Wow! This morning I really didn’t want to go diving. It did get really cold with ice on the car, my drysuit is very tight on me that I am so not comfortable diving and we don’t even know if the nudis are back to Peirce Island, and they are the main attraction there. But we had said “yes” to dive offer and there we were. The cold did not scare only 4 people form the whole group, Mike, Geoff, Bert and myself.
At the first sight the visibility was really suffering at around 5-8 ft. It looked quite mucky, I thought to myself that we shouldn’t really have dove at low tide. But, even though the viz did not improve much it turned out to be a really cool dive. It was a quite short but efficient dive.
There were indeed a few nudibranchs but they were quite small in size. Nothing like the ones we saw last March. However I could spot two different species.
Despite the cold temperatures we came across a big pipefish and a few grubbies. The hyrdoids were in bloom, ready for all the nudis to go crazy on.
This dive I was testing my new strobe. Actually it was my second time in with the strobe but my first trial was a disaster,I am not even talking about it. This time I did much better with the settings and I enjoyed taking photos with the strobe.
One problem I have is that the camera housing I have (Canon housing for S100) does not allow use of full manual mode, so I have to choose aperture (Av) or shutter speed (Tv) priority mode. I think most photographers like to use the aperture priority mode. I didn’t get very good results for that in the past, especially in the dark with fast moving subjects. That’s why I like to use Tv mode. I would set the shutter speed so that I can get still photos. If the exposure is low I can always fix it later.
With the strobe I again set the camera to Tv mode and really high shutter speed (1/500). This time keeping the strobe a little farther away from the subject compared to my first trial game decent photos. I love the fact that I can use such high shutter speeds under water, for the first time I could get the little flipping fins of the pipefish. 🙂
So far I really enjoyed the strobe. The high shutter speed and even lighting gave really good results. During the long winter time, whenever I get my courage to jump in the cold waters I will work more on my strobe with variety of nudis as my subjects. Can’t wait for the Feb/Mar for the giant nudis at the Peirce Island!
32ft, 34 min, 41F
