I was contacted earlier this year and asked to give a presentation to the Orange County Underwater Photographic Society on some of the shipwrecks and airplane wrecks in Southern California.
Since it was a group of photographers, I developed a presentation about some of the challenges of taking photos on Southern California wreck dives that are deep and cold. There are some unique challenges including limited bottom time, a lot of particulate matter in the water, and often dark conditions that are adverse to photos, etc. — not to mention that many times the site is a target and I have no idea what we are going to find.
I am making this presentation available for others to view and hopefully learn about some of the wrecks in SoCal and maybe get some tips about taking photos in this environment.
Some of the slides in this presentation are about using photogrammetry as a tool. I ended up returning a couple months later and gave an in-depth presentation on photogrammetry and I will also publish.
Please let me know if you enjoyed the presentation and/ or if you have any feedback.
Dear Brett, congratulations for your beautiful and informative blog site! …and all your beautiful pictures.
How do you (safely) burp your WWL-C?
How neutral is your set up in the water?
I have a WWL-C with bayonet mount for my RX100 in Nauticam. As you know, that wet lens is large diameter and it is heavy. It would be great to have 3 hands to burp this lense… One to hold the housing, one to hold the (detached) lens and one to wipe out the bubbles from the housing glass and from the WWL-C back element… For 2024, I am thinking of supporting the housing from my rEVO harness with two Nauticam woven straps and to use my 2 available hands to a) hold the WWL-C and b) wipe the glass surfaces of the lens and of the housing. I have a thin shock cord tying the hard lens cap (and the lens) to the housing while I do this (I had to drill the hard cap). After the lens is burped and re-installed to the housing, I would unclip the hard lens cover and let it hang (from the shock cord) under the housing. I plan to try this this Spring when Ohio is warm again. To keep my hands free when not taking pictures, I am also planning to keep the housing hanging (with the 2 Nauticam straps) from the CCR harness (like you would do with a neck strap for land camera).
How do handle your WWL-C on deep water dives? You do not appear to use a lot of floatation.
Thank you in advance for your comments and recommendations!
Jacques Girouard
There are a lot of good questions. It will take me a little time to respond to all of them. I’ll get back to you in a day or two.