Digital Shootout 2008

[scottsax]

Me and 3 buddies are heading to Bonaire June 6-14 for the Digital Shootout 2008. 7 days of diving, taking pictures, diving, talking about diving, diving, talking about taking pictures while diving, diving, etc... (You get the idea.)

I'm anxiously awaiting trip reports from all of you that are going to be there before me....


4 months and counting......

[scottsax]

Okay-now I leave in 7 weeks, and I can barely focus on anything else. The only thing that saves me from going completely bananas is that I'm diving regularly. But now my gear's getting it's annual service, and I'm going to be dry for at least a week, if not longer. So, you recent Bonaire visitors, tell me where I should be diving, what I should be doing topside, where I should be eating.... I'm staying at the Divi Flamingo, so that's covered....

One of my buddies is bringing his HD DV cam and a housing. Filmmaking, diving, and cooking/eating have always been great passions of mine, so I'd like to shoot a sort of Anthony Bourdain/Andrew Zimmern-go-diving kind of show, with topside emphasis on the native/local cuisine. I want to start researching Bonaire now and writing some voice-overs and stand-ups in May. Any suggestions of places to start my research?



Thanks, as always....

[girldiver]

Scott,

Sorry I took so long...but usually don't hit this site.

Talk to Liz at Golden Reef Inn. She's a wealth of knowledge and can steer you in the right direction...give you a "locals" point of view. Great gal.

I haven't been to BonAire...but know Liz from DEMA...and she's planning the first Women in Scuba conference in 2009...so that's my affiliation with her.

Have a great time!!

[scottsax]

Hey thanks, Cindy!

I leave in 2 1/2 weeks. That's 17 days. 408 hours.

Very hard to concentrate.

[mattwave]

Sounds like a blast, my Dad will be there as well as couple other buddies, make sure you hook up with Russ or Berk from Backscatter, they have some really good knowledge about the area and will be happy to lend info. They convinced me that there is a ton of Deep Wreck diving there I have to check out there most of them shore dives!

[mattwave]

Reports>?

[Tom Nic]

Come on Scott! We need a Bonaire report!!

[scottsax]

Sorry-been frantically trying to catch up at work.

And sort through 3 Gb of pix and video to find the 8 decent shots I took.

Short answer-Bonaire was AMAZING, and I can't wait to go back. 16 dives in 6 days (hey-I had to eat and sleep sometime), including 2 on the Hilma Hooker. I learned a ton about UW photography, made some great friends, did my first dives on nitrox (yay nitrox!), and saw some amazing stuff.

I promise I'll post pix and a more complete trip report soon. :hello2:

[Tom Nic]

Only 16 dives?! Come on, we did 24 and that was taking some time off! That and about 20gb pictures... are you sure you did Bonaire? :rr:

Seriously, welcome back, and if you have time, a detailed report will be greatly appreciated!

Bonaire is an amazing dive destination! I'll be going back in September for 12 days. Supposedly the prevailing winds die down some in September and October, which makes wild side diving a little more accessible, as well as some of the really nice sites that are a long ways South much more doable. And as a bonus we'll be catching the Coral Spawn!

[scottsax]

My buddies were less...enthusiastic about diving every waking moment than I was. I also discovered that I do NOT have the patience necessary to be a successful underwater photographer. The shoot, review, adjust, shoot plan was many times more than I wanted to deal with, hence only 3 Gb.

I did get some cool ones, though.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13786635@N ... 671378689/

It's just these 3 right now-more soon. Hard to do this at work.

[spatman]

My buddies were less...enthusiastic about diving every waking moment than I was.

we'll need to take a dive trip sometime. i always try to be in the water as much as possible.

looking forward to your pics!

you coming to sund rock on sunday?

[mattwave]

Sounds like it was a good time and full of good info. :rr:

[scottsax]

we'll need to take a dive trip sometime. i always try to be in the water as much as possible.

looking forward to your pics!

you coming to sund rock on sunday?

One of my buddies from this trip wants to go to Cozumel in October. Need to think about it, but it sounds like a good idea to me.

I'm gonna try to make it to Sund Rock on Sunday. I may come for the afternoon dive. The morning is probably not going to happen for me, as I'm driving back from Yakima late Saturday night.

[Tom Nic]

My buddies were less...enthusiastic about diving every waking moment than I was.

we'll need to take a dive trip sometime. i always try to be in the water as much as possible.

looking forward to your pics!

you coming to sund rock on sunday?

Who you go with on a DIVE trip is a big deal. I love the sun of the tropics, but my main interest is being underwater, not laying on the beach or seeing the sights. There's always enough surface interval for the above water stuff, but underwater has to be priority #1! If you're going with me, anyway! :-) It's all part of a "dive buddy compatibility index" text that I ought to develop and patent, but... (Come to think of it, I'll just mention it here and someone in NWDC will probably do it in about a week!)

Very nice photos, BTW!!

[scottsax]

Very nice photos, BTW!!

