ATJ

Just be aware than when you do get the upgrade, it will want to convert all existing projects next time you run it.

OK, now it is working for me with the App Store. Looks like it is the whole thing, though, rather than an update - 1.47GB.

Same here... :/

It is generally pretty easy to tell whether it will be an issue or not before you take the shot. Look at the exposure meter in the viewfinder. If it is telling you the shot will be underexposed, you don't have to worry. If it's a stop or less underexposed, it might be an issue. If you're shooting macro, the exposure meter will almost always indicate underexposure (or you have too slow a shutter speed) and you should be fine, as Alex points out. It is only when you want to balance for ambient light that there might be an issue.

I can think of two technical reasons: 1) The wiring is different for the cable going to the master strobe versus the secondary strobe. I'm not sure they'd be able to accommodate that in an adapter. 2) You'd have 2 extra potential sites for a leak. The dual sync cords work well and when compared to the cost of the complete rig I even bought spares.

Not always. At least not here in Oz. I have frequently seen new release ebooks substantially more expensive that hardcovers. Yes.. but I still have to wonder how much the authors have a say in the price of eBooks... I know that when the music industry was going through all this (and things have improved a lot), artists were complaining about how little they were getting.

Convenience may play some part in the pricing. There is also a great deal of convenience with a paper based edition. For example, a paper based edition is actually easier (and perfectly legal) to share with people in the same physical location. e.g. a member of a family can buy the paper based edition and then pass it on to the next family member when they have finished. The next person can pass it on, and so, on. I remember when I was back at school and they used to issue us with novels to read. Those same physical books were read over and over again. Only one purchase per book and all perfectly legal. eBooks won't have that same convenience unless they are copied illegally. Exactly! I agree 100%. Why then are eBooks often more expensive than a paper based book when they contain the exact same IP? Also agree, but I very much doubt the artist has much say in what the publishers do with their work. Also notice that self published stuff tends to be cheaper (and even free).

That was not my suggestion at all... quite the contrary. I was saying that I would not expect older shows to be HD and so that just because the channel broadcasts in 1080i or even 720p doesn't mean the content is that. By the way, I have also read that in some circumstances 720p is better than 1080i so being able to download 720p content for TV shows may mean that it "looks" better than what was broadcast at 1080i. We don't have a large enough TV to see the differences so I can't really comment on whether it is true or not.

I checked what we have here. In Sydney we have 5 free-to-air HD channels. Two are 720p and 3 are 1080i. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the content they show is 1080i or even 720p. While I was checking, one of the 1080i channels was playing an episode of "M*A*S*H". I had to wonder if the source material was equivalent to 1080i or even 720p and they were just upscaling for broadcast.

Or less. I know people that buy a book and then sell/give it to a second-hand book shop/op shop after they read it. You don't need many people doing that for it to add up. Publisher/Author gets nothing. That is all true, but artificially inflating the price will do nothing to stop piracy. Perhaps if they weren't being so greedy more people would be prepared to pay for their eBooks. I know if I have a choice between buying a book second-hand for $5 or an eBook of the same for $15, I'll go for the second-hand book. I have made that choice often. I could even sell the book after I've finished with it and so my outlay was even less. As has already been discussed, people will pirate stuff no matter what they do - but why punish the honest people?

I'll have to check again. Last time I looked most (recent) TV shows on HD channels here in Oz are only broadcast in 720p. So, at least for us, iTunes 720p is just as good. They can and do broadcast 1080p but it doesn't seem to be the norm - at least last time I checked. I was taking TV series (and I thought Cor was, too). They won't put out the DVD or BD until after the season ends which will be at least 9 months after the first episode aired - and in many cases even longer than that.

This really shows the book publishers are fools. For a physical book, they only make money when it is first sold. The author only gets royalty when the physical book is first sold. That book may change hands (perfectly legally) hundreds of times after the first sale and neither the publisher nor the author get a single cent. An eBook on the other hand can only ever be sold once legally as there is no way to legally transfer ownership of an eBook. If 100 people want the eBook they each have to buy it (or get an illegal copy). Given production and distribution costs of an eBook are significantly lower, an eBook should be way cheaper. Maybe one day they will wake up.

Actually it is "near" Blu-ray quality. OK, it isn't 1080p, but a large proportion of (the more recently created) content is 720p with 5.1 sound. That's the same as (most) HD broadcast quality and higher than DVD quality. If you're downloading TV shows, you'll be getting the same quality as if you watched them "live". If you wanted Blu-ray quality for those same shows you'd be waiting 12 months to 3 years for the BDs to be released.

Sure it is. There's a raft of content available on iTunes, including TV shows and movies. I can buy a season pass for a TV series and download each episode as soon as it has aired.

I did the best thing for Australia Day - went for a dive and took some photos.

The VR version of the 18-55mm lens is very cheap and a versatile lens for both above and underwater. The VR helps for video, too.

