What a lovely trip.
Before I load down the details (which I may never do), let me show u some o-e-shi Japanese cusine !

香港 + 九州 trip

Tomorrow, we will off to Hong Kong & Kyshu ! This is not a diving trip, this is pay-off time (family vacation) since I went on live aboard alone in August! I look forward to consume plenty of fugu & soak in on-sen until my skin begins to peel!

Lately nothing exciting in Monterey, it's change of seasons, water has been rough and on top, the oil spill from San Francisco is not helping. Althogugh the oil spill seems minimal, it's going to affect marina life up and down the coast for a while.

While not much diving going on, I further attempt to improve my cooking creativity.
Here are a few results

It was between seasons & very bad visibiltiy yesterday in Monterey Breakwater, only better then last week because of no swell. I barely see my own feet. With only 5 ft visibility, I was hanging out by some rocks and look for critters. Wish the kelp not so distracting here. Beyond close up like this, there was no hope for any picture.

What a nasty day in Monterey ! Weather has been rough early in the week, system came from the North, rain and now Santa Ana from the East. But it was beautiful from home this morning, so I decided to head Monterey after checking the water condition showing a 10 ft swell ! Boy should I have stay home ! It was 1 of the worst sea condition I had seen in BreakWater. It's definitely a 12 ft swell or more and it went in a big cicrle ! Upon decent to 9 ft, I saw only about 1.5 to 2 ft and I was pulling in circles, went further down to 25 ft, same situation. After 25 min drifting in circle and no chance of taking any shot, I decide to go back. As much as I want to dive, I did but wasn't much fun ! Well until next weekend ....

Couple favorite from recent weekends in Monterey!

I have finally group my nudibranch collection into a flickr set, come take a look, hope you like it !

Tulamben album completed

Few of my favorites ...







Finally finished the Tulamben album !

Buy Nikon Capture NX !

Capture Peter Schulz's write up about Nikon NX on Digital Diver

The DP Review consensus is that NX produces the highest quality images but is slower than some other programs.

I own NX and Adobe CS2 and Bible plus I have tried a lot of others. As far as I'm concerned, NX can't be beat re image quality.

Try this. Shoot in RAW and JPEG at the same time. Then open the RAW image in NX and save it as a JPEG. When I do this the JPEGs are identical. Point being, I think the NX conversion engine is based on the same thinking that went into the Nikon camera conversion engine. Stated another way, I think Nikon knows their camera better than any other software company and has the luxury of applying this knowledge in NX with only the need to work for their cameras.

As for work flow, I open in NX and make my basic adjustments in NX. Then I save as a TIFF and open in Adobe CS2 for a few final adjustments e.g. Shadows and Highlights and sharpening.

I'm Back !

Tulambem, Bali

While diving in Tulambem may not have the same level of luxury services parallel to the live aboard of the Peligian. The dive itself offer much more luxury then the dive in Komondo though ! You can dive with a local private guide at the site you like & at the time of your choice, that alone sets apart from diving anywhere else in the world ! This area is packed with a wide variaties of dive terrain from wrek to rock formation to coral reef to semi-muck providing homes for all kinds of critters. This is not the place for giantic fishes but rather a relatively calm area for pymy seahorse, boxer crab, squaw lobster and frog fish, it's really a world full of crabs here, real crabs ! No wonder folks keep going back here time after time, I spoked to a Japanese diver who is there for the 17th times and 4 times this year alone !! Guess I have a lot of catch up to do if I can only retire after hitting the lottery tomorrow !











Komondo

Komondo is beautiful, complex landscape, volcano & exotic animals all blended into a world of warm and cold water mixture hosting an unique environment for a wide ranges of sea life ! The result is an absolute spectaular diving experience !

The time has come, it's my annual dive vacation.
Off to Komondo on the Peligian. On my way back, I will stay a few days at Tulabem.

With a new 60mm, hopefully I will get some decent shots.