Thanks. This was my first time ever taking photos underwater. Very tricky to get the right combination of white balance/f-stop/shutter speed/flash power/focus/composition/critter to make the shot at all appealing to look at.

[scottsax]

More pics have been uploaded. Some are absolute shite, but some came out not bad. Need to dust off my Photoshop skills and do some color correction on most, just to take out the overwhelming blue...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13786635@N ... 671378689/

[spatman]

you have some good ones there, scott! i really like the schooling fish around the pilings. that's one of my favorite things to see while diving.

[scottsax]

you have some good ones there, scott! i really like the schooling fish around the pilings. that's one of my favorite things to see while diving.

After most of my dives on the house reef, I spent 15 or 20 minutes swimming through those schools of fish, testing out different combinations of aperture and shutter speed trying to get something interesting. I also shot some video where I was "herding" the different schools around. Very fun!

[Sounder]

You photogs are a different breed... I just love being there and don't have the patience to fuss with a camera.

[spatman]

You photogs are a different breed... I just love being there and don't have the patience to fuss with a camera.

i love taking pics, but i don't like a lot of fuss either. i'll spend a minute or two adjusting a few settings when i first hit the water, but after that i just want to be able to click click click.

[scottsax]

You photogs are a different breed... I just love being there and don't have the patience to fuss with a camera.

Uh, yeah-the most important lesson I learned in those classes I took that week was that this probably wasn't how I wanted to spend my dives.

I could probably do video at some point, but since the Automatic setting on my camera produces terrible results, I think still pictures is not something I'll do regularly. Besides, without my drysuit and all the extra crap I carry when diving here, I just didn't feel like I had enough task loading on the dives in Bonaire, so I had to do something!

[Sounder]

You photogs are a different breed... I just love being there and don't have the patience to fuss with a camera.

Uh, yeah-the most important lesson I learned in those classes I took that week was that this probably wasn't how I wanted to spend my dives.

I could probably do video at some point, but since the Automatic setting on my camera produces terrible results, I think still pictures is not something I'll do regularly. Besides, without my drysuit and all the extra crap I carry when diving here, I just didn't feel like I had enough task loading on the dives in Bonaire, so I had to do something!

I've just never been one to feel the need to "document" the whole trip, every dive, every critter. Some people love doing JUST THAT, but I don't. I prefer to "enjoy the moment" and make a memory. If I were writing a book, or documenting the "whatever" for some reason, that'd be a different story, but then we're going on the dive for that purpose.

[spatman]

I've just never been one to feel the need to "document" the whole trip, every dive, every critter. Some people love doing JUST THAT, but I don't. I prefer to "enjoy the moment" and make a memory. If I were writing a book, or documenting the "whatever" for some reason, that'd be a different story, but then we're going on the dive for that purpose.

i don't feel the need to "document" the dive. like many land-based photogs do above water, i enjoy trying to capture the amazing shapes and colors we see in a creative and interesting way. now i'm not the best photographer out there so a lot of my creative attempts do look like just documentation! and sometimes i take a pic solely to have something to reference later when i try to ID a critter i'd never seen before.

but like scott said, i don't want to spend my whole dive futzing with cameras. if all i did all the time was dive, it would be a different story...

[Sounder]

I've just never been one to feel the need to "document" the whole trip, every dive, every critter. Some people love doing JUST THAT, but I don't. I prefer to "enjoy the moment" and make a memory. If I were writing a book, or documenting the "whatever" for some reason, that'd be a different story, but then we're going on the dive for that purpose.

i don't feel the need to "document" the dive. like many land-based photogs do above water, i enjoy trying to capture the amazing shapes and colors we see in a creative and interesting way. now i'm not the best photographer out there so a lot of my creative attempts do look like just documentation! and sometimes i take a pic solely to have something to reference later when i try to ID a critter i'd never seen before.

but like scott said, i don't want to spend my whole dive futzing with cameras. if all i did all the time was dive, it would be a different story...

You need a scooter. Creativity and art goes out the window - you simply stop caring and just enjoy the dive, and the ride!! I know I do. Course, I'm not doing the camera thing now so it is a natural mate. Then again the scooter can get you, and your camera, to places you couldn't otherwise access so perhaps your creativity would be enhanced?? Uugh... cameras just aren't for me.

[scottsax]

but like scott said, i don't want to spend my whole dive futzing with cameras. if all i did all the time was dive, it would be a different story...

Amen to that! I, too, don't want to document the dive, but giving non-divers a sense of what we do is always fun. And it'd be great to be able to capture the unbelievable moments we experience around here. I'd like to shoot video at some point, because a)I've always loved shooting video, b)I love film, and c)it MOVES AND HAS SOUND! I could see a video project like "a year's worth of diving in the Sound" or "a year underwater at BHUT", capturing the change of seasons underwater. (Actually, that's a really cool idea!) Or dive-specific video shoots on wrecks, like what DCS Films does.

But camera gear costs money, and there's more actual dive gear and training I'd rather have first. So, my Powershot will have to suffice for the time being until I'm confident I'm ready to add that kind of distraction to my dives.