BigEbass

FYI - the olympus I believe you are refering to is available in a few different models - about 300 bucks now - I am surprised the price did not come down a bit more. I am cheap so I would stick with a weather resistant model, but if you want the underwater stuff, go for it.

And let me just re-iterate this - most peoples shots are crummy for a few distince reasons. But primarily its due to OVER-exposure due to the harsh sun - you have to manage this better as discussed. Also it may be due to camera shake or a blurry photo - most times fixed by a steady hand or a tripod really as discussed (or you can prop it on something). If you get the lighting right, you can point and shoot in auto and mostly be pleased with the result. But learn the exposure feature at a minimum and tinker with it - it will pay off.

Olympus as far as I can tell have a real corner on that market - I had one of those olympus jobs - brought it snorkeling on our honeymoon - it worked like a charm and its a pretty tough camera - mine ended up having a problem and I returned it, but I would buy one again and a fried of mine had a "water resistant" model - these are cheaper, durable - can be rained on, splashed on etc without messing up - I recommend these for the tighter budget, although the fully waterproof version has likely came down in price at this point? Anyway, olympus is good in that regard! On the issue of flash again - definately try to always use it for bright sunny days - many people dont understand this - the sun produces shadons on the face that are not pleasing and a flash can eleminate or reduce the shadows there depending on the conditions. It is important to recognize that the little flash from your point and shoot may simply NOT have enough power to do much to hard shadows on a very sunny day with the sun directly overhead - the flash is just not that powerful. I have not gotten into this cause I doubt many of you would do it, but any old light colored poster board set up to reflect some light into the subject's face would help tremendously in this harsh light scenario - but if you are by yourself that could be tricky - so just keep that nugget in your mind perhaps as an FYI - using a reflector (I recommend light grey foam core board or white 4 bucks at CVS). But use the flash non-the-less - it may help a bit, but remember it will noticibly help for less harsh shadows that are common as well - on cloudy days it just depends - the flash in certain cloudy conditions could make your photo look un-natural, try both and see what works for you - unfortunately most point and shoots do not have the abillity to change the flash value. Sunglasses and glasses can be an issue as far as a light reflecting, but many times you can get away with it if you angle the shot a bit - I like to leave my glasses/sunglasses in most cases. Fish Chris - I purposefully left out the setup issues you mention - if you go it alone you will need some sort of small tripod for sure - most cameras have a feature to lock prefocus, but during most daytime shots, the camera in auto with auto focus will do fine - especially in most daytime uses where the f stop may be automatically set as high as f12-f32. Anyway, I think many point and shoots have timer functions as well as multiple shot functions where you set it up and it will take 3 shots in a row with 2 sec breaks in between shots - that is a really nice feature here in this application to have. Fish Chris also mentioned changing "manual settings" to his liking - I am not familiar with the camera he uses, but I believe he is talking about a camera that will allow YOU to more directly change shutter speed, aperture, etc. to change the "exposure". I do not recommend this for most people that I am targeting fot this post. Most point and shoots do not allow you to make such specific changes (well not exactly, I wont get into details) - what most should do rather is use the "exposure adjustment" feature - what this feature does is change the shutter speed and aperture for you to get a certain exposure - you just dial up or down the exosure to get the exposure that works - this will be much more more simple for everyone out there. And fish's setup whil it is all pre-setup - will still require some tweaking of those manual exposure features to get the desired exposure depending on the lighting in the scene. As far as video used and getting a still from a video, it is my understanding (and I could be wrong) that a still from a video feed is simply lower quality than is a still from a camera photo....photos are still better, plus you really do get a huge benefit from use of flash that you will not get from a still from video, but I am sure it would be a great tool to have in your arsenal - but for my PB - I would want some great photos, and video would be nice (but not necessary for me personally, thats just preference). Oh and hijack away people, thats what the post is for!!

