At What Depth Did I Take That Photograph?
Happy year of the dog! It’s the Chinese New Year holidays and we have three days of public holidays starting Monday. I’m in no mood to go back to work for just 2 days so I took Thursday and Friday off as well. So I have 9 continuous days of absolutely nothing to do. What better time to update my blog.
I always have trouble remembering what I saw after a dive. Having a camera helps a lot. Photos are also really useful when you want to identify exactly what you saw. While researching the identity of the subjects I often come across interesting bits of information that make the whole diving experience more satisfying. Isn’t it a more enriching experience when, for example, you see a giant clam and you get thoughts like: “…these guys have blue or green Zooxanthallae inside them that produces part of their food requirements, instead of just sitting there filtering the water for passing plankton. That’s why they can grow so big…”; instead of “… hey look giant clam… I wonder how they taste… yuck it looks blue and green… it’ll make me sick… hey look another one of those colourful fishes…”.
As you can see from my previous post, I always record the depth at which I made the particular photograph. No, I did not stop to write it down on my slate. That would be too much tedious work. What I do to get depth information from all my photos is really easy.
Before the first dive of any trip, I normally synchronize the clock in my camera to the time on my dive computer. The JPEG files produced by the camera carry, among other things, a date (and time) stamp. This information is preserved even when the file has gone through some image processing (e.g. with GIMP). Note that this date stamp is not the same date stamp recorded by the operating system of your computer.
A screenshot of popup window with some image information recorded by the camera.
If you are using Windows XP like I do, you can see this date stamp by just putting your mouse pointer over the file (or thumbnail) in Windows Explorer. In a moment a popup windows appear that shows the “Date Picture Taken” piece of information. It does not show the “seconds” but having the time to the closest minute is good enough for my purpose. You can also look at the advanced properties of the file to view all the stored image information.
My Suunto Mosquito dive computer and my Canon A610 camera inside the WP-DC90 housing.
When I come home from a dive, I normally plug my dive computer to my PC to download all my dive profiles. Incidentally, I built my own Suunto interface using the instructions found on this site: Roli's PC Interface for Suunto® ACW® Dive Computers. It’s cheap and simple to build. Just don’t go suing anyone if it fries your dive computer!
The dive profile shows you your time and depth profile. From here you instantly know at what depth your photographs where taken – simple!
My home made Suunto Mosquito PC interface device.
I always have trouble remembering what I saw after a dive. Having a camera helps a lot. Photos are also really useful when you want to identify exactly what you saw. While researching the identity of the subjects I often come across interesting bits of information that make the whole diving experience more satisfying. Isn’t it a more enriching experience when, for example, you see a giant clam and you get thoughts like: “…these guys have blue or green Zooxanthallae inside them that produces part of their food requirements, instead of just sitting there filtering the water for passing plankton. That’s why they can grow so big…”; instead of “… hey look giant clam… I wonder how they taste… yuck it looks blue and green… it’ll make me sick… hey look another one of those colourful fishes…”.
As you can see from my previous post, I always record the depth at which I made the particular photograph. No, I did not stop to write it down on my slate. That would be too much tedious work. What I do to get depth information from all my photos is really easy.
Before the first dive of any trip, I normally synchronize the clock in my camera to the time on my dive computer. The JPEG files produced by the camera carry, among other things, a date (and time) stamp. This information is preserved even when the file has gone through some image processing (e.g. with GIMP). Note that this date stamp is not the same date stamp recorded by the operating system of your computer.
A screenshot of popup window with some image information recorded by the camera.
If you are using Windows XP like I do, you can see this date stamp by just putting your mouse pointer over the file (or thumbnail) in Windows Explorer. In a moment a popup windows appear that shows the “Date Picture Taken” piece of information. It does not show the “seconds” but having the time to the closest minute is good enough for my purpose. You can also look at the advanced properties of the file to view all the stored image information.
My Suunto Mosquito dive computer and my Canon A610 camera inside the WP-DC90 housing.
When I come home from a dive, I normally plug my dive computer to my PC to download all my dive profiles. Incidentally, I built my own Suunto interface using the instructions found on this site: Roli's PC Interface for Suunto® ACW® Dive Computers. It’s cheap and simple to build. Just don’t go suing anyone if it fries your dive computer!
The dive profile shows you your time and depth profile. From here you instantly know at what depth your photographs where taken – simple!
My home made Suunto Mosquito PC interface device.
posted by seetho at 6:16 pm
1 Comments:
Wah... so detailed ar! Too bad my dive comp. don't have timing device like your Suunto Mosquito. Mine's the old faithful Alladin Pro. Hehehe...
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