Saturday, December 17th, 2011

The Tank Bangers present Our Blue

The Tank Bangers have posted an underwater video of their charity song on YouTube. The group is all dive guides and instructors working in the Egyptian Red Sea, and due to the downturn in tourism in the region, found that they has plenty of time on their hands. The resulting video and song is :

“At the finish line. 10 months in the making. 7 minutes long. It has taken hundred of dives and thousands of takes. It has cost us a small fortune and most of our sanity. But it is done. We hope you enjoy it. We hope you get behind us. There is much yet to do. Please share it and please buy it. Sing it far and wide. This is our chance to sing for our oceans.”

The song is available to buy and download for $3.15 (£2). All proceeds from the sale will go to marine charities.

Saturday, December 17th, 2011

How to win competitions (the Tony Wu way)

On his blog, underwater photographer Tony Wu has posted some guidelines for achieving success in underwater photography contests. Among the suggestions are: To avoid copying other peoples’ styles, to ensure that images are entered into the correct category, to check that subtle details in the image do not detract from its effect as a whole and to avoid using “trendy” techniques simply because they are currently popular, rather than suited to the subject.

Tony has been a judge in the DEEP Indonesia, Underwater Festival and Ocean Art competitions this year.

Saturday, December 17th, 2011

New control option for Sony CX series camcorders

HGTV Underwater Development Group has continued to develop solutions for controlling cams inside housings. They have just developed a new LANC-IR remote control for the new Sony CX360, 590, 690 and 700 cams. This gives full control of all camera functions including video-out for an external monitor. In addition, the company has developed a script for white-balancing the cameras via the menu (one push white-balance function). Aditech and BS Kinetics are the first companies that will the new circuit board in their housings.

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Newmediasoup releases photo training app

Newmediasoup, in conjunction with David Fleetham and Marty Snyderman, has released a photo training app in the App Store. The first in a series of five, this app focuses on improving silhouettes. It has eight sections of tips, using images by both photographers, as well as additional training slides, and is narrated.

Other titles to be released include: Histograms Explained, Natural Light Images, Coordinating Natural Light and Strobes and Using Strobes Effectively Silhouettes Underwater. The app is available in the App Store now and is priced at $4.99.

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Moceanarmor releases housing for iPhone

Moceanarmor has announced plans to manufacture the FourPro housing for the Apple iPhone 4 and 4s. It is rated to a depth of 100ft (30m) and is constructed from marine-grade aluminum and stainless steel. It has a mechanically activated record/stop button with an eight lip seal, a viewing port that allows viewing of the full LCD screen and a sun shade for the front lens.

The FourPro will be available soon and a kit containing the housing, a hard case, lanyard and tray with teak grips will retail for $699. In order to fund the tooling, it is available until 10 January, 2012 on Kickstarter at $399.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Dyron launches flourescent light

Dyron has launched the Solaris 4200 UV light. The light emits an 120º beam with a maximum output of 4200 lumens and has a burn time of 30 to 50 minutes depending on power setting. The light is supplied with a gel filter that can be cut and fitted to a mask, and also between a wet lens and the port of a housing. This combination will allow the user to view and photograph fluorescence underwater.

The light is available now.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Winners of Ocean Art 2011 announced

The winners of the Ocean Art 2011 contest have been announced. Best of Show goes to Tobias Friedrich of Germany with a wide-angle photograph of several manta rays, while other categories feature images of a feeding leopard seal, moray eels and squids. The contest was judged by Marty Snyderman, Bonnie Pelnar, Martin Edge, and Tony Wu.

Full results are available here on Wetpixel, or on the Ocean Art pages. Hearty congratulations to all the winners and, of course, to the many members of the Wetpixel community featured in the results.

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Lightroom and Camera RAW updates available

Adobe has announced the release of the final versions of Lightroom 3.6 and camera RAW 6.6. These updates add additional camera support to the software for: Canon Powershot S100, Fuji FinePix X10, Leica V-LUX 3, Nikon 1 V1, Nikon 1 J1, Panasonic DMC-GX1, Ricoh GR Digital IV, Samsung NX5, Samsung NX200 and Sony NEX-7. In addition, they fix a variety of bugs including: Rapid advancement through the grid can make the preview processor die, Lightroom does not write to the correct metadata fields after editing capture time, Lightroom crashes when saving keyword to file, Certain JPG files appear to unsupported or damaged upon import into Lightroom, default scrolling behavior on OSX 10.7 makes non-scrolling mouse wheel actions work backwards (Mac only) and the program crashing when using local adjustment brush with automask on with an attached image.

The updates are available via in-app update, or by download from the Adobe software update pages.

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Cayman Islands extend grouper fishing ban

The Cayman News Service reports that the Cayman Marine Conservation Board has published a notice announcing that the Nassau grouper fishing ban in spawning areas during the spawning season has been extended for a further eight years; giving the endangered fish an opportunity to continue their recovery. REEF has been active in studying the grouper populations to provide data to groups that worked alongside the Department of Environment to secure the extension, as the existing prohibition was due to expire this month. The continuation of the ban was necessary to ensure that the last viable spawning aggregation in the Cayman Islands, located in the West End of Little Cayman, did not collapse.

Saturday, December 10th, 2011

Nauticam releases NA-D7000V housing

Previewed at DEMA, Nauticam has now released details of the NA-D7000V housing, an updated version of their NA-D7000 housing for the Nikon D7000 SLR, which is also optimized for video use. Principle updates include that the multi-controller, info and OK buttons have been moved closer to the right hand and a lever added to allow the zoom/focus gear to disengage when wide bodied lenses to be loaded. Stainless steel saddles have been added, connecting the handles and housing body to add strength when mounting heavy strobes or lights to the handle balls.

The new housing will be available from 1 January at a retail price of $3300. We aim to review it very soon, so please check back for a detailed report on the new features.

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