For real - waiting can be tough - and these units I have found take A WHILE to significantly reduce in price - I think a decent basic GPS depth sounder combo has remained in the 300-500 dollar range since I started fishing 2 years ago...... And the general rule of electronics is that no matter when you buy, it will at some point drop significantly in price no matter what - its rather annoying - but thats life >

Yeah, if that is happening with any regularity, it will start to hurt their brand name - especially with every little thing making its way onto internet forums for everyone to read Otherwise, I am quite pleased with the unit and as long as they fix it then I will be happy - the turn around they said was 3-5 days - and they are gonna replace it if needed - I really think they will fix it quick - and if that is the case then I think that speaks volumes about the company, but yeah, perhaps not for QA department

Also, as any digital file, these photos are susceptable to losing via a crashing computer or something like that - get a double or triple type of backup for your media folks - all your precious photos you have saved on your hard-drive could be lost in one fail swoop!! Also I will say on that same note that some of you take photos on your 8GB memor card and NEVER take them off onto your computer. DONT DO THAT - copy them onto your hardrive at a minimum - cards can break or fail - losing all data (essentiallY) - also the memory cards really need to be formatted on a regular basis to keep them running smooth.

Glad you like - I love photos - memories saved for a lifetimes - that is if you ensure to back them up properly

woops forgot the link to my photo site: http://photo.net/photos/Ellery

So I am a photography enthusiast - an amateur - only have taken a couple courses and read too many books on the subject. Fish Chris's recent post inspired me to open a discussion about some good basic fishing photography tips for most of us. Fist of all - lets talk hardware. To contrary belief - you DO NOT need an expensive camera to take quality fishing photos. Point and shoot cameras offer these days high resolution shots and a fair amount of ability to get creative (that is to change out of plain old auto mode) to get the shot you desire. So many people own point and shoots and have no idea how to use them to their fullest. You go into the best buy these days and you say "I want to take the best photos I can" - oh and they just have to steer you to SLR's - not that an SLR's dont have their place - but for most of you fisherman out there that barely know anything about photography - it is a waste of time - unless you just really do want to get more into photography - in that case SLR's have their place. But a 2K dollar SLR set in auto mode on your boat is really nearly the same tool as a point and shoot camera set in auto mode - they will for the most part take the same quality photo. So my comments will be disregarding tips as it relates to SLR usage and more of a focus on point and shoots, cause face it, that and a cell phone camera are what most of you will be using. Lets talk lighting - its all about lighting: 1) Overcast days - now if you go look through your photos you have previously taken, you may find that photos on overcast days tend to come out the clearest and sharpest with all details preserved. You can thanks those clouds for that - they disperse the light from the sun evenly across everthing making for a "technically good exposure" - that is you can see all the details in the photo - no areas are too bright to the point details are lost - you see this more in your sunny day shots at times - well talk about that in a sec. Two primary problems I can think of about overcast days and fishing photos. One is insufficient light. Lets say its earlin in the AM or late in the day and heavy overcast - there is perhaps too little light relatively - in a standard auto mode of you point and shoot or even using your blackberry - you may find your photos blurry, not "tack sharp". For the most part this can be averted by either forcing the flash to go off (take flash off auto mode to some form of always flash mode if it exists) - or more importantly - keep a steady hand - and what I do with my point and shoot when taking such photos - I set its self timer on a 1 or 2 second delay - this ensures that the photo is taken after you depress the button so that you dont get "camera shake" when you press the button with too much gusto - this happens to people all the time - try and not press the button so dramatically - it doesnt take much . Low light situations are trickly for photography - I am not gonna elaborate too much on it - have a steady hand (or a tripod), try to use flash if needed.... I am not going to talk about night shots at this point - but in general with a point and shoot you will just have to point and shoot - hard to escape that flash light look in such an environment. Second problem with overcast days is the boring overcast sky in your shot. If you take the photo and include much of the sky in a heavy overcast situation, the exposure might be just fine, but that 20% of the photo made up of overcast is a void, a nothingness, its very blah and featureless - getting it? Solution? Recognize this fact and dont include it in your composition, or if you notice it later - crop it out using a crop tool of some sort after the fact (camera offer cropping tool most times if you have no clue how to crop on your computer). Now lets talk about when the sun is up and out in our photos. We will talk dawn and dusk in a moment - I am gonna start with mid-day situation - the sun is out and "harsh" - harsh means in this case that it really lights up light colors in your photos - and most times to the detriment of your photo. This is a situation that MOST OFTEN ruins peoples fishing photos IMO. How do we avoid this? Well, lets talk about "exposure a bit" - a camera