My plans to photograph Machu Picchu at the winter solstice came to a screeching halt as the political situation deteriorated in Peru. Instead we found ourselves in Belize at the BluZen Resort on Caye Caulker. We had a great time snorkling, fishing, ziplining, cave tubing, and seeing Mayan ruins. I was able to test out some ND filters as well, and we had interesting sunsets (and sunrises!) right outside our door. I also took along an Olympus Tough TG-6 which I used for in water shooting. First, lets talk ND filters.
I know a guy named Erik Eilers, who is a great photographer and takes great photos of moving water. You can see his work at www.erikmeilers.com. Erik always inspires me, so I thought I would get some ND filters, on the internet, and see what I could come up with. ND filters are pretty cool, because they allow you to use a longer shutter speed to capture your picture, thus the bluring of moving water and other things moving in your scene! In the photo above, I took it with an 8 second exposure at f/8.0 and ISO 400 with a 24 mm lens on my Canon EOS R5. Long exposures also require tripods and remote shutters if possible to keep the camera motion to a minimum. In the shot above, you can see the ocean is relatively smooth, but I have to say, it was pretty rough out there, with winds at least 25 kts. You also might notice some blurring of the palm fronds, which is due to them also blowing around in the wind. Other things, like the ornaments, did not blow around, so look pretty crisp.
One problem I did have with the ND filters was some vignetting. The two photos below show some of this issue. I could see the darkness moving into the middle of the frame as I dialed in more stops of the filter. I bought some cheap ones, so not sure if that is to be expected or if that is a lack of quality. Still made for some interesting pictures. I think this is likely a factor of the zoom of my lens. At 24 mm, there is much more vignetting, than at 70 mm. I have one that I have not yet tried on my 70-200 mm lens, so need to try that out next.
The Olympus Tough was a pretty handy camera. It shoots 4K video and has a 4x optical zoom on it. There are a lot of preset modes for underwater, underwater micro, macro, landscape, and HDR. I didn't try the HDR in the water, but did get some macro and some regular underwater snapshots, while snorkeling. I actually though the photos came out very well, especially in getting colors adjusted for the blue light that seemed to saturate my son and wife's iPhone pictures. The other nice part vs. the iPhone, was I was able to zoom and manipulate settings, where as my family had purchased dry bags for their phones, which did not seem to allow for touching of the screen for adjustment or shutter. They had to use the side volume button to take photos. As a point and shoot camera, I thought it had some nice smarts to it, but also had the ability to customize and save settings. The camera also has wifi and pictures can be offloaded to a phone through the OI.share app. It also has a GPS and can log your position, though this is a bit of a battery drain. Also, be aware that the battery is symmetrical, so don't put it in backwards like I did, or it doesn't charge!! I figured it out....
There are many more photos in my Belize 2022 collection, which you can find here.
