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Post by scubadiverbob on Jul 4, 2014 6:02:37 GMT -8
Since it's almost impossible to get quality film anymore ... I loaned my Nik V & SB-105 to a friend of mine who is a commercial diver and needed a camera that would go deeper than any digital's on the market; and now I just use a Vivitar digital camera ...
Sorry for not diving "vintage" as far as photography goes, I promise I will never give up my DA Aquamaster (it's a fine tuned breathing machine!) ...
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Post by kgehring on Jul 4, 2014 14:17:25 GMT -8
Below 200 Feet?
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Post by scubadiverbob on Jul 5, 2014 21:53:01 GMT -8
Karl, www.camerasunderwater.co.uk/articles/gallery/nikonos The calypso-phot was rated to 200 feet. I think Nik V to 330ft. The friend of mine, who is a commercial diver, dives mostly to 150 feet well within the range of a Nik V. Sometimes they go to 350 ft; but, he only needed it for the dives to 150 ft. I told him "good luck finding decent film!; most film on the market now-a-days is "Hecho en Chine" and won't work well with Nikonos cameras. My 4A, which I still have, likes to "eat" Fiji and "hecho en Chine" film ... Developing is also expensive. I have a darkroom; but, haven't developed in like a few years, not even B/W. Hard to find chemicals. So far, there are no digital cameras that will come close to what film cameras would do with good film ... I used to use 32 ASA film for portraits (and could use it in Nikonos cameras) ... know of any digital camera that will compare? (it would require over 30 Megapixels) I don't know of any digital's that will yet match the Nikonos line of cameras in depth capabilities without housings ... The best qualities of digital, is you can delete your mistakes before anyone sees them; or you can correct them with photoshop (a.k.a. photoslop). Robert |
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Post by surflung on Jul 9, 2014 5:57:16 GMT -8
- I played around with underwater photography using a Nikonos back in '68-'73... Used Ektachrome ASA 400 and pushing it to higher ASA in the developer bath. My pictures without a flash in the 25'+ visibility of Square Lake were pitiful. I took it to Cayman Islands in '73 and found that better subject matter gave the most dramatic improvement in my picture quality. But my pictures were still nothing compared to what I get off my GoPro Hero I with aftermarket flat housing lens.
- The digital aspects of this GoPro camera give far higher resolution PLUS it can handle low light far better... All automatically. The photos and movies I get off my GoPro are far better and far easier to take than I ever got off my Nikonos with film.
- The word "grainy" was often used to describe low light pictures shot with film... And it referred to the light sensitive emulsion on the celluloid film. That's an actual physical "grain" that I don't think can come anywhere near the "Megapixel" resolutions of digital cameras.
- I'd be interested to know if other photographers like yourself prefer film to digital... I mean no offense but, that's entirely opposite of what my own experience has been.
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Post by sitkadiver on Jul 9, 2014 8:53:29 GMT -8
Bob, What is your friend planning to do? Deep commercial work with a camera that would require him to use his hands to operate a shudder and advance the film? Did he know what you had? I own my own dive business here in Sitka and do hull inspections, pipeline work and zinc/anode replacement etc and I only use a digital camera. The main purpose for taking pictures underwater is to show someone topside what is happening and with digital, making copies is a lot easier than with film. I can redact a video, add some photos and show a client the before and after pics of a job I've done. There is absolutely no way I could do that with a film camera. Also, when I was diving for the Sealife Discovery, all of our photo and video was digital and that staretd up in 2001, thus the technology is now 15 years old. Without a huge lens and/ or big bright lights, there is no way a film camera could compete with our Sea Horse work camera. It had imbedded software that adjusted the camera for low light settings automatically, which meant that the camera could see things I could not! Seriously - I was able to get video of things I could not see with the naked eye. The only issue we had with the Sea Horse camera was that in low light situations it would adjust some color back to a median wave length and make some blues a purple-ish color or yellow would look bright green etc..... But, other than that, it was an amazing rig. Here is t is in shallow water:  And here is a video using a Gopro: The skipper of this boat hit bottom while fishing near a hatchery(it's called cost recovery). I also added some Splash Zone to the front of the keel cooler and went back and took still images of that completed project. The skipper then received a CD with the video and photos showing there were no holes in the fiberglass and that the front of the keel cooler was mudded properly. He also was worried about having line in the wheel and had a vibration. |
