Tidepools at Wai'opae

Normally I shoot panoramas with a fisheye lens on a Panoscan or Nikon D70, but for this theme I tried to get a fisheye view using cheap disposable underwater cameras.

Unfortunately, between difficult ocean surge, rough wave action, bad lighting, sharp lava rocks and jagged coral, none of the four panoramas I attempted came out well enough to use. My final attempt, which promised to be the best, was destroyed by Wal-Mart during film processing.

So... I reverted to my backup travel camera (not having my standard panorama equipment with me on vacation) to produce the relatively low-tech, handheld panorama on this page.

The Wai'opae Tidepools, revealed by a book called Snorkel Hawai'i: The Big Island by Judy and Mel Malinowski, turned out to be a wonderful place to enjoy the tropical fish, coral, and invertebrates Hawai'i has to offer. I highly recommend this site (and the book) to anyone visiting Big Island with snorkeling gear. But be very careful walking around the flesh-cutting rocks in the area.

These tidal pools vary in size and depth from shallow to several meters deep, and range widely in area as well. A barrier of laval protects them from the sea, so it's a rather safe place for beginners to take up mask and snorkel (no fins are necessary).

If anyone manages to produce a decent underwater panorama for the WWP site them you can trust they are very, very good at what they do.

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Pacific Ocean / USA-Hawaii

Lat: 19° 29' 55.49" N
Long: 155° 50' 13.51" W

Elevation: about 1 meter

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Unknown / Undeclared.

Fuji FinePix S7000, 18 handheld horizontal shots at f/7.0 ISO 200 at 1/640 sec. Stitched in Photoshop CS, wrapped in PanaVue ImageAssembler and saved into QuickTime from there.