13. Mar, 2019

Shooting with natural - ambient or available- underwater light can be a challenge, if not 'cool'. Strobes are the widely accepted tool to cope with conditions like color absorption and light diffused by multiple particles drifting in the water column.  But when not carefully balanced with natural light, they lead to unnatural lightings of your UW target. Strobe shooters may also lose their sensitivity to catch the unique atmosphere of the underwater landscape and light fall, as you see or experience it through your eyes and diving mask. For example, when drifting over a lovely Red Sea coral garden,  or the white and sunlit sandy Bahamian sea floor. With natural light, you depend on shutter speed, aperture, ISO and the light conditions underwater. You won’t have your strobes to add color to an object close to your lenses, creating a nice contrast with the blue natural background. Which means that your range of suitable targets and light conditions is very limited. 

As said, natural light  UW  photography is not easy, because of the conditions underwater work against the principles of photography.   Best conditions are plenty of sunlight and shallow depth (say not more than 30 feet). In short; keep the path that light travels (vertically as well as horizontally)  as short as possible. There are two reasons why underwater photography without strobes often leads to poor and disappointing results.  One being longer shutter speeds. Longer shutter speeds can be useful to bring in more light from the blue background while using the strobes to light up a  colorful closely focused (often nonmoving) target. But without strobes, longer shutter speeds will cause a blur of a moving target.  A second reason is that the underwater color cast drops sharply with greater depth or a greater distance to the object, causing a monochrome and dull  UW landscape. Light diffusion is another factor. Taken together these factors will produce pictures with poor contrast and bleak colors, especially when your target is further than 1 meter away.  

A way around to restore colors is to use a red filter (e.g. the ‘Magic’ filter). The filter also requires sunny days, and with the sunlight coming from behind your back. The effects of filters are most rewarding when shooting large  (often static) objects like wrecks,  at a distance when strobes would not be of any use. So stay as shallow and close to the object as possible. With a fish-eye lens, you can get pretty close to the wreck. The stern of the Ghiannis D wreck in the Red Sea, for example,  has become a classical ‘template’ for wide-angle shooters (see for another example the insert with the Abu Nuhas wreck in the Northern Red Sea).  When using the filter, you will need to adjust your white balance manually, preferably at the same depth where you intend to do the shooting. One believes that it gives better results than adjusting the image after shooting with Photoshop. Shooting very big sea mammals like whales, moving slowly at shallow depths, is another example of a condition where a fisheye lens is a must, and there is no direct need for strobes.

Some ambient light  pictures I took last month during my visit to the Bahamas may serve to illustrate my point. I used the Olympus  F1.8, 8mm fisheye lens without the strobes, mounted with a Zen extension ring on the EPL5 4/3  Pen camera in the EPL10 housing. I  normally use this rig to back up my bigger Nikon D7200 with strobes combo. Unfortunately, there is no way of attaching the magic filter to the rear of the  Olympus lens, like with the Lumix Panasonic 8mm lens*. I used automatic white balance adjustment, with slight corrections of the images in the RAW  Adobe Photoshop CS5 mode.

On that particular day on Tiger Beach, we did a shallow dive (12 feet)  with plenty of sun and good viz. I wanted to get a sharp picture with enough color and contrast of sharks (in particular of  their head) while they moved slowly at a distance of maximal 1 meter. I used normal apertures (f11-f13) and shutter speeds (1/100 to 1/125).  I felt rather happy with the result.

*You may also take a look at an earlier  review and  comparative tests of these two fish eye lenses and some of EPL5  fish-eye lens combinations I used.



26. Feb, 2019






1. Dec, 2018












9. Nov, 2018

 Confronted with the decline in nuclear power worldwide, nuclear industry leaders and their political and media allies are trying to impose the idea that this technology is an appropriate and indispensable solution to fight climate change. Nuclear power can make a vital contribution to meeting climate change targets while delivering the increasingly large quantities of electricity needed for global economic development, according to a new IAEA report. With electricity demand expected to rise sharply in the coming years as countries need more power for development,” said IAEA Deputy Director General Mikhail Chudakov, Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy. “If nuclear power deployment doesn’t expand in line with this scenario, the other technologies may not fill the gap—and we may not meet our climate target.  Even in Holland, the country of tulips, green meadows and clean water, often seen as an ideal candidate for exploiting green energy in the form of building more windmills, the political climate seems to be changing.  

Dutch parliament majority now also seems in favor of nuclear power plants. Conservative parties in Holland seem to like the idea to build more nuclear power plants to fight global warming.  This concerns the party for Freedom (PVV), the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), the Forum for Democracy (FvD) and VVD. The Green and Social-liberal parties still say no to nuclear energy expansion. Surprisingly, even intellectuals with a leftish profile (cognitive psychologist and writer of bestsellers Steven Pinker is a recent example) are now ready to embrace ''ecomodernism', that is accepting nuclear energy as the last resort for saving the world from environmental destruction and poverty. 

