I’ve had time to work up some more Canon G10 images from the dive on Saturday at the Eel Garden near Pig Island.  I’m still a little disbelieving at what’s coming out of this relatively cheap camera. It makes me wonder what we’ll be able to do in another five years. 3D?? Who knows?

Here is absolutely the anatomically best shot that I’ve ever gotten of a Spinecheek Anemonefish (Premnas biaculeatus):

What I usually get is a pretty reddish-orange blob with some detail. Sometimes you can actually see the spine on the the cheek. With the G10 I’m getting scales  on the side of the fish! If you click to enlarge, you’ll see a lot more detail than I’ve been able to show you before.

Here is a difficult to photograph nudibranch. They are very small (this one as long as your pinky finger). Depth of field is always a problem:

I’ve not been able to capture the delicate nuances of shading around the white bumps before. In this shot you can tell that they are white protrusions, not just faded spots.

Here’s another difficult fish to photograph because of the same problem that we have with Clark’s Anemonefish – the huge dynamic range of contrast between the soot-black bars and the snow white patches. It’s a Moorish Idol (Zanclus comutus):

In this shot, I was able to get some detail in both areas; a first for me. I give the credit to the camera’s dynamic range. I’m not doing anything new or different.

Here is a Many-Spotted Sweetlips (Plectorhinchus chaetodonoides) lurking under the catamaran wreck:

Like the other subjects here, this is a difficult one to shoot. It likes to hide. If it can’t, it swims away. This shot is nowhere near perfect, but it’s the best of this fish that I have managed to get so far.

To finish up today, here is probably one of the most photographed fish on the planet. Everybody and his brother wants to take home a picture that “I took” of a lionfish. This is the Common Lionfish (looks particularly uncommon to me, but . . . ) whose taxonomic name is (Pterois volitans):

For a fish that poses so nicely, it is still difficult to get a good shot. Again, the contrast ratio is through the roof. I did have to work a little to get the dark bands up from the depths. This shot was saved by Photoshop.  Nevertheless, I give the G10 credit for giving me a few bits to work with from the bottom of the well.

You’re going to get a lot more underwater photos in the future. I hope you have a taste for fish.

Related posts:

1. Underwater Eye Candy – the Canon G10 Again What's better than buying a new toy and discovering it's everything you hoped for, and more? I'm suffering no buyer's remorse over my purchase of the Canon G10....
2. Still at The Eel Garden – Can’t Get Enough of It A few more shots from our dive last Saturday on The Eel Garden near Pig Island in Madang, Papua New Guinea. Despite sinusitus, my head did not implode....
3. More Eel Garden Goodies More images from the Saturday dive near Pig Island at The Eel Garden. I didn't blow a sinus, which is a minor miracle....
4. More Canon G10 Underwater Goodness The great underwater hunt continues with the trusty Canon G10 at my side. How beautiful can something called a tube worm be? Find out here....
5. Underwater Guest Shooter – KP Perkins You've seen KP here before, but this time she has the Canon G11 in her hands. UW Photo lessons and Photoshop instruction make for very nice shots....
6. More Eel Garden Goodies How may ways could you photograph a tree? It fascinates me. After years of shooting underwater, I'm getting bored enough by it to start exploring seriously. It's going to be an interesting ride....
7. The Half-Eaten Gumdrop Once again, I find myself in the middle of the evening trying to catch up with the day. How did I hustle so much and accomplish nothing that I can call progress? It seems to be becoming a way of life. How thought provoking. The harder I work the less...

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 at 14:53 and is filed under Under the Sea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.