Ok, I'm trying to get some more time in on the board.....been a ghost for some time.
Why? well...work, etc....but lately I've been getting my Scuba certs. I picked up an underwater housing for my digital camera and gave it a trial run on Wed during a fun dive.
Now, since I'm way up here in North Dakota....I don't have any really awesome pics relatives of the fish we keep in our reef tanks. You'll just have to get by with the freshwater fish found in the Lakes of Minnesota. :-)
I started to put all the pics on my server in my living room, and there are some videos there too. So if you'd like to see a northern swimming around, or a small fish playing Jaws and following some of the divers....you will need the quicktime player. The video's will play in the browser, but you do need the player to watch them.
Here's the disclaimer....I wasn't very good with my picture taking skills underwater. A number of pics, especially of the fish are blurry. I will get better at this in time, next scheduled dive is in two weeks. But, I do have some prints from a regular film camera that turned out pretty good. As soon as I get them scanned in...I'll add them to my site...and maybe post a few here too.
Here's the link if you wish to check my pics out. Note, I'm playing around with a few photo gallery packages....with this one, go under "user galleries" and pick Scott. I'll be putting more albums in there for each dive I make.
LOL! Well, I had to pull everything from the tank....
Yeah, I wish it was as clear as my tank. but it was actually good viz...we had around 20 feet of visibility. Which is really good in some of these MN lakes! Back on the 31st we dove Lake Seven (right across the road for Lake Six) and we only had 6-8 feet of visibility.
I just can't wait to actually make it to a reef and take some pictures of our friends in their natural habitat.
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
Ok, obviously these are some of the pics that you'd find via that link. But, I thought I'd post a "before" and "after" shot of a few. The "before" pics have only been re-sized to a lower resolution. Then the "after" pics got a little photoshop work....auto level, auto contrast, and auto color. Just a little difference between the two. <G>
John...here's a better pic of that "HA" you mentioned. LOL
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
How's the water temp? Can't wait to see the other pics..looks fun.
Let's see....I had 70F for the water temp at the surface. And the temp was 64F down at 20 feet, just below a thermocline. That was for those photo's on June 14th, with the dive being from 7:15pm-8pm (central time).
I should have more pics available after I scan in 12 photo's from our Advanced Open Water photo dive. Both of my desktops have been down for over a year...and my scanner is a scsi scanner (don't have anything to hook it up to my laptop). So I'll try and scan in the photo's at work...maybe tomorrow. Otherwise, I should get some more pics and videos on the 29th...I think that's our next fun dive.
Back on May 13-14 is when I did my Open Water dives, and the water temp was 50F...of course the air temp was like 47F . We did hit 41F when we did our deep dive for the Advanced class over Memorial Day weekend....that was at 79 feet down....water surface temp was at 73F with air temp at 82F. Wish I would have had a camera on that dive...as we were ascending (about 10 feet deep) we saw a loon swimming around. That was very cool to see, guess not many people have been underwater and seen a loon swimming around like that.
Overall, the water temp was ok for all of them. I'm diving wet...but I have my wetsuit, hooded vest, and core warmer along with the boots and gloves. Just fine in that setup. I plan on diving that this winter in the ice. Then maybe next year's tax return will get me a dry suit.
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
Great pics Scott, I wish I had the time and $$$ to dive!
Thanks...didn't really have the cash until I found out I could get a little money from my GI Bill for a few classes I was taking back in spring. The classes were already taken care of so I debated what to use the money for...decided I wouldn't pay any bills with it, put off the idea of a Mac (was hard doing that) and decided I wanted to try something I've wanted to do since I was a kid...scuba dive. And now I'm hooked!
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
I should have more pics available after I scan in 12 photo's from our Advanced Open Water photo dive.
Anymore pics yet?
Thanks for all your help the other night. Poor Scott was on the phone with me about 2 hours trying to explain how to work my new iPod and of course, the program I just LOVE, iTunes. ahhhhh!!
DOH! Totally forgot about scanning the film pics....maybe that's something I should do today before I leave work.....as I can't use my home scanner.
Other than scanning those in.....I should get more pics tomorrow. Another fun dive....then I may get some neat ones over the weekend (1st-4th)....going to spend the entire weekend diving.
Quote:
Thanks for all your help the other night. Poor Scott was on the phone with me about 2 hours trying to explain how to work my new iPod and of course, the program I just LOVE, iTunes. ahhhhh!!
Happy to help. So...were you able to jam out at work???
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
OK, here is a few samples. These pics were taken back on May 28th during a training dive, was an underwater film camera the dive shop had.
I've downsized them and ran auto level, color, and contrast on the photo's. I'll try and get all of them up in the photo section of my site.
Here's a log or post that had a bolt in it, used to be a open pit mine.
You find a lot of trees, as they had plenty of time to grow when the mine pits were still in use. But once they finished using the mines, they stopped pumping water out and the mines filled up with water and the trees became a great home for fish. Some of the mines are over 500 feet deep.
Found this one almost right under the pontoon boat we were diving off. Water was shallow, around 15 feet in this area.
__________________ Tank setup 8-5-05
26 gal bowfront
icon under there name and give them Reputation points
"Just a Whole Bowl Of Wrong" 
. We did hit 41F when we did our deep dive for the Advanced class over Memorial Day weekend....that was at 79 feet down....water surface temp was at 73F with air temp at 82F. Wish I would have had a camera on that dive...as we were ascending (about 10 feet deep) we saw a loon swimming around. That was very cool to see, guess not many people have been underwater and seen a loon swimming around like that.
Then maybe next year's tax return will get me a dry suit. 
USA