Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

Beluga aggregation from the air

Arctic Watch has posted an amazing aerial image of the annual beluga whale aggregation that occurs in the Canadian arctic each year on its Facebook page. To quote Arctic Watch’s Richard Weber:

“Every summer about 2,000 beluga whales go to Cunningham inlet in Nunavut to take advantage of the warmer water to molt their skin, nurse their young and socialize. They stay for about one month.”

During this period, the whales come very close to shore, sometimes “only a few feet away” from photographers. The aerial image was shot from a Twin Otter aircraft by Gretchen Freund of Arctic Watch.

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

Nauticam announces the NA-D600 housing

Although an early version was shown at the 2012 DEMA show, Nauticam has today announced the final version of their housing for the Nikon D600 SLR camera. The new hoeing is smaller and lighter than existing Nauticam designs, and features dual paddle levers on both left and right hand sides. These control video record and AE-L/AF-L on the right and playback and ISO on the left. The NA-D600 has a new design of mode dial control, which allows the mode dial to be locked in position. The housing has fiber optic strobe triggering ports as standard, but is equipped with an accessory port for the addition of an electronic flash trigger bulkhead, HDMI bulkhead or other accessory.

The NA-D600 will be available from 20 December at a US retail price of $3,300.

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

Sea Save Foundation hosts charity auction

The Sea Save Foundation has launched its annual charity auction. Now in its second year, the online event has increased in size with over 40 items up for grabs, including dive trips, insightful lunches with Hollywood producers, underwater imaging equipment, books and art. All the items have been donated to generate funds for Sea Save’s conservation and environmental education projects.

For a full list of the items and to place your bids, please see the auction’s page on Charitybuzz. This is a great way to help the oceans and get some great deals.

Monday, December 10th, 2012

Histograms Explained available in the App Store

Newmediasoup, in conjunction with photographers David Fleetham and Marty Snyderman, has released a new app which aims to explain how a camera’s histogram works and can be used to gauge correct exposures underwater. Entitled “Histograms Explained”, the app has eight sections of tips, with photographic examples accompanying the text and explanations. Suitable for iPad and iPhone, it is fully narrate and has quizzes to reinforce the learning.

“Histograms Explained” is available now in the App Store at $4.99.

Monday, December 10th, 2012

Wetpixel Ultimate Indonesia trip reports

Wetpixel Publisher Eric Cheng has started the trip report of the 2012 Wetpixel Ultimate Indonesia Expedition in the Wetpixel forum. The entire trip is aboard the Damai II and Eric was leading the first leg, which consisted of 12 nights journeying from Ambon to Kaiman, taking in the diving at Ambon, Banda, Momon, and Triton Bay. Eric has also posted a slideshow of stunning imagery and video from the trip. Douglas Seifert is currently leading the remaining two legs, the first from Kaimana to Sorong and the second from Sorong to Sorong. We hope that there will be more participant contributions to the forum thread about the trip over the next few weeks.

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Leviathan by Howard Hall

Howard Hall has released a short film about humpback whales called Leviathan. It consists of footage shot during his August 2012 Tonga Expedition during which he spent a total of over 8 weeks in Tonga, shooting 5K digital cinema catalog footage, as well as 70mm film and Epic 5K digital for the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX feature, Humpback Whales. The music is by Alan Williams.

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

December issue of African Diver available

The December issue of African Diver magazine is now available to download. Featured in issue number 25 are articles about diving in Zimbabwe’s Chinhoyi caves, Zavora in Mozambique and Madeira as well as the cichlids of Lake Malawi. Vickie Collins talks about her experiences as a Cove guardian in Taji, Japan, and the featured photographer is Christopher Bartlett.

African Diver magazine is free to download in pdf format.

Friday, December 7th, 2012

Canon EOS 7D Mark II rumors surface

In common with the stories about a new Nikon DX camera scheduled for 2013 release, there are also rumors surfacing about a replacement for the Canon EOS 7D. Petapixel list the specifications for the new camera as having a 24.2 megapixel APS-C sensor, dual DIGIC V processors, dual memory card slots, a new ergonomic design, a new type of battery, and 10.2 frame per second burst mode. Northlight Images claim the new camera will be aimed at:

“The sports and nature market, with a lot of features based on feedback from “pro” users. The 10 fps rate is seen as an important feature, along with many features derived from 1DX developments, particularly AF and lower light performance. Sensor size would be advertised as 21MP, but faster and less noisy than the 7D (25MP was apparently seen as not offering enough image quality).”

Release date is predicted to be February 2013. Please bear in mind that the above are rumors which may or may not be true!

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Canon announces product advisory for EOS 6D

Canon USA has announced a product advisory for the EOS 6D SLR. It identifies a problem that occurs when trying to playback videos shot with the camera on YouTube. Canon suggests a temporary fix of using the ImageBrowser EX application that is bundled with the camera to save the video and then to upload it. They also state that they are working towards a more complete fix.

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Lightroom 4 for the Underwater Photographer released

Doug and Lorenza Sloss have released the latest in their series of photo editing tutorials. Uniquely, Lightroom 4 for the Underwater Photographer is supplied in a USB stick, making it considerably more portable than the previous DVD versions. The new tutorials run for 13 hours and cover all aspects of using Lightroom 4 including catalogs, the library, map, develop, book, slideshow, print and web modules, exporting and Photoshop and Photmatix Pro integration.

Lightroom 4 for the Underwater Photographer is available now for pre-order with a despatch date of 8 December. It sells for $108.00.

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