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Komodo Trip Report: Biodiversity Amid Nature’s Fury
(Or Hell Hath No Fury Like a Dragon Scorned)Komodo National Park lies near Bali, between East & West Nusa Tenggara islands in Indonesia. Our intrepid group of Optical Ocean Sales photographers managed to survive a cold wet season dive expedition there last February on the Damai 1 liveaboard boat.Cold and wet aren’t what usually comes to mind when thinking of Komodo, which is hot and dry most of the year. But during the short winter months things reverse. The north becomes cold and the south beco...
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Congratulations to Kona Underwater Photography Shootout Winners!
1st Place overall and 1st Place Wide Angle — Bo PardauWe were happy to be a sponsor of the 1st Kona Underwater Photo Shootout along with Kona Honu Divers and other leading manufacturers! Some great photos and good fun! Congratulations to the winners!3rd Place Wide Angle — Deron Verbeck and a $100 gift certificate from Optical Ocean Sales.The results of the 2016 Kona Underwater Shootout are in! A big THANK YOU to our sponsors for this year’s event; SEA&SEA Underwater Imaging, Waterproof USA, Opti...
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More New FREE Underwater Photography Handbooks
Five NEW FREE Handbooks join our Basics of Better UW Photography Series and are now in the Optical Ocean Sales Education Resource Center. These downloadable Acrobat files are easy-to-read with lots of photos and illustrations to help you gain basic skills and understanding of their subjects.The first is for those wanting to get their feet "wet" with Underwater Photography. Titled "Choosing an Underwater Camera & Housing", it goes over basic things to look for for on both cameras and housings. Ba...
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Sea of Cortez: The Only Sure Thing is Whale Sharks
Twenty-one underwater photographers boarded the Solmar V dive boat in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, on June 23rd expecting to steam the next 25 hours to the Revigadagos Islands, aka "The Socorros", 250 miles offshore. Alas, "Amanda" had other ideas. Having built up to a Category 4 Hurricane, Amanda was an early violent storm a few hundred miles south of Socorro Island and heading straight for the area we were to dive. Needless to say, the Captain told me that we had to make a big change and head north...
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New Handbooks: Guides to Better Underwater Photography
We’ve developed some great FREE handbooks to help give you a basic guide to many aspects of underwater photography. Titled "Guides to Better Underwater Photography", these are easy-to-read articles with lots of example photos designed to get you out in the water trying new techniques quickly.They give you basic concepts and practical tips that will help you get better photos; from how to get started, to more advanced lighting techniques. These are applicable to any type of system from compact to...
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Choosing an Underwater Photography Lighting System
What’s Right for You? – by Denise KitchelWhy do I need a lighting system?That might seem like a silly question, but it is not always obvious to people what factors are involved in determining how much lighting they need. There are a few things that determine the amount of color saturation and image clarity in underwater photography: depth, ambient light, and water clarity. By adding to the available natural light, you’ll be able to improve the color saturation, sharpness and clarity of your phot...
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Free Handbooks: Basics of Underwater Photos
We’ve just revised and published several new FREE handbooks in a series Basics of Better Underwater Photos. These .pdfs cover basic overall techniques and approaches, as well as various types of shots like macro, wide angle, close focus/wide angle, sunballs and much more. There’s lots of good info here for beginners and experts; starting exposures, lighting diagrams, composition, etc. These are a "fast-read" using photos to illustrate. The first eight are posted, we’re working on adding more soo...
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Blue Water Diving: It’s All Good
Went down to Cabo for a few days and then out on the Solmar V to the Soccoros for a week in mid-January. It can always be a crap shoot, and the last trip I made (this is my third) was in January and was spectacular. This time we had wind and cool weather in Cabo for most of the 5 days before the trip. The islands really had gotten beat up with the hard rain and wind. Fortunately, it had improved as we left. Unfortunately the seas were choppy and the wind was still bad for the first couple of day...
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Optical Ocean Sales Has a New Website!
After patching together our old site for 8 years, it was time to make a change to an entirely new Optical Ocean Sales webstore! We’ve redesigned and reorganized the store so that it’s fast and easy to find products and systems to improve your underwater photography. A Few New Features: New Home Page: Bright graphics greet and direct you to the main store pages. At the bottom, you’ll find additonal information will help you including: Customer Care, and our all-new Education section (check out ou...
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Optical Ocean Sales Becomes SEACAM Dealer
SEACAMUSA, the exclusive North and South American distributor for SEACAM underwater housings and submersible strobes, is proud to announce the appointment of Optical Ocean Sales as a SEACAM dealer. In recognition of their 9-years service to the local Northwest diving community and the passion for underwater photography by owner Jack Connick, SEACAMUSA owner Stephen Frink comments “We are very pleased to have Jack and his staff as members of the SEACAM team. We welcome their expertise and commitm...
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Putting Your PEN in Place Underwater
The Olympus E-PL3 ($699) is a good camera and they’ve made some nice improvements over the E-PL2 this year in terms of speed; particularly AF, as well has now having full 1080i HD video now. The flash is now an external, which means that the housing had to become taller again. There is a nice tilt screen for above water shooting. There are 3 housings that Optical Ocean Sales offers and one alternative. Olympus made sort of a lame new port of the housing in the PT-EP05L this year. The housing is ...
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Optical Ocean Sales Guides to UW Photography Available
Martin Heyn and I have put together a couple of free .pdf guides that gives new underwater photographers a starting place, and more experienced photographers gain basic knowledge of strobe positioning and usage. Basic Tips for UW Photographers: Is a 17-page guide that gives you a number of ways to work on improving your phoots. Brief descriptions of ideas are illustrated with example photos. Basic rules on shooting angles, composition, lighting and much more are presented. Basic Principles of St...
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