The Los Angeles Underwater Photographic Society (LAUPS) has posted the winners of its 44th International Underwater Photographic Competition. A number of Wetpixel members placed or earned honorable mentions in the competition.

The Best of Show was awarded to Adriano Morettin for his brilliant photograph of an anemonefish. Winning images, information about the judges, and the judges’ comments will be posted this Saturday.

Continue reading for a list of the winners, with Wetpixel winners (at least the ones I know of) highlighted in bold.

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Mark Stiebel has written a review of his impressions of the UK-Germany housing for the Pentax *istDS digital SLR. Mark commends the company for the solidly built housing, their support of the Pentax brand, and the speed with which his questions were answered, “even when emailing via Google translator.”

Mark writes “after taking this housing for only a few dives so far, I am extremely happy with my results. It feels so much better to hold and use than my previous underwater camera (Sony DSC-P10 P&S), and I actually enjoy taking pictures instead of being frustrated by my equipment.”

The review includes photos of the housing and camera in various stages of assembly, as well as some of his first photos with the new system. Read on for all the details…

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Digital Film Tools offers a variety of downloads and plug-ins that might be useful for underwater photographers. One of their more recent titles is EZ Mask 1.0, an image masking tool capable of extracting almost any object in an image - even the fine details of fish fins, for example.

According to the press release, the extraction process creates what is known as a mask; once a mask is extracted, the foreground object can be seamlessly composed onto a new background in Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. Users are then able to apply filter and image corrections only within the area defined by the mask. EZ Mask 1.0 is a downloadable application that costs $150.

In light of the recent art vs. reality discussion on Wetpixel, I wonder how popular this application will be for many underwater photographers. Moreover, a similar tool (i.e., the Magic Extractor) was already introduced in Photoshop Elements 4.0, which costs roughly half the price.

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Wetpixel member Jeff Mullins (reefwalker), of Tulamben’s Reef Wreck and Critter Dive Tours, has written a review of the Olympus Evolt E-330 digital SLR and the accompanying 10Bar housing:

When Olympus released their latest Evolt E-330 7.5 megapixel Live-View digital SLR earlier this year. I knew that this camera was for me. I converted to digital back in 2003, after a lot of years taking underwater photographs utilising film SLR’s…

10Bar produced my port and housing and had it delivered to me in Bali in only a couple of weeks. I was eager to get the camera wet (not) by the time it arrived. Manufactured from clear polycarbonate, the overall appearance of the housing was sturdy and well engineered… I really like the system and its simplicity.

Continue reading for the full review, which includes a number of colorful photos from the Bali area…
 

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There is a fantastic discussion going on in our forums about images lit only by ambient light.

Alex Mustard asks, “[do] non-underwater photographers prefer the look of underwater images taken in available light only?  Or whether it is merely a reflection that the sorts of subjects that tend to do well in wildlife photo competitions (marine mammals, turtles and sharks) are often photographed in ambient light?”

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