Alex Mustard had posted some preliminary test shots taken with Nikon’s new D3 and D300 digital SLRs. In addition to posting illuminating sample images from his time with the cameras, Alex writes about high ISO performance, live view, corner sharpness, vignetting, and more.
Oh, and Alex also tried Nikon’s new 14-24mm wide-angle zoom lens. Sample images from the new lens are also in the informal report.
The Wetpixel Picture of the Week competition now has an RSS feed! Subscribe to the new RSS feed to automatically be notified when a new winning image emerges from the mix.
If you don’t know what RSS is, read about it and then go out of your way to set yourself up with a RSS reader. Once you are properly set up, it has the potential to save you from hours of idle web browsing each week. If you don’t want to download any special software, try out Google’s feed reader, which has been received favorably by nearly everyone I know who has tried it.
The Wetpixel POTW is sponsored by Ikelite Underwater Systems.
On the heels of announcing the prestigious 3rd-annual, US-based international photo and video competition, Wetpixel & DivePhotoGuide have once again organized a joint collaboration with DEEP Indonesia, Indonesia’s first-ever Diving, Adventure Travel and Water sports expo.
Photographers will compete in 7 themed categories to win over $30,000 in prizes, including photo equipment, dive gear, and premium dive travel packages to some of the top photo destinations in Indonesia and beyond…
Our good friend Jason Heller of DivePhotoGuide has posted a write-up of his visit to PDN's PhotoPlus Expo 2007.
Being at PhotoPlus Expo is like being the proverbial kid in a candy store. The advances in photography are staggering and walking the aisles of the show only reminds us of that.
In his coverage, Jason writes mostly about digital SLR developments from Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Olympus, although he also visits the Epson booth to check out their printers, the Kata booth for their photo and video bags, and DxO for their new RAW converter.
Wetpixel member George Cathcart (rivominer) obtained a copy of “Reef” by Scubazoo and reflects on the quality of the photographs and the environmental message of the book:
David Brower understood that people will protect what they love, and his books were the eloquent pleas of a suitor trying to get people to fall in love with and fight for the natural world…that is the goal of a unique enterprise known as Scubazoo. [But] if the aim is to convince the uninitiated to fall in love with and protect the world’s reefs, it is best to start by showing them what’s in their own backyards. They may be awed by the exotic animals and scenes on the far side of the world, but will they fight to protect it?
Continue reading for Cathcart’s full review and a sampling of included imagery…
Voting for the official 2008 Raja Ampat entrance tag contest closes October 19, 2007! If you’re thinking of traveling and diving in the Raja Ampat region in the near future, you have the chance to decide which image will be featured on your tag.
Remember that the winner’s image will be printed onto over 5,000 park tags to be attached to diver BCDs while in the new Raja Ampat park, and he/she will win a free diving package in Raja Ampat, courtesty of local dive sponsors. Thank you to all who have voted already!
Aquatica has sent us photos of their new housing for the Nikon D40x dSLR.
The Aquatica D40X features a “quick response zoom control,” comes standard with a single Nikonos-style bulkhead, is rated to 100 meters depth, and is compatible with the current line of Aquatica ports and the Aqua View finder.
Continue for the full press release…
The British Underwater Image Festival (BUIF) invites entries for its third annual Photography and Video competition. More than $20,000 USD worth of prizes, sponsored by Suunto, PADI, Mares and Apeks, are available to the winners in each of the competition’s nine categories.
Leading underwater film-maker Peter Scoones, DIVE editor Simon Rogerson, British Society of Underwater Photographers co-founder Colin Doeg and award-winning photographers Alex Mustard and Charles Hood will be among judges.
Reef Check Australia has announced the winner and finalists from the “What do Australia’s coral reefs mean to you?” photography competition. Giles Winstanley is Reef Check Australia’s 2007 Photographer of the Year, placing first in two of five categories, “Reef in Our Hands” and “Animal Behaviour,” and will receive a Canon A630 digital camera and underwater housing kit and a diving trip in the Great Barrier Reef. Justin Gilligan and Samara Nicolson were the overall runner-up and Young Photographer of the Year, respectively.
Reef Check Australia is dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of coral reefs, and plans to run a competition next year to support the 2nd International Year of the Reef. Continue for the full press release from this year’s contest, and check out the results - congratulations to all the finalists!
Bad marine field guides should be stored in deep, dark recesses on dank, dingy dive boats. Good guides should be perused by congenitally disliked divers bent on “impressing” the rest of us with their mind-numbing array of knowledge.
Of course, the very best field guides belong on shelves and are only to have the dust blown off them when we want to identify a bizarre fish before uploading the image to Wetpixel’s Photo of the Week contest.
Continue reading for the rest of Willy Volk’s review of “A Diver’s Guide to Underwater Malaysia Macrolife”...