How does he find them? Tiny seahorse

kelpdiver wrote:

With so much time out of the water, how long did it take for you to feel competent with the 850 in the water?

Hehe, for macro, no problem at all.  For wide angle, I'm definitely needing to work on it.

Video - now THERE'S a ... situation.   I decided I should try a 20-30 second video on each dive, and on the first 2-3 dives I remembered to do that.  However, post-processing (grading) the video is totally new to me.  I figured this would be a fine time to learn.  I had to find new software to try after finding that Davinci Resolve wouldn't work on my laptop.  Ended up with Lightworks.

And what did I get from my first few videos?  Well, I guess I never checked the settings, because I shot them all in 4x slo-mo. SIgh.

I'm pretty familiar with the camera, but intentionally am leaning toward a lot of wide angle this year, partly because I feel I have much more to learn there than macro.  Both in shooting and in post.  Since my camera gear was all working ok, I didn't pay that much attention.  I've had all sorts of other issues.

Currently I'm down with some sort of ear problem and missed the last 4 dives.  No idea if it will clear up by tomorrow.  Feels more like I'm coming down with something.  I had 10 dives, and most of them were painful.  My left ear barely wants to clear, going both down and up.

On top of that I have dive computer issues.  Two years ago I bought a new Suunto D5.  This is the first time I got to try it out.  I was confused as to the functions, and I couldn't get it paired to my tank pod when I got here, so I just went on a checkout dive without an air gauge.  Figured 20 minutes would be fine.  I do a shore dive Saturday afternoon when i arrive to check out my gear before starting the boat dives in the morning.  This was really a solo dive too - I had someone help me into the water, then I was on my own.  Getting out with the camera was a real pain.

The next day I switched back to my old Cobra2 and loaned the D5 to my divemaster, who wore it on two dives.   We couldn't figure out how to get some things to display however.  That night I downloaded the manual and found out the D5 was set to Gauge mode.

So I reset it to Air/Nitrox, and also fixed the pairing issue with the tank pod.

And then it bit me.   When you dive in Gauge Mode and switch to Air/Nitrox, as a safety measure it LOCKS ITSELF FO 48 HOURS from displaying any kind of deco info.  And when you dive with it in that condition, it just resets the timer to 48 hours again.  Now I can't dive with it until after the two morning dives tomorrow, if I'm able to dive again.

Something else happened that was probably due to 2 years off diving too.  I ran out of air - twice!  Both times as I was handing the camera up to the boat, and I knew it was coming.  The divemaster and I have dove together extensively, and we always have 60+ minute dives.  The dive pace is planned around this.  On two dives we hit unexpected and unusual current, and my out-of-shapeness led me to get back to the boat with about 100 psi, then run out handing things up.

Considering I was also barely able to change depth for the last several dives, and it was just pushing things too close to the edge and I decided to take a good day or two off and rest.  Also started a course of antibiotics.

So my concentration has not been on my photography very much on these dives.  Still had a lot of fun.

If I can't dive tomorrow, I can instead snorkel (great snorkeling here) and practice over-under shots and some video.