Friday 21 September 2007

First test in the neighbours pool. 60mm macro


14th Sept 2007
Time to get wet!
I asked over the fence if I could jump in the pool (still unheated from winter - 13c, so donned the drysuit and scuba gear) and after checking the orings too many times took the first slow steps into the water.

I took a few colourful objects to photograph like Nuditor the test nudibranch and Fragmento the test great white shark.

Using the 60mm macro and flat port here are a few of the first shots.

First impressions
The very first thing I noticed was the restricted view through the viewfinder! I was not expecting this! With my Mares X vision mask, which slopes forward at the top, I could not get my eye close enough to see the full view. Note: Next dive try my older smaller mask. (This improved the view markedly but could still be better)

Once I accepted this issue I started to have fun with the lightning fast and accurate autofocus. It was like using a real camera again, just brilliant.

4 comments:

  1. Andrew - what a wonderful diary of your Nikon D80.

    I bought both the D80 and the Ikelite underwater housing yesterday and took it for a test run in the Hotel pool this afternoon.

    I immediately noticed that it was hard to look through the viewfinder and being a SLR novice (last underwater camera was a Sony DSC W5 in std Marine Pack), I immediately tried to find the button to turn on the monitor screen and take pictures that way...

    No luck there - and then I ran into another problem - the afternoon was over cast and the sun had set - so the light was bad - and the camera couldn't focus and therefore didn't want to actually take pictures (LCD screen gave "r11" error when I depressed the shutter lever.

    The frustrating things was that it would work fine on the surface but not work 30cm underwater.

    I had not put the strobe set on - one thing at a time - and thought this may be part of issue.

    Anyway - it got too dark to see anything... have to wait 'til tomorrow.

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  2. r11 error?

    I think that means you can fit 11 images on the buffer with your current settings.

    Thanks for leaving a comment. You are the first.
    Let me know how you go. Good luck.

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  3. Hi Andrew,

    yes - I found the section in the manual (when in doubt RTFM). "r11" means 11 shots in the buffer.

    The fact that this was the last message before the camera didn't take a picture was what threw me.

    I managed to get some pictures of people's torsos underwater - but anything closer than 1.5m (using the standard 18 - 135mm lens) was a problem - the auto-focus was not able to work and hence the camera quite rightly didn't take a picture.

    This is my first SLR and there is so much to learn...

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  4. Yes, r11 does mean there is space for 11 shots left in the buffer but it is quite a well known issue that this appears when trying to autofocus in some situations.

    This drives me mad on my D80, there are all sorts of shots I can no longer take that would have come out find on my Canon 300D.

    There are more details on this problem at http://www.fixya.com/support/t236700-nikon_d80_auto_focus".

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