Author: travel67

Christmas Tree Worms- Spirobranchus giganteus

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Spirobranchus giganteus, commonly known as Christmas tree worms, are small, tube-building polychaete worms belonging to the family Serpulidae (Wikipedia). Each worm has two Christmas tree like structures that are used for both feeding and respiration. If you move too close to the worm they rapidly retract back into the coral. (In the movie Avatar some of the plants on the alien world behaved in a similar fashion.) These were shot with the K5 and the fisheye lens. The lens isn’t designed for macro work, but you can still get some interesting wide-angle close-up images.

Ikelite K5 Housing – Open Water Test

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Tested out the underwater housing for the K5 at Cape Maeda this morning. Hiroshi and Shawn were my buddies for the dive. As more experienced underwater shooters, they could make sure that I’d sealed everything down properly. So what did I learn? The housing didn’t leak and you can operate all buttons while underwater. There also appears to be a button (labeled Fn Button in the manual) that allows you to press the lens release button. I may contact Ikelite to see if I’m just being dimwitted or if this is some design issue. (I didn’t try to use this while underwater.) Operating functions that require doing two things at the same time are tricky e.g. pressing the ISO button and turning the rear e-dial. This means using exposure compensation underwater will be more problematic than simply using manual mode and adjusting exposure with the e-dials. The controller for the “Green Button” can easily get stuck. Probably not an issue as I don’t use the Green Button normally, but strange nonetheless. Live View is useful …

Yongnuo YN560 Speedlite Review

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Is buying a cheap alternative brand hot-shoe flash a great way to save hundreds of dollars or are you just wasting your money? Let’s start with the key difference. Cost Nikon SB910 $538.81 Canon 580EX II $457.00 Pentax AF540FGZ $399.00 Yongnuo YN560 $67.40 So what are the similarities? Power: The Yongnuo Flash has a guide number of 58. This means the camera has a similar maximum power to the other top end flashes listed above. (Guide Number indicates the power of the flash.  GN = max distance to subject x f-stop at ISO 100 – e.g. if GN is 58,  max distance to subject is 29 meters when aperture is  f/2 and ISO is 100.) Manual Control: All four flashes allow you to manually control both the level of power and the zoom on the flash. Slave Modes: All four flashes allow you to slave the flash so it fires when it detects the light from another flash. Bounce: All four flashes allow you to both tilt and rotate the flash head to bounce the flash off the …

Successful Strobing – The Off Camera Flash Workshop

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A huge thanks to Robert, Michelle, Danielle, Shawn, Amanda, David,  Jen and Dave for being such fun and motivated participants in last weekend’s off camera flash workshop. The first day we learned all about the different types of strobes and getting the most out of them on and off camera. The second day we moved from TTL to manual flash control, and from wired to wireless triggers. By the end of the weekend we were on the beach as Pete gave a short masterclass in location lighting. I’ll post a few more of the photographs from the weekend soon. It all goes to show that a little bit of off camera flash can brighten anyone’s day.

Triple Terabyte Time Machine

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As you shoot more photos, or buy more media from iTunes you are going to fill up both the hard disks on your computer, and if you’re a Mac user, your Time Machine. My 1.5TB Time Machine was so full it couldn’t update easily so I decided to get something bigger. The hard disk I was previously using as the Time Machine will then be used for off-site backups. Fortunately as the need for storage grows, the price per terabyte  has gone down. In Japan, you can now get a 3TB hard disk for less than ¥16,000  which is about the same amount I paid for the 1.5TB model a year or two ago. Not a particularly exciting piece of gear, but if you don’t back up your data… “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Hardball with Ryukyu Bus Kotsu – 琉球バス交通

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At the start of the year, I wrote a post about being involved in a minor traffic accident. A coach decided to merge into my lane and, although I wasn’t moving and beeping my horn, the coach scraped the fender and bumper of my car. It’s annoying to have to fill in paperwork, get your car fixed, and drive around a loaner for a week or two, but accidents happen. In the previous blog post I wrote: The one issue that does remain is exactly whose insurance will be paying for the repairs. You might assume that the bus company’s insurance would pay for everything, but in Japan blame is rarely attributed entirely to one driver. If the discussion between insurance companies results in me being given a token 10% of the blame, my insurance will pay for 10% of the damage to my car and the bus, and next year’s insurance premium will go up. A couple of weeks ago, I got the accident summary from my insurance company ( J.A. ) it said …

Shisa Artist Sano Toshio ( Portraits with the 645 FA 150mm )

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Shisa artist Haru Toshi was at the sunflower festival in Kitanakagusku Village.  He said he had a face like the lion-dog talismans he creates. The 150mm lens for the Pentax 645 is a great portrait lens. It is the equivalent of a 118mm lens on a 35mm FF body so it gives nice proportions to the face, and at wide apertures gives a very limited depth of field. If we put the following information into a depth of field calculator: 645D sensor, f/stop 2.8, lens 150mm, focus 1m 20cm it gives the depth of field as 1.58cm. This means if you focus on the eye, the tip of the nose and ear will be fading into bokeh.  (Interestingly it’s about the same D.O.F. as you get with an 85mm at f/1.4  at 1m 20cm on a FF)

Sunflowers in Kitanakagusku, Okinawa

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There’s a sunflower festival taking place in Kitanakagusku Village at the moment. Local farmers have grown thousands of sunflowers in vacant plots of land between the vegetables. It’s free to wander around, and there are small paths that wind through the flowers if you want to immerse yourself in nature. Enterprising locals have set up a few stalls selling ramen, soba, shisa and garden plants should you wish to help the local economy.

Ikelite Underwater Housing for Pentax K5 / K7

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Living on Okinawa, I can scuba dive most weekends. If you shore dive and only pay for tank rental, a day’s scuba diving actually works out cheaper than an evening bowling. I’ve tried underwater photography a couple of times before. First with an EWA Marine bag for my Nikon film camera that was good down to 5 meters, but limited functionality. Then I got a used Sea & Sea MX-10 submersible camera that you could take scuba diving, but the optical quality wasn’t great. I sold off the MX-10 and for the last 8 years have dived without a camera. From 2012, however, things are going to be different. Ikelite recently started production of a housing for the Pentax K5 / K7 cameras.  I ordered an Ikelite housing from the States and picked up a K5 on sale at Amazon Japan. The housing is rated to be waterproof to 60M (20M below the maximum depth for recreation divers) and allows you to access all the functions of the camera while underwater. You must attach a …