No replies to this topic

[wthurman]

Hello, and thanks to all the contributors for making this site a valuable resource.

I've shot a lot of film underwater but I am very new to digital photography. In the early 90's I was living in the Cayman Islands and was shooting several rolls of chrome a week- started on Grand Cayman with a Nikonos III then moved over to Little Cayman and shot a Nikon F4 in an Aquatica housing and an Ikelite-housed FM2. I've no idea how many dives I've done in Bloody Bay but I must have photographed a pretty good part of the wall and the flats (good jawfish shooting there) over a couple of years time. But all things come to an end and I left the islands and largely lost interest in shooting and diving- just got burned out, I guess.

Well, I am back! I recently bought a Canon 5D for shooting above-water in Central Asia, a very scenic and interesting place, and it's been a joy and a challenge shooting digital images. I'm still away from home- work thing- but I started diving again last summer on my return trips to the States. I could probably hit some very nice Indian Ocean or Andaman Sea spots but I haven't- my diving has gotten pretty specialized and is largely confined to the freshwater caves and springs of North Florida (I'll be buying a home there in a couple of months; once the cave diving bug bites, there is no other cure!)

Having shot Nikon equipment for the most part, I feel a bit of a sell-out using Canon cameras and lenses now, but the results have been fantastic. I am looking forward to getting a housed SLR into a cave system like Little River but haven't decided whether to switch back to Nikon equipment for this sort of work. The D3 appeals a lot and the cost savings over the 1Ds MKIII would pay for an Aquatica housing sans ports but the thought of the Canon's near medium-format resolution is tempting. Too many choices!

Few people are shooting at a professional level in the environments I am diving in- I know I can turn out some stunning images of places very few people- even divers- ever see. Technically the overhead environment is demanding enough without dealing with a camera- each dive takes serious planning and introducing imaging to that environment will be interesting, to say the least.

But anyway, hello and thanks again!