Promised Photos

I think I remember saying something about pictures from Saturday!! So here are some.

Just to recap - for Christmas I got an Olympus SW790. As far as digital cameras go it is unimpressive. In fact, I got used to a much nicer Sony camera, so going to the Olympus was a downgrade.

BUT the Olympus offers one really cool feature. It is waterproof to 10 feet. There is also a housing that is good to 131 feet. Ill probably think about getting that thing at some point. But not now.

Now being waterproof to 10 feet means I can use it on the surface. No problem. It laughs at rain. It also laughs at spray. This is why I wanted it. It is a tough little point and shoot simple to use digital camera.

So for all those features Ill take a hit on picture quality. It is an acceptable trade off. I am not a photo professional anyway.

So here it goes! The first underwater photos taken with the Olympus camera!


I have no idea what that blurry part in the corner is all about. My best guess is there was an air bubble on the lens or something. What you can see is sand (light areas) some sea fans (they are there) and even a few fish. Reef fish. Probably the fish that stole my bait.

The original photo is much larger. But it is also over 2 megs. So I made it smaller. But like I said before, the camera does not take the greatest pictures but it also does not come with a Nikon digital SLR price tag!

But if it were the original size you could see more stuff in there. Mostly the small fish. Very grainy but you can pick em out.

This is another photo. There are more sea fans and some other soft corals as well. I think there are also some sponges. And small bait stealing fish. But you can see there is more than sand on the bottom. All kinds of stuff.

Now you may be asking yourself - is everything so blue? No. Not really. There is all kinds of colors there. You just can not see it! Water absorbs light. The deeper you go the less light there is. At some point you can no longer see the sun.

But the light is not absorbed all at once! The water filters out all the colors starting with red. Just a few feet underwater and red looks purplish-black. Orange is the next color to be absorbed, followed by yellow, green, blue, and so on.

This is why the deep sea appears so darn blue! The white light enters the water, and by the time it is reflected back all that is left is blue, indigo, and violet.

So this is why the pictures are so green / blue balanced. And this is also why underwater photography gets so expensive. You need a powerful underwater flash unit to provide enough light to bring out the true colors. The weak built in flash on my camera is just not going to do it.

In this photo, the blurry stuff is back! I really have to figure out what that is all about. But the bottom is there! You can still see stuff. More assorted soft corals. Pretty neat.

So all things considered, the camera did well. It is really not an underwater camera, it is a land camera that happens to be waterproof to 10 feet and can work underwater. It does OK for what it is.

And I did not want it for use underwater anyway. I got it because I could use it and not worry if I spilled a beer on it. Or if it rains. Or if it gets splashed. Or if it gets sprayed. Or whatever. The camera would be OK.

And so I can take photos like this.



This picture was taken while I was floating around behind the boat. There was a current running. Not too strong, but not really something I felt like swimming against. So that yellow line you see is attached to my ring buoy. This way I can put one of my legs through the ring, and then I can just hang out and relax. I do not have to exert any effort to swim and the line prevents the current from taking me too far away. And I can pull myself back to the boat using the line so I do not have to swim against the current at all.

And since the camera is waterproof I can jump in with it! No problem.

As you can see, at this moment my dad is not catching anything. But the boat looks sharp! As you can see there is plenty of fishing gear in the various rod holders. Just no fish.