can only record a certain range of brightness detail when you are holding your 10 lb bass - so in this situation you may have areas brightly light by the sun directly that are light colored or white, and say your T shirt is brown or black. You point, you shoot - what do you get? Usually you get the lighter areas "blown out" - that is to say, they are so bright, that they actually have no detail - when you print the photo these bright areas are actually simply the color of your white printing paper - there is little or no detail there. Obviously this isnt what we want. So what I do? First of all, if you can find shade - then you avoid this problem alltogether - shooting in heavy shade will avoid this "harsh exposure" - more likely you can if possibly put the sun behind the subject (depending on time of day) - careful shooting into the sun though - if the suns rays are at a angle to your lens, you will get "lens flare" - otherwise experiment with different angles depending on where the sun is at in the sky - if it is 12pm blue bird skies, you will just have to take the shot likely or find shade. Oh, and when taking photos druing the daytime - if your camera has an "always flash" function - its pretty much a good idea - it will eliminate shadows to a degree under the eyes for a better photo - my point and shoot does not offer such a function - stupid camera - one of the times direct flash use is acutally very helpful is actually during the day - use of it in low light ruins many photos. In these harsh lighting scenarios you may need to make an adjustment in your camera - I will not given many of such pointer to avoid confusion for many of you. But this one may help. You have a function in your camera that will adjust "exposure" - without getting technical, it will adjust the amount of light allowed to enter the camera for your exposure. So in a given shot, if areas are too bright, you can dial down the exposure - you may then find that some areas become darker, maybe even too dark, this is where you will need to decide what exposure works for YOU then. I want my fish in that scenario to be in perfect detail so I focus on the fish - if other parts of the scene are too dark - oh well....sometimes you have to choose - and if you let the camera choose in full auto, it will soemtimes choose your black shirt details to keep and your fish and your light colored shirt end up the color of your printer paper - aka a crappy fishing photo. So the auto mode on your point and shoot do not always get it right - YOU CAN CHANGE THAT by dialing up or down the "exposure" feature of your point and shoot - give it a whirl. (note that you have some lattitude in adusting exposure after you take the picture via use of some form of editing program such as Picasa, photoshop, or whatever program you have know how to use - but I wont get into that at this point - but you may want to at some point) "The Magic Hour"....I call both the early AM and late evening "the magic hour" - in this situation, the sun is near the horizon and much of its harshness is blunted and that golden light cast DIRECTLY on your subject - on your face - and on your fish is pleasing this time around - so alls you have to do is position your self with the fish allowing this ligt to hit you and take the photo - if you take the same photo with the sun behind you, your face will be too dark - if you take it with the sun on your side, this may work and sometimes look even better - just try - there is no one size fits all..... Fill the frame - fill the photo with you and the fish - unless there is some wonderful background detail - fill your photo IN THE CAMERA with your subject - failing to do so in camera and cropping later can perhaps cause loss of detail later. I will not get into focal lenght or perspecitves much - others can talk about that - we all know that if you hold the fish up closer to the lens it appears larger - the extent of this may depend on your cameras lens etc....but those are more finite details. Note that if you do some of these things, you will get much better photos. Please note that most cell phone cameras are simply not high enough resolution, I try not to use them and rather use a point and shoot camera that has adequate resolution. But even in using your cell phone camera, the lighting principles are the same and will allow you to take better photos. If you do not understand some of these ideas, a more expensive camera will not fix such botched shots - even photoshop cannot really fix totally lost areas of detail in most cases. Anway, I am no expert by far - so take my points with a grain of salt, add to them, ammend them, clarify them, ask a question if you like - hope this all will help a few of you. Check out my photo.net site for fun if you like - again I am only a big amateur - so nothing really special - take care.

Oh man, that is a really nice one - I ordered my first two hudds last week and planned on using them yesterday, they havent came in the mail yet - blahh. Freakin nice fish man. Photography is a hobby of mine (an obsession at times). I size down my photos as such to 800 pixels high for portrait orented photos and 1200 pixels wide for landscape oriented photos - it usually in that case will make for easier viewing for most peoples' monitors. Note to all you fisherman out there - for the most part you too can easily take quality fishing photos with most any point and shoot camera these days - most models now are well over 8 megapixels. It really has little to do with the gear for such fishing shots for most of us and more to do with a few considerations about available light - and positioning yourself for getting a "good exposure". I dont want to hijack this thread so I will be posting some tips and on another thread soon and hopefully others will offer other tips to help us all take these awesome photos too on our trips! Again, awesome fish man - you are inspiring me!!!!

