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BSoUP's
Theme Portfolio Competition 1998
Winner
- Bob Allen |
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'Carnatic'
© Bob Allen |
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My
winning portfolio
by
Bob Allen |
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Equipment:-
Subal Housing, Nikon 8015 Camera Nikon 16mrn Fish-eye lens,
Fish-eye dome port, Sea & Sea Y550 & Y530 strobes
and 100 ASA Fuji Provia film.
All
the pictures were taken on the wreck of the two-masted schooner-shaped
CARNATIC which sank on the 13th September 1869. The ship was
a mail ship of the Peninsular and Oriental Company of 90m
length, 1,776 tons, built of iron and powered by sails and
a steam-driven propeller. She ran into the Red Sea Reef of
Shat Abu Nuhas on the north side, where she rests in 25m of
water on her port side, running parallel to the reef with
her deck facing out into open water.
To
me she is the most exciting of wrecks and my favourite, being
almost 136 years old, bridging the age of steam and sail,
and all the doubts of the period about iron as opposed to
wooden ships. She is very much the wreck that is imagined,
or dreamed of, by divers and non-divers alike.
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Slide#1.
Taken
half-way along the bow section on the top of the deck and
shows a diver, sunburst and illuminated soft coral. Using
aperture priority, I set the exposure at f8 to control the
sun burst and focused on and illuminated the soft coral in
the foreground with the Y550 |
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Slide#2.
The
lateen stern taken from the sea bed at 25m. Ishows a diver
with a lighted torch descending from the surface?boat to the
wreck. I set the aperture to F5.6/4.8 to give the longest
possible time exposure (l/30th,l/15th sec.) so I could hand
hold the camera. This is an attempt to give the longest possible
time for the detail of the wreck to be recorded through the
water column between camera and subject. |
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Slide#3.
The
bow section showing the support and hole where the timber
bowsprit would have been mounted. The difficulty with this
shot is balancing the sunburst and the darker wreck due to
the depth. Here I set the aperture after metering off the
wreck and the sun and taking an average then bracketing either
side by adjusting the speed. The aperture would have been
F8/FI1 to give good depth of field and slow speed to record
the detail. |
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Slide#4
Taken
inside the stern with the diver exploring with a torch, notice
the deck supports in iron and the square port holes. Here
I have set the aperture at F5.6/1`8 to give detail, at a speed
of 1/60th second to balance strobes. I have used both strobes,
YS 50 to illuminate at high level and the YS 30 at low level
to give good overall illumination of the structure and diver. |
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Slide#5.
Taken
inside the bow section and shows the second deck level, an
illuminated scorpion fish and a diver with the illuminating
torch. Here again, I have used aperture priority, setting
the aperture to F8/F11 to control the light on the fish and
speed of 1/60'h second. I used the Y530 strobe to illuminate
the close fish (100mm) and the Y550 the diver. The distance
of the diver from the strobe has tended to under-expose the
diver. There is always the need with the fisheye lens to remember
to keep your strobes well back or they will make an unwelcome
appearance in the picture. This makes long distance illumination
quite difficult as is the case with this diver. |
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Slide#6.
A
silhouette of a diver exploring inside the bow section with
a torch. Here I have tried to use an aperture to give sharp
detail, F5.6/F8 at a speed of 1/30"h to 1/15h second.
The bright sunburst though the square pothole has given a
good halo effect, but might have been better placed behind
the fixed structure to enable more detail to be seen (a personal
choice as always). |
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BSoUP
THEME PORTFOLIO COMPETITION |