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Post by scubadiverbob on Jul 15, 2014 17:12:21 GMT -8
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Post by SeaRat on Jul 15, 2014 22:29:47 GMT -8
Bob, I think the GoPro 3+ Black Edition with a housing is currently rated for 60 meters/197 feet. I'm thinking about getting one, as on my dive last week (can't say last dive, as I dove today), I could have gotten some really interesting video of red-sided shiners spawning. They weren't doing it today. So I'm torn between whether to get the GoPro (sounds like my wife will let me) or simply let it go. Concerning film, I'm still shooting film, and getting it developed at Blue Moon Photography in Portland. I use Fujichrome Provia 100F, and get really good slides. I'm also shooting digital, with a Canon EOS Rebel XT-i. Sitkadiver, I'm interested in your GoPro; are you helmet-mounting it? If so, please be more specific about how you use the camera. That was a great way of showing the capabilities of the GoPro. Concerning film verses digital, here's something to think about. Will you have you images in another forty years?    Larry Longley and I jumped on a fire on a ridge in the Washington Cascade Mountains in 1972. I was a smokejumper for a summer with the North Cascades Smokejumper Base in Winthrop, Washington (that's a whole other story). Larry got a hangup by his suspension lines, and the aircraft thought he had been hurt until I put out an "LL" sign on the rocks with florescent red plastic rolls. The photos show how his 'chute looked when he got his tree hangup, and then how he released himself and used a nylon tape to rappel from the tree. Finally, I re-arranged the last photo to show him up in the tree, topping it so we could recover the 'chute after putting out the fire. That was 42 years ago. I have a nephew who is a videographer (graduated with a degree in it), and he feels that this digital age will be a blank in the history books, as the digital media won't survive for a long time. We'll have to keep copying and copying our images and videos in order to save them, as the formats will change, and the old stuff may be lost in the process. John |
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Post by SeaRat on Jul 15, 2014 22:41:21 GMT -8
Here are some images of my brothers in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s (50-60 years ago). The last one is of me and two other Pararescuemen on a HC-130N Hercules prior to a parascuba jump in 1970 (44 years ago). I am currently going over my hundreds of slides to get them into an order that I can use, and these are some examples of uses.    John |
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Post by diverdon on Jul 16, 2014 2:09:36 GMT -8
Very nice John,
You must have an incredible file system with a ton of photos and slides. Thanks for posting. And Dave, I too enjoyed the videos, however I'm currently having an audio problem. Keep up the great posts gentlemen.
Thank you,
Don
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Post by sharkskin on Sept 10, 2014 20:30:10 GMT -8
Very interesting topic. Digital vs film is been a never ending conversation for both photo and moving picture.
Digital photography is so advanced now days... and so benevolent with the user...that is simply fantastic. Reason why most of us have, easily, 3-5 digital cameras in our drawers ( on top of our iphones ). That being said, last year I started shooting a bit of film again and I love the whole experience of carefully planning and excecuting a shot rather than blazing away with multiple frames per second. Then the anticipation of getting a roll developed, driving home trying to look at the negatives, putting the cd of scans in the computer and bang, it all comes to life! the first shots on a roll were sometimes from a month ago and I can tell every shot has had more thought put into it than my digital shots. Film shots have such a cool vibe to me and different films and cameras give styles beyond what the shooter planned.
In the end, film photography could make us better digital photographers. To really try to put more thought to our work, to get purposeful shots and bring quality of subject back to photography.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2014 15:36:25 GMT -8
Bob, There is a photo shop in NY ...yeah...ugh.......called B&H photo......you can get anything you want (sorta like Alice's restaurant) regarding film...including Kodak according to their website..........exp: Kodak GC-135 36 exp. $3.29 per roll plus shipping. They have 24 exp for a dollar less.......also fuji and something called llford, and mucho dark room supplies and equip, including chems. John, I agree, I have lost many digital photos due to corrupted disks or computer crashes, if not saved to photo bucket they are gone....but I still have my old photos on paper and some I scanned and uploaded to photo bucket.........they are easily photo shopped as well. Below are photos taken of my youngest son some twenty years apart with a Nikonos II, GC-135 36 400 Kodak film and the one of him testing the Mk3 is CVS brand 400.......about the same....also one of me diving in All Saints Bay which is digital and photo shopped.....an Olympus 220 in a uw housing. I can not see much difference de    |
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