But how realistic are the current predictions made by proponents of nuclear energy?  For example in France, a country that beats the world record with producing 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are four times too high to reach the climatic objectives. In 2014, fossil fuels still accounted for more than half of the country’s primary energy consumption.  So even with a drastic increase in electricity from nuclear power, fossil burning by industries,  households,  automobiles and aircraft will likely continue, instead of  replacing fossil burning. And apart from the enormous costs involved in building safe nuclear plants, storing reactor  waste, dismantling  and replacing the current unsafe older plants, there are more problems to look at.

It has often been argued that  like wind, solar and hydro electricity, nuclear produces far less GHG than coal or petrol. But critical minds have also  pointed to  negative factors for the environment such as  dumping of millions of gallons of warm water in the oceans, radioactive pollution of beaches and water near nuclear plants,  and reactors using huge quantities of steam and water vapor that also warm the atmosphere.  It has been argued that every nuclear generating station spews about two thirds of the energy  it burns inside its reactor core into the environment. Only one-third is converted into electricity. 

The mining and enrichment of uranium; the manufacturing, transport and reprocessing of nuclear fuel rods and waste; the building and dismantling of the reactors. At every step, nuclear energy produces greenhouse gas (GHG).  The problem of disposal of high-level reactor wastes has proven to be much less of a relatively simple problem than has been argued by nuclear lobbyists. And what about floods and forest fires? Which now seem to become an increasing threat of climate change and may damage even the more solidly built nuclear plants. The bottom line (in my view) is  NOT to be tempted by nuclear lobbyists, who most likely are motivated by the perspectives of new markets, and not by what is best to save the environment. For the next decades, it would be wiser to stimulate electricity as an energy source in private cars and public transport. This would certainly help to improve the air quality in our big cities, although it would still depend on fossil energy plants. Discouraging further growth of international airports and air traffic, as long as kerosine remains their major energy source. would be a very crucial step, but unfortunately not easily taken by national governments still depending on the major airports. A clean environment will also ask sacrifices,  of which the increasing prices of air tickets or gasoline, may be hard to digest for those living on a low budget.





8. Oct, 2018

 Scubadivers visiting the northern Red Sea normally go for the magnificent reefs flanking  the southern Sinai peninsula in Ras Muhammed National Park. Sharkreef and Yolanda reef are its most prominent hotspots. The steep drop offs and strong currents  make this the most spectacular diving site of the northern Red Sea, with packs of Bohar snappers visiting the area in the right season. The sandy plateau at 12 meters changes abruptly in a steep drop off, descending  to an abyss of around 3000 m deep. Marking the place where millions of years ago the African and Asian continents drifted away from each other  by powerful geological forces, leaving  the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gulf of Suez as shallow clefts at the east and west side.

At the eastern side of the Sinai peninsula,  at the entrance of the Gulf of Aqaba, there is  the Tiran Protected area with Tiran Island and Jackson reef. At the western side,   at the entrance of the Gulf of Suez one finds lots of cargo ships passing to and from the Suez channel.  Close to the Sinai peninsula there is Shab Ali  reef with the famous  Thistlegorm wreck, perhaps the most famous sanctuary for divers and UW photographers. Thistlegorm was sunk in 1941, packed with a cargo of supplies bound for the British army based in Alexandria, but bombed by German plane on her way to port.

West of the entrance of the Gulf of Suez (closer to the Egyptian mainland)  one finds still more popular wrecks lined up in the area of Shab Abu Nuhas, also called a ships graveyard.  In respective order:  the Ghiannis D.,  Carnatic, Chrisoula  K. and Kimon M.  South of Abu Nuhas lies Shadwan Island,  the largest island of the northern Red Sea.  

All these sites have become a must for wreck lovers and are visited by numerous Egyptian live-a-boards and day boats from  Hurghada as well as Sharm el Sheikh,  packed with divers. Only in the very early morning, one can hope to find some tranquility. My personal favorite spot is a small  -at first sight insignificant-  wreck called the Barge. It is located at Bluff point  at the eastern side of Gubal island  in 14 meters of water and particularly popular as a place for night dives.  There is not much left of the wreck itself, no superstructure, only a mass of pieces of twisted metal providing ideal shelters  for literally hundreds of species of marine life. At a  5 minutes swim from the wreck there is a shallow lagoon where rare yellow gobies seek shelter in the branches of large Acropora corals.

 The Barge is an open hull some 35m long, now broken in several parts. It is believed to be a tugboat sunk during the Arab-Israeli war.  Its corals are poor but  It’s inhabited by schools of sergeant major, soldierfish, numerous gobies, triggerfish (including the Arabian Picasso triggerfish), various species of damselfish, angelfish (including the Arabian angelfish), stonefish, scorpion and crocodile fish and two giant moray eels, one of which is nicknamed George. George is normally found at the bottom of the wreck at the port side with the head sticking out of its shelter (see insert).  The other eel has chosen the top of the wreck, hiding in its favorite habitat under a lump of coral.