just got back from the keys!

I just got back from a trip with my girlfriend to the Florida Keys and Ginnie Springs. We did 4 days of diving and it was our first chance with our new camera. we have a canon SD 550 with the canon housing. So, here are my questions.

I started using my slate the second day to set a manual white ballance. this worked well but i don't think i was doing it often enough. so the questions are... how often should i do this and what works well as a white card to set the white ballance?

Second, i just started using software from yahoo (the free stuff) but it dosn't help me to make slideshows or anything so what software do you guys use to make this happen? I want to have it on my website and not a site like photodex etc.

last, i have lots of pics of the back sides of fish... go figure. i will have to learn to be more stealthy.


http://www.flypierce.com/keysOne.html

http://www.flypierce.com/GinnieSprings.html

Nice pics from the Keys!!

I like the Ginnie shots. Fun place!

Nice pictures....

Very nice! I didn't see any white balance problems, but I might recommend getting a little closer in some of the photos.

My company has had its annual meeting at Hawks Cay three times. They keep us so busy. It's frustrating to be stuck in meetings while the dolphins are playing right outside. We usually have an afternoon free, which I use to go diving. My favorite dive is the Thunderbolt wreck. This past year, I brought my gear as usual. When I showed up at Tilden's, they told me the boats were cancelled. Too windy. And I lugged my gear for nothing. Next year we're in Arizona, so no diving.

we were supposed to dive the thunderbolt as well but like you, we woke up to 25+kt winds and they said there was 5' swells at the sight so it was a no go. there was a very odd cold from moving in from the north. it was a bummer. I thought Hawks Cay was great, exspecially for 99/night that we found on travelzoo.com.

Beautiful pictures. The weather in Florida is funny. Much like your dive that one morning, it can look terrible one minute, and then clear up the next.

TOM

Nero does slideshows, but I'm not sure how much I like Nero. I've had some issues with other functions in Nero.

PSCSII has a built in web generater that will do slide shows. But it is expensive. Maybe Elements has something similar, I bet it does, but don't know for sure.

PhotoDex does slideshows, and you can output the slides shows to different media. I know a few people who use and love PhotoDex.

HERE is a review of some software. I'd be interested in hearing some opinions as I want to get something more flexible that PS, or maybe I should say more than the supplied action without having to do the work myself.

For white balance you really need to set it when necessary! How is THAT for a totally true, and worthless answer. The real answer is set it when the lighting conditions change. Lighting conditions change when one changes depth, or the sun goes behind a cloud, or if vis get's better or worst. In reality if you are doing shallow reef dives with a rather constant profile like the keys you should be able to set it, and be fine. The WB in your images looked OK to me, but there were not a lot of images posted, so maybe you had issues in other images?