Whiskeyjack

I also second the suggestion of booking a day trip to Verde Island for wide angle, it's a very nice area.

@oneyellowtang My only trip to Lembeh was in November of 2022, perhaps I was graced by the macro gods Not to invalidate your experiences, mine have just been different, but perhaps I'm biased as my single trip to Lembeh was so fruitful. The trash site you are referring to I imagine is the is off the inner tip of Caban island, past the dari-laut site? I agree, I think that is the only place I have seen a blue ring in probably 150+ dives in Anilao over the last 4 years or so. I also agree about the rhinopias, they are common during the right season in Anilao, I can't speak to Lembeh as I've only been the one time, and we did see 1 or 2 over the week. I usually dive with Blue Ribbon as they allow me to bring my dog out on the boat, and they also have their own bangka so there is none of that nonsense where you don't know how much you will pay for the boat until the end of the day based on number of divers that the local bangka cartel has established in Anilao... That being said I've dove with various operators there including Crystal Blue, Acacia, Buceo, etc I'm not trying to say Anilao isn't an amazing place, it definitely is, I just wanted to offer a different perspective. Back to the main point for OP, there are certainly non-macro sites as well, anything out by Sombrero Island (batok, beatrice, larry's garden is amazing but it's deep and best done as a deco dive in my opinion as the shallowest area of the site is at 20m), Bahura and Kirby's rock are nice wide angle dives as well, though watch for strong current.

I find this opinion interesting. Living in Manila I dive Anilao often as it's so close (2-3 hours drive). I've only been to Lembeh once for a week long trip but found it to have a noticeably higher density of interesting critters per dive. Nowhere in Anilao have I seen 5 blue rings on a single dive, etc. I will say that if you really like nudis then Anilao is the place to go. Many dives I will see dozens of nudis but very few other interesting macro subjects. My other reason for preferring Lembeh is the accessability of the dive site. Many sites in Anilao are going to be 10-30 minutes on the local bangkas (with their diesel fumes and loud engines) depending on the resort you are at. Lembeh in my experience was 5-15 minutes on modern speedboats. Anyway, just my two cents, and Anilao is a spectacular dive destination, no doubt about that.

I don't suppose you've heard anything further about this or had the chance to try it out? I still don't see the lense on nauticam's port charts, though the lens is now defnitely available in US.

Did you just reach out to thikntank for these dividers? I have the same bag and same issue, the dividers don't work very well placing them horizontally rather than vertically, and this looks much better.

Interesting. Living in the Philippines for around 5 years now, I routinely get my carry-on bag wieghed, and it's almost always over the 7kg limit. This has happened flying, PAL, Cebu Pacific, and Air Asia. However, after explaining and showing the check-in agent that the bag contains mostly camera gear they have never actually forced me to check the bag, though they often warn me to next time make it lighter.

Yep, so I emailed Isotta and actually sounds like it's fairly simple if you just stick with their ports. Here is what they recommended: Housing -> 40mm extension+gear (SKU 2548) -> zoom ring (SKU 3546 not yet on website)-> 20mm extension (SKU 0174) -> 4.5" glass dome (SKU 1429) This would seem to make sense as the Nauticam solution is using the 34.7mm extension with an additonal 5mm, so the numbers do seem to match. Probably not super helpful for OP as he owns the Nauticam ports already, but just wanted to post here for anyone else considering Isotta for this application. A bonus would be that the camera should be able to be inserted into the housing with the lense attached since the Isotta port opening is larger than the Nauticam.

It's too bad there are no measurements listed on the website, though i imagine it would be only a few mm of extension. Hard to say.

Hi Wolfgang, did you ever end up making a decision on this? I am looking to switch to an Olympus OMD-5 MkIII in an Isotta housing and have also been following your thread on using the Canon 8-15mm FE as that is an interesting option for me. If this is easily accomplished with an Isotta housing just using the sea&sea adapter to use Nauticam 120 ports that would be great, though it seems like the Zen DP100-N120 will not work which is too bad as that would make for a travel-friendly setup. I wonder about the N120 140mm dome port, there are no pictures of the base plate on nauticam's website so hard to know for sure. Maybe something like this would be required to adapt the Isotta 102 port for their Olympus housing to the 120 port and then use the Nauticam to Sea&Sea base plate adapter: https://www.unterwasserkamera.at/shop/catalog/en/product_info.php?info=p6048_isotta-portadapter-isotta-b102.html

Hi, I'm Chase, originally from the USA, but currently living and diving in the Philippines for the last 5 years. I started shooting underwater perhaps 4 years ago, though took a break from photography for a while. In the past year or two I've gotten back into it and have been upgrading my kit recently while diving locally when possible with the COVID restrictions here. Best, Chase