Some recent images from the Caribbean (Roatan)

During a two-week 34-dive trip I somehow ended up rating almost 500 shots as 4-stars, but I'm now cutting those down!   Been working through post-processing them all on my large monitors and fixing a lot of post-processing issues.

Images were taken with a Nikon D850 in a Nauticam housing.  Dual or single YS-D1 strobes.  (One of my strobes failed the first week so a lot of shots are single strobe).  Lenses were 105vr behind flat port of 16-35vr behind 230mm dome port with 90mm extension and Sea and Sea Internal Correction Lens.

Here are some I like.

Star Horseshoe Worm - one of many

I like the various colors you find in anemones

Banded Coral Shrimp - one of many

Magnificent Feather Duster

Common Octopus eat the divemaster's lunch.

Florida Corralimorphs

Looking up inside Calvin's Crack

A cluster of Painted Tunicates

Christmas Tree Worm detail

Queen Angelfish

Yellowhead Jawfish

Now I need to make a second pass through all the shots to cull a few more and to make white balance more consistent between shots in sequences.

Excellent.  Now, we need to see the 3 stars.

daveco2 wrote:

Excellent. Now, we need to see the 3 stars.

I've got something like 490 4-stars at the moment...   I'm going through the 3-stars now, elevating a few, eliminating more.

daveco2 wrote:

Excellent. Now, we need to see the 3 stars.

I up-rated these after doing some work on them.

Amazing spot-on focus.  Are these autofocus only or with manual (or position) tweak, what we would call DMF on a Sony system?

What's that green crook thing across your finger?

daveco2 wrote:

Amazing spot-on focus. Are these autofocus only or with manual (or position) tweak, what we would call DMF on a Sony system?

If an image is out of focus, I almost always delete it immediately, unless it has very compelling subjects.  (Like the fish chamber).

I never hooked up the focus ring for the 105vr.  Spot autofocus only, and it's seriously good and seriously better than the D810.

For the 16-35vr, I have the zoom ring hooked up, which means there is no manual focus possible.  (Only one control for zooming or focusing).

What's that green crook thing across your finger?

I assume you mean the Wire Coral across divemaster David's finger.  And a Wire Shrimp on the Wire Coral as well.

Wire Shrimp are actually too small for the 105vr.   All the shots are heavy crops. It needs a magnifying diopter/wet lens attached, and then it would be quite challenging to find the target, focus on it (Wire Shrimp move very quickly when they want.  It's like trying to focus on fruit flies buzzing around in moonlight).   Wire Coral has the characteristic of a) growing at depth and b) extending horizontally out from a vertical wall.   This means when I'm taking a shot of a Wire Shrimp, I'm entirely floating and controlling my buoyancy while trying to frame, focus and shoot.   It makes simple shots of little critters more rewarding when they come out well.