barbados pics ....finally, with a catch!

[charleskieffner]

1st off if you have 35mm made into cd by ritz you get entrapped into their lil gig and you become part of their twisted e-mail system which limits you to how many pics you can blast in a month! PITA!

also the way the files are compressed and me living in cave in cave creek and having dial up makes it total PITA to download and pelican wont accept them.


sooooooooooooo if yer interested in seeing some cool pics send me yer e-mail addy and ill blast a few via my aol acct and i wont have to sit in front of computer for the next 20 years downloading.

i'll cherry pic them and give you a potporri of diving/hotel/beaches/countryside.

[Joeaksa]

Chuck,

Email them to me (will PM you my email) and will post them for you.

Joe

[Joeaksa]

Here we go, will probably miss a couple as there were a LOT of them.

[Joeaksa]

[Joeaksa]

[Joeaksa]

Chuck doing his seal impression

[Joeaksa]

Whats left of an old drug runner boat







All for now!

[charleskieffner]

thank you very much joe.

[Evans, Marv]

Beautiful! Beautiful! Thanks a bunch!

[charleskieffner]

thanks marv. the extent of the PITA to get pictures back from this trip was beyond belief.

when i opened my dive gear roll along and my pelican hard cases after going phx-dfw-orlando-into miami that first night for a 6 hr layover at a very spendy wyndam hotel and found my gear in disarray and my 6.1 digital camera destroyed................i about had heart failure!

to get excellant pictures............YOU MUST TAKE A HELL OF ALOT OF PICTURES! saw a show where this guy w/a new york stock exchange background, made a bunch of bucks and decided to start taking pictures of the world from the air. ie. from airplanes. glaciers/bays/islands/mtns/you name it he took pictures of it. when all said and done he had taken over 70,000 pics and when he finally had his gallery showing, he showed 140 pictures!

my dive days got shoved back after talking to dive camera mfg. they said they would ship me one fed-ex to the hotel at st. lawrence gap. it never showed due to miscommunication btwn mfg and hotel. hotel connected to 2nd hotel which runs both. they didnt know who the hell i was when mfg. called. therefore camera wasnt sent. e-mails to mfg. were never received blah blah.

so since dive days shoved back a tropical depression rolled thru and the weather changed. best time for dive pics are from 10am-2pm when sun is high. on my dive days it was very cloudy with the sun sometimes poking thru and then changing to rain. then add depth beyond 33ft and your basically pissing up a rope. depth filters the color spectrum to a point of finally making everything blue or gray looking.

advantage of 35mm is i can blow these pics up to wall size and no pixelation. with digital you can take alot of pictures very quickly or even 20 min. of video. bad side to digital when blown up pixelation shows and graininess when blown large.

soooooooooooooo, thats why i take (2) cameras underwater with me all the time. PITA but should one flood or get damaged i have a back up. usually just do giant stride entry with BC full of air and kersplash bob like a cork and have cameras handed to me one at a time by boat captain and hold onto one with wrist leash and attach other to BC with small carabiner.

other method i have used is to hang 40 ft line off of boat with carabiners on each end and have boat captain drop camera down on line. will go burn up 24-36 shots of 100ASA 35mm and then swim back to boat line and switch cameras on carabiner and give line a tug for captain to pull back up.

drift dives with fast current and big wave action(4-6ft) add a entire new spectrum to getting a camera back on board boat in one piece.

once you flood a camera and incur the expense and embarrassment of doing so, 2 things happen............you give up on taking u/w pics...........or you become real damn ANAL ABOUT YOUR O-RINGS!!!!

minimum of an hour and 1/2 cleaning camera changing batteries on strobe and camera, loading new film after the end of a dive day.

on board the boat with the digital i replace strobe batteries every time, and the camera battery. also replace 1 gig card with new one everytime. this allows me to salvage some pics if camera floods.

on board boat with 35mm i just change out strobe batteries and leave camera batteries in.(they last all day). but i must flush camera with fresh water. dry completely. and then rewind film and then reload film. all of this on a rocking rolling boat! and then throw in other divers bumping into you and getting you wet. big fun i tell ya!

but all worth it when you come home with some pics to show people.


how did i get into this???? nobody believed what i told them i saw unta wata!

[CJFusco]

... looks like paradise.