water, shooting through just a few feet can result in noticeable softness.  In low visibility conditions, the impact of shooting through water is much worse.  So it is very important to get close to your subject.  The closer the better.  I would guess that 95% of my macro work is with my camera less than 2 feet from the subject.  This means choosing the right subjects for your equipment.  If you have to back way up to get the whole subject in the frame then you may be better off moving in closer and photographing a selected area of the subject.  Maybe just the face or even eyes instead of the whole fish.  For wide angle photography getting close means you need a wide angle lens.  A wide angle lens allows you to get close while still capturing a large area of reef in the image.

The quality of the optics will certainly impact the sharpness of the image.  There are some lenses that are just sharper than others.  For Nikon SLRs the 60mm and 105mm lens have long been regarded as good quality lenses that produce sharp images.  There are a lot of good lenses out there and a few bad ones as well.  Research your lenses before you spend the money.  It is also very important to be sure you have the correct dome port for your lens.  Some lens/port combinations will require diopters or port extensions.

A little housekeeping may also help you produce sharper images.  Make sure you keep you lens and port clean and free of condensation.  Dirt, dust or condensation will certainly have a negative impact on the image quality.  There are varying degrees of "sharpness." All I can say is the sharper the better.  Examine your images and see if the critical areas are really as sharp as they should be.

Sea and Sea DX8000G Review
By James Wiseman

The Sea and Sea DX8000G is an 8 megapixel compact underwater photography system made up of the camera, the compact polycarbonate case, a bayonet mount .6x wideangle lens, and a lens caddy made to mount onto the strobe arm.  The camera uses the same 8 megapixel sensor used in the larger prosumer cameras like the Sony 828 and the Olympus 8080, however this unit is considerably smaller.  Since Sea and Sea has designed this housing as part of a larger system, I was happy to get a chance to review the whole package at once, including the above, as well as a tray and arm, and a YS25 Auto strobe and fiber optic kit.  That sounds like a lot of gear, but when the system is all assembled, it’s easy to use and fits in one hand.

Underwater handling is excellent; the whole system weighs just ounces underwater, and with a bayonet mount lens, you don’t have to worry about dropping it while trying to mount it to the camera.  Just remove the lens from the caddy, press, twist, and the lens is ready to use.  The strobe arm is short, so it folds nicely around the housing when not in use, but with the strobe extended out to the left and the diffuser mounted, I was able to make backscatter free photos in murky water.  The strobe synchronizes with the camera’s internal flash through a fiber optic cable and provides just the right amount of fill in light to bring out good colors underwater.  Divers skin tones look natural and colors look accurate.  Image quality was on the same level as other 8 megapixel cameras, and full manual control of aperture and shutterspeed as well as a number of auto settings means this camera is great for beginners, but flexible enough to meet the creative needs of more experienced photographers.

With the wide angle adapter removed, the camera is great for close-up work and can focus down until the subject is almost touching the port.  Because of this unit’s almost imperceptible shutter delay, I was able to capture fish portraits with this compact camera – something that I have been unable to do with other models.  The DX8000G was a treat to use after shooting a DSLR for so long – it’s a small underwater camera system that makes big images.

The Houston Underwater Photographic Society (HUPS) meets the first Monday of every month at 7:00PM at the Bayland Community Center, 6400 Bissonet, near Hillcroft.

Social time begins at 7:00PM for members and visitors to get acquainted. Visitors are always welcome to join us. So, stop by and see what we are all about!