Ocean Brite Systems and Equinox Underwater Products are proud to announce the pending release of new, affordable housing for the Canon EOS 300D, the Nikon D70, the Canon Powershot Pro 1, the Nikon Coolpix 8700 and the Olympus C8080Z Digital Cameras.

The Housings will become available as the cameras become available in the USA market, the first being the Canon 300D Digital Rebel Housing, with shipments commencing in April 2004.

Hello, readers. I've been working hard tonight, and have completed a few updates to Wetpixel's feature-set:

1) Digideep POTW Syndication
2) Affiliate Links
3) User Interface Tweaks
4) Short URL Implementation

Continue reading for more information.

Congratulations to Wetpixel's Eric Cheng for his cover shot on this month's Tauchen Magazine, and for his cover shot and cover story in Issue #5 of Shark Diver Magazine! Eric's story is entitled, "Galapagos Adventure," and features whale sharks, schooling hammerheads, and more.

Both of these covers were shot digitally, with a Sea & Sea-housed Canon D60 Digital SLR.

New Review: Aquatica's Jean Bruneau gives his first impressions of the Nikon 10.5" fisheye lens (with Nikon D100 and Aquatica D100 housing).

Aquatica has sent us some photos of their Canon Digital Rebel housings being assembled.  We're all looking forward to this new housing, which we've been told supports TTL.

*UPDATE FEB 19* New photos of painted housings!
[discuss in forums]

Aquatica's Jean Bruneau gives his first impressions of the Nikon 10.5" fisheye lens (with Nikon D100 and Aquatica D100 housing). *UPDATE* - March 15, 2004 - Photos from under the ice, by Jean Bruneau.

We would like to spread the word about a public call to photographers for helping to protect the biggest fish on earth. In Jan 2004 sharktrust.org lined up together with Project-A.W.A.R.E to start tracing the migration routes of whale sharks. These routes maintain yet unknown and are essential for enforcing the protection of this lovely species.

If you have photos of a whale shark, you can help! All you have to do is to send a copy to sharktrust.org or Project-A.W.A.R.E, and quote the place and date you took the picture.

Scientist are going to match the dot pattern with other photos from their database to identify the shark.  The dot pattern o­n the whale shark is unique as a human fingerprint The more submissions are forwarded to scientists, the more precise the estimation of the migration routes is going to be.

There are many new products being announced at this year's PMA Show in Las Vegas, including a new set of 8MP consumer cameras (which all use Sony's 8MP CCD), digital media card improvements (e.g. 8GB CF cards, 2GB memory stick pro cards, speed improvements), the first consumer camera to use a Foveon chip, and much more.

Instead of locally reproducing all of the press releases, I'd like to point you to Phil Askey's excellent product coverage of the show at his site, dpreview.com.

There is a lot of discussion going on in our forums about all of the new products. Please join us!

Kodak's PMA Announcement: Next-Generation Camera Offers Medium-Format Image Quality, 35mm Flexibility

The latest addition to Kodak’s venerable professional camera portfolio, the DCS Pro SLR/n digital camera contains a new high performance imaging system with an entirely new 35 mm size CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) sensor, which delivers 14 million pixels with a total available ISO range of 160 to 1600.

This looks like it is shaping up to be an excellent camera for underwater photographers with Nikon lenses. Want to see what others think? There is an active thread in our forums.

The prestigious Celebrate the Sea Marine Imagery Festival 2004 just got bigger. We thought competitions, seminars, photographic workshops, static exhibitions, non-stop marine feature documentaries, the latest dive equipment, digital innovations and some of the world's leading underwater image makers was just not enough. So now, the four-day festival will run alongside ‘ WETEXPO. 2004'

For the event we have perhaps assembled an elite VIPS – Speakers and Jury team. Confirmed to attend are: Wyland, Emory Kristof,  Dr Gerry Allen, Dr Walter Stark, Dr Mark Erhmann, Tony White, Michael AW, Kim Michelle Toft, Pierre Coton, Daniel Mercier, James Wiseman, Eric Cheng, Daniel Dorville, Mathieu Meur, Charles Hood, Phil Greco and John Bennett... (read more for full details)