I took my 50th dive Saturday, November 17th, and took my D3S underwater with me for the event. I’ve taken it with me on a two previous dives but ran into an issue where the Live View button was pressed as soon as I reached 10 feet or so, leaving me without access to the LCD. I suppose I could count a shallow, ambient light outing in the warm waters of the Virgin Islands but that almost seems like cheating compared with diving in Puget Sound.
Saturday I moved the Live view lever up and away from the guide and for the first time had some feedback after taking shots. Not that I made any changes; I was content for this dive just to get the feel of the housing and know I was capturing something. Now I can begin the journey of understanding strobe positioning and power combined with appropriate SS and aperture settings based on lens and port configuration. Plus I need to work on how to do that reverse frog kick.
Buoyancy control is definitely more of a challenge, yet manageable, while attempting to set up a shot with a large housing and a couple strobes. I was beginning to feel good about my rapidly improving SAC rate that increased significantly on my Saturday dive with a camera. I assume that will drop as I get more comfortable.
It has been a long process testing my patience. A lot has happened. Of course the D4 was released, which I now use for my sports photography, but the D3S is still a fine camera and it is nice to have a third body on the sidelines at times anyway.
What a blast I had. The dive was too short and my constant grin was making my mask leak. I can't wait to start working on becoming an UW photographer.
Here is the token first shot of a tiny squid that was not happy to see me. Obviously the hot spot and more shadow than I like tells me my strobe positioning was not ideal but it is a start.