And one more....

Edits as you requested Red - hope you enjoy.

Really cool - My first chilld is on the way - ETA 9/4/10 - I really look forward to such experiences ;D ;D And what a nice "first fish" - mine was so much smaller - oh and trick work weightless one of my fav. tactics on top water or just below surface around weeds and other cover - that kid is gonna be ruined now - a bass junky ;D

By the way, to give perspective - this was a creek arm off the main lake with floating docks just 5-10 feet from each side of the boat - the water drops off in this lake from the bank very quickely even in this creek arms down to 30-50 feet - this creek arm was probably ranging from 50 to 90 feet wide....

Sorry about the second snapshot - kinda ruined it with that range screen in the middle....

Here are my very first two and only two snapshots with my 998. It was so cool - I went to lewish smith lake for the first time and all structure, contourse, brush, timber, etc..was quite readily visible - I am sure I will get better with it in time. I was struck by these photos particularly - I am not totally sure what they are - but we were casting to these floating docks on the lake - they are only held in place by cables above the water column so the side imaging can easily see under them - I think "fish" were stacked up under them? not entirely sure - Only hooked one fish on my first time use of a swimbait - hooked him on the shady side of that dock and he came unbuttoned :'( - we ended up catching a few nice fish a piece though - and of course I was peeled mainly to the screen which probably accounted for catching less fish - but an investment in future fishing excursions. Thanks gale for your photos - you really can see rock pilings rock ledges, submerged trees - having fun with it so far - thanks for the photos! On the negative side, my GPS isnt working - "no GPS fix" it reads - it reads as GPS connected, and it shows satellites on the diagnostic view - called hb customer service - they said something will likely need to be replace - but only they say a 3-5 day turn around to fix this - it was a huge bummer on my day though yesterday - I had spent probably 2 hours marking a number of really good points that looked prime - we will see how they turn it around - So far it is I suppose a testament to their customer service - if that is they turn it around quick - but it was a huge downer after spending 2 grand to get something that just doesnt work in a big way - no biggie though....the side imaging though and sonar features were spot on though - freaking awesome so far.

SSAAWWEEEEETTTTTT!!!! Nice one man!!! See how much all out largemouth tips helped you hahaha

Ya know I realized during fishing yesterday that I too say "there he is" never really took notice to it till now, heh heh - and it is usually when fishing the jig or worm - not ever while doing a crank bait or spinner bait.

Mo-fish was funny - I thought it was really funny at first tough cause I thought it was a setup to mess with the presentation - bummer that it was a setup - he needs to go and spoof those demonstrations for real and get it on video!! He seems like a funny dude!

What do you call catching a catfish while bass fishing - did that yesterday on a shaky head with a powerbait craw - 4 lber - I was like "what the hell"

Oh yeah, thats what its about - now go get some more - I know I am gonna be trying!!!! Congratz man!!!

hahahaha - that really made me laugh man - I heard "moose" I think, oh yeah, and "booyah" - colorful fella - I like him - nice bass too - hate to see how he reacts to a 10 lber - now that would be a funny video!!!!!

I dont get the question either - the fishing line confuses the issue - alls you have is a fishing line and thats it? if you have no other materials I am not really sure if you can make some for of "hook" to attach to said line - so the line would simply have to be something to use for other fish catching or animal catching purposes - the trap was a good idea.... I am too slow in the brain for such things - I would use it to hang myself at some point likely cause I couldnt figure out what the hell to do - assuming it was a 200lb test line that is.

I couldnt say for sure why its not mentioned.... I live in Birmingham and by virtue of the location I mainly fish Lay Lake, Logan Martin, Smith Lake, and some other local ponds/lakes - Weiss is just a bit far from me, but I would be willing to fish it at some point - you seem to have caught some quality fish there, as has my neighbor - probably isnt fished as much due to its location - its just a bit further away for many folks perhaps and subsequently other lakes get more attn??

We are educated yay ;D ;D ;D Good point too - very narrow beam - difficult perhaps futile to have the goal of "finding fish" as a use of your unit.