Took some nice metridium shots this past Saturday, visibility was really poor, about 8ft.

Summer Vacation

Woo-hoo ! Finally got approval to escape from the real world for a couple of weeks ALL to MYSELF ! I am going all-in ! First it's a week on the Pelagian live aboard luxury yacht, then another 3 days of diving in Tauch Terminal Tulamben. It's going to be a happy August, hopefully I will be able to capture some decent shots.

Here are a couple macro nudibranch I took Sat in the 50F Monterey.

A nice short write up of the Nikon 105VR vs Tamaron 90

6/3/2007

Quite decent visibility and clam yesterday in Breakwater. Work on the Tamaron 90mm again, most of the better shots shot at f8~f16, 1/200, ISO100. Found hundereds & thousands of snail giving birth !

I came across this thread about Depth-of-field & focus area on DigitalDive.net which seems interesting. Remind myself to really understand and try this stuffs!

Back to Monterey Break Water for the 2nd time this year. Nice weather but a little bit of swell above normal. Visi was pretty bad, some spots were like 5 ft ! Should have gone earlier. Still frustrated w/ the new dslr setup. Guess will have to keep tryng & learning. If gas $ not that expensive, I would go again tomorrow.

Just read this article from MSNBC, for the first time, I see some underwater life form which are not that glamorous. They are found in between 2,000 and 21,000 feet below, whew !

Polish plastic port

For those poor diver like me using plastic port, I came across this thread in Wetpixel show us how to polish minor scratch. Pretty useful but scary !

Under Water Restaurant

Wow ! Check this out, the World's First All-glass Undersea Restaurant Opens, it's the Hilton Maldives. Don't miss the Dinner menu. Very exepensive but sounds good ! Hmm! May be I need
to plan a trip out to Maldives.

Diappointed - Long way to learn !

2 hrs boat ride from Ventura to Anacapa, 15 ft visi and 54F water but at the island, it could fool you as somewhere warm ! Lot more life then Monterey BreakWater (San Carlos Beach). Several sea lions hung around, plenty of 4 footer Sheephead. Great time working with 3 open water students also. The disappointing thing was no good pictures ! Got to be honest, just switched from p&s Olympus 5050 to a Nikon D80, it's such a big different. Talk about task load ! Nothing came out focus even the DS-125's modeling light was on.
The cool thing w/ the DS-125's, we had three 40~50 minutes dives and I ran the modeling light on on all 3 dives and never recharge in between. On the 4th dive, the battery finally drained but that's like 2 hrs of usage before it retired. ... I need to learn this all over again !

Anacapa Weekend

Here we go, a beautiful Sat, temperature in the mid 60's and will go up to the 70's by tomorrow or when I get to Ventura. We are going with the Peace Dive Boat. Hope I will get some decent sheephead shots, etc. etc. 6 hrs drive, outta here now ...

Retro-posting old albums

I have been using Sony Imagestation and Yahoo Photo for years. Guess I have to find time to start moving some of my favorite memory on to my Flickr .
Too much work ... :-(

Nothing accomplished !

Thought of going out to Monterey but one thing lead to another, ended up sit on my butt the entire weekend. Well not exactly, planted 2 trees and some peneials but not exactly something I like forward doing.

I was reading Ken Rockwell's D80 manual over the weekend. It seems he recommend shooting in P mode and adjust the dial to "Program Shift" for variation instead of using A or S. So I am curious what other experts does out there especially in the under water photography areana. Do you use P, or A or S or totally manual ? And why ?
Hope the folks on Digital Diver will enlight me

Enjoy a lot of Jenny's photo set too !

It's only Monday, 5 more days to go before I head to Anacapa for the first time ! That's pretty exciting ...

April 2007

4/26 Finally getting started with this.

Almost end of April, weather truning better. Been dry for weeks, partly because of all those works around the new house we move in since Feb. Looks like this weekend might be the weekend to go back to BreakWater Monterey and try out my Tamaron 90mm.
Now I am excited ...