Panoramic

[unirdna]

Originally posted by DeepThought
Wyoming! rofl
I don't even know where that is, or how to spell it. I'm not an american. My guess is mid-west...? I guess not many freedivers from there.

A-hem :hmm . There's a few freedivers in the Midwest . Nevertheless, Wyoming is not in the Midwest....just west. Admittedly, it can be a bit challenging finding good fresh water to jump in around here. Luckily, the University of Wisconsin has an ongoing project (of which I'm affiliated) that studies all our lakes using satalites (and ground data too, of course). This website shows the summer clarity (peak trophic period) for all our lakes. Jon and I have found many gems using this tool.

http://www.ersc.wisc.edu/research/Projects/LakesTSI/index.html

ps. Sorry to interrupt the camera talk. Feel free to ignore me .

Ted

 

[Adrian]

Ted,

I lived in Chicago from end of 1979 to 1981. Why the %$&76
didn't I get into freediving then! I have a question because on some of the pictures Jon takes of you, there is a lanyard attached to your weight belt at the back. Is that the line to your float? Do you have some sort of break-away incase it gets entangled with something? Here I have to watch the windsurfers who feel exempt from the safety distance! :head Silly question but it was hovering in the background these last couple of days.

Do you know if there are similar satellite systems for the Med?

Adrian

 

[unirdna]

Originally posted by Adrian
Ted,
I lived in Chicago from end of 1979 to 1981. Why the %$&76
didn't you get into freediving then!?
Adrian

Uh, because I was 5 . Jon would have been a teenager though; he could have joined you.

Windsurfers!? Yikes! At least I can hear when a motorboat is approaching. Getting smacked by a 60 km/h silent windsurfer wouldn't be much better.

That is my float attached to my belt. I have a weight-stopper with a ss loop that I attach my float line to. If I was in a pinch, I could reach back and unclip the carabiner, and if that wasn't an option, I have a dive knife as well. The floatline is made of norprene and is a semi-bungie; so if I ever needed to stretch it to maneuver, I could. I used to attach my floatline to my gun, but soon realized that there isn't a freshwater fish that has the power to hold me from draggin it to the surface (they do more thrashing than running). But since I need to carry a float (warn boaters, carry the fish stringer, etc), and I prefer to not have to think about it, I just clip it on the belt. My line floats, so it usually stays out from inbetween my legs.

Regarding the website, I don't know if there is another project like this anywhere else. It is unique to the U.S. because the project I work on is located at the federal, long-term lake-research center. We do plan to extend our range to neighboring states (and eventually the whole country). This is the pilot project......and judging by our success, we will get the public support for more funding (government support is another matter ).

Ted

edit: Sorry for taking the thread off-course. I'll PM folks from now on .

 

[DeepThought]

Re: Wyoming

unirdna:
A-hem . There's a few freedivers in the Midwest . Nevertheless, Wyoming is not in the Midwest....just west.

I was trying to say that I don't think there are much freedivers here from Wyoming.
no disrespect to the mid-west, nor to Wyoming.
Actually my sister lived in Minnesota for a few years, and after that in Iowa for a few more years. does'nt that count as mid-west?
(she ended in Massachusettes for now.)

 

[Jon]

People forget that we have the GREAT LAKES here in the midwest.:duh

When I did my instructor training out in California I would get the comment all the time, "Wisconsin, where do you dive flooded cornfields?" I guess they never figured out what that big blue smudge on the map was sitting inbetween the US and Canada.

Minnesota has a bunch of lakes, but Wisconsin has more, plus they have a very active tec diving community up there- even if the do dive rebreathers.

My gun line doesn't float, unlike Ted's, so I keep it clipped off to my gun and not my belt. I know that Ted saved his belt at least once by keeping the line attached to it the way he does- belt came off and fell into 3' of silt on the bottom of a lake.

The book says that my camera, Olympus 5050-z, has a 7.1mm-21.3mm lens which is equivalent to a 35mm-105mm lens on a 35m camera. CLiff has been raving about an INON lens that now has a dome port to attach to it and gives very good results.

BTW: I started scuba diving in 80' and got my instructor rating in 84'. I wish I would have spent all of that time freediving, instead of bubble blowing- I certainly could have afforded freediving gear a whole lot easier than scuba gear back then.

Jon

 

[Iyadiver]

Thanks for th info Jon....

 

[DiverD]

I really liked adrian's panorama shot so I'm posting one I made last year. It's not as nice as adrian's. I did the "stitching" myself in photoshop. I worked at it a bit but it still has some serious color shifts in it. I still haven't tried it underwater.

It's looking at the eastern tip of Santa Cruz Island.

One seam passes through the group of people who were milling around and talking. They never actually stood togther that way at the same point in time. You can see how the back of the boat is not a straight line.

(edit: eastern not southern)

 

[unirdna]

I bought the same camera as Jon (Olympus C-5050). Here's my very first attempt at a pan shot. It's a shot of Sand Lake in northern Wisconsin on a calm morning. This one is about 170 degrees. I just followed the instructions on the camera and the software. No skill was involved .

Jon has told me that the closer/more shots you take, the less obvious the stitching between photos will appear. I'll give that a go next time.

Ted