Canon Canon A720IS Photos from Sipadan Island (Part 1)

Well I've finally gotten around to uploading my photos from our December 2007 trip to Sipadan Island. Some of them are still "works in progress". About the only image manipulation I did was to use Picasa for cropping and some of the easy "fixes" available in Picasa. I'd like to learn how to do more using GIMP but for now I'm stuck with using Picasa.

This was my first experience with a digital camera and I did exactly what everyone says not to do. I bought the camera right before we left on our trip with it arriving 2 days before our departure. Even with that error on my part I was pretty pleased with the results and I found that you can shoot some pretty good pic's using only natural light or the in-camera strobe. All of the pictures can be found at:

Picasa Web Albums - Rick - Sipadan Islan...

and I have video clips posted at:

rickgreatting/Sipadan 2007 - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Here's what I learned about using the A720 on my recent trip:

- full auto works pretty good if you are in clear, shallow water (less than 6m or so) and bright sunlight
- I wasn't able to use my MWB option because as it turned out the directions in User Guide didn't work. When I went online to CanonUSA after I got home I found that the MWB instructions on their website were different than the User Guide. I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to use my camera to see what the results are using MWB.
- below 9-10 meters I usually used the "cloudy" setting for WB. I did some comparison shots using "cloudy" and "UW WB" at depths greater than 9-10 meters and didn't notice much difference.
- above 9 meters I usually used the "sunny" WB setting unless it was early or late in the day or cloudy in which case I went back to the "cloudy" WB setting.
- keep your camera in the Macro mode at all times. It will work just fine shooting longer range shots and you won't forget to switch to Macro when you do want to shoot Macro.
- practice how to turn your flash on and off and adjust camera flash levels until you can almost do them with your eyes closed. You'll find when shooting Macro you will have to reduce your flash level otherwise the picture will be way over-exposed, especially if you are shooting against a light colored background (e.g., sand or light colored coral or rock)
- learn how to shoot in the Manual mode. Almost all of these photos shoot in the Manual mode.
- I usually kept the camera in the "center weighted" focus mode. I used "spot" focus mode for Macro shots and "center weighted" for most everything else except of course when I would occasionally forget to switch to "spot" for a macro shot which resulted in some less than optimal focusing for some of the macro subjects.

Enough talk for now - here are the pictures.

Looking good!

I love those little anglerfish

Cool stuff.

good stuff rick. seems the titan trigger wasn't in a bad mood

Great photos and videos, Rickg.... You may have meant well but I thot you shouldn't have touched that turtle though.... Were the videos shot using the A720 as well?

jonix:

good stuff rick. seems the titan trigger wasn't in a bad mood

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jonix,

You are correct about the "titan". They weren't nesting while we were there so they were on their good behavior. I have been on the receiving end from titan trigger fish on previous trips to Sipadan I saw the absolute biggest titan that I have ever seen while on this trip. It was probably close to 1m in length and resting under a coral ledge when I saw it. Now come the "fish story". I was on my first set of batteries (and had no real feel for how long a set of batteries would last) when I tried to take a picture of this giant when the camera died. Cei’ Le VieI - guess that is how the story goes.

scorpenesub:

Great photos and videos, Rickg.... You may have meant well but I thot you shouldn't have touched that turtle though.... Were the videos shot using the A720 as well?

Click to expand...

scorpenesub,

I guarantee you that the turtle wasn't touched. This was the 4th trip for my wife and I to Sipadan since '94 and we are well attuned to the need for not touching the turtles (or anything else for that matter). It is the camera angle that makes it appear that the turtle was being touched. I think it actually goes to show how accustomed the turtles at Sipadan are to divers that they will allow someone to get that close to them without reacting.

Yes, the video clips were all shot with the A720 camera. I was really surprised with how well the camera does taking video. The original clips are even better than what you can see on PhotoBucket. There is some loss associated with the compression when uploading these to PhotoBucket, although it is less than what I saw when I first tried to upload these to YouTube.

One question. All the wider angle shots appear grainy. I have the same problem with my A 640 is it due to shutter speed? How can it be corrected if it is not shutter speed?

I really like the frogfish pciture but I thought it was a little overexposed and could be cleaned up and cropped a little more. Here is it after 5 mins in photoshop. Hope you don't mind

I really like the frogfish pciture but I thought it was a little overexposed and could be cleaned up and cropped a little more. Here is it after 5 mins in photoshop. Hope you don't mind