I am suggesting that it is very unlikely that Ikelite will measure the "colour temperature" of each and every strobe when it comes off the production line and also that there is going to be some variation from unit to unit. It is far better to validate the effect it has on white balance in your particular setup (including the camera) than rely on the specifications - especially when it is actually easier to do the former. It is also worth pointing out that electronic flash is NOT a black body and at best colour temperature is only going to be an approximation for the behaviour of the interaction of the light with a camera sensor. Again, it is far better to assess the impact on white balance that try to connect two approximations. I didn't find the colour temperature of my strobes and never claimed to. I also understand colour temperature and know it would be pretty meaningless to even try to measure it. As above, it makes more sense and is easier to assess the effect on white balance. White balance MUST be objective to ensure consistent and repeatable results. It also has to be objective for the very reason that you can't reliably use your eyes to measure or assess it. The human brain interprets what the eyes see and makes adjustments to fit in with what it expects. That's why if you walk into a room lit with incandescent lamps you still see the scene as you would expect to see it, even though the white balance is way out. Take a photograph of that scene without making the appropriate white balance adjustments and the resulting photograph will look terrible. Underwater scenes are even more troublesome because you never actually see them with white light. There's no way you can know how something actually appears as you never see it that way. The only way to get the colours accurate is to set the white balance empirically, such as with a gray card. It is the need to "re-introduce colours" which mandates setting of white balance objectively because your eyes only ever see the scene without the missing colours. i.e. you never see the scene with white light. If photographers are not at least starting with accurate colours through appropriate use of white balance they are merely artists not capturing reality. Certainly, a photographer may choose to alter reality to tell the story they want to tell, but if they have no way of knowing what reality is in the first place, they are fooling themselves as well as everyone else. Setting white balance objectively is very easy using a gray card and is actually much easier than setting it subjectively. There's no need to pour over images and adjust colours until they look right. You just set the white balance once so that it is right and use the same settings over and over again. Again, this is far more work that simply taking a photograph of a gray card using the intended lighting.

I didn't even realise there were two settings. When I checked mine, I have been using Auto1 and get good results. Even though I always change the white balance to the appropriate preset in post processing (Lightroom), I notice the images look pretty good before the change.

Unfortunately, that assumes that Ikelite have correctly measured and reported the colour temperature of their strobes and that there is no variation between the strobes themselves. My results below, suggest that while the DS161 is rated at 4800K, it has a somewhat higher colour temperature. How did you verify your white balance was "very close to perfect"? An accurate way is with a 18% gray card. And an even more accurate way would be to use a colour checker, but that is very fiddly. I regularly use a Kodak 18% gray card for setting and verifying my white balance settings. As an experiment, I set up my D7000 using instructions you posted - so that the white balance would be set to 4760K. I then connected my D7000 to my 2 DS161 strobes and took a photograph of the gray card. Just for fun, I also took photos of the gray card with the camera set to "Daylight" and "Flash". I imported the photographs into Lightroom for analysis. The development module in Lightroom provides both a histogram and point analysis of the photo. Additionally, there's a "dropper" which will set the white balance of the photograph so that red, green and blue are the same levels. The photo shot with white balance set to 4760K had a distinct blue to it. Lightroom shows the colour temperature as 4750K with a Tint of +12. The histogram showed that blue was brighter and separate from the red and green channels. Using the point analysis, red and green are around 38% (with green being slightly higher than red). The blue channel was over 42%. If I use the white balance dropper, to set the white balance, it sets the Temp to between 5200 and 5250K with a tint of +3 to +5. The "daylight" shot looks much more neutral. Lightroom also shows the Temp as 5200K and the Tint as +11. The histogram shows all three channels almost together, with blue slightly higher than red and red slightly higher than green. The dropper shows numbers like: R: 42.4 G: 41.8 B: 43.0%. Using the WB dropper makes little difference either leaving the Temp at 5200K or changing it to 5250K. The tint drops to +3 to +5 and this would be expected. The "flash" shot was wrong and obviously so. Lightroom shows the Temp as 6600K and Tint as +10. The histogram show more separation than the other two with blue being the lowest and and red the highest. Point analysis is like R: 47.7 G: 44.9 B: 41.9. So, at least for my D7000 and DS161 strobes, "daylight" was the closest. If you want to set the white balance in the camera, a more accurate way would be to use Preset manual (Page 123 in the D7000 manual) with a gray card and using the strobes as a light source. However, if the camera is not used exclusively for underwater photography with the same strobes, it is far easy to just shoot raw and set the white balance in post processing. The problem if you use the camera for other photography is forgetting to set the white balance before underwater use and so it is wrong anyway. I do a lot of different photography, but most of the time I'm using a strobe of one sort or another and with different soft boxes. I have a number of white balance presets in Lightroom created by photographing the gray card with each of the different combinations of strobes and diffusers I use. It is just a matter of selecting the correct preset on import (or even later if I forget). I even have the luxury of creating a preset after the fact (postset?).

All the images have exif data included so you can get the shutter speed and f/stop for all of them. I always shoot manual and set the shutter speed and f/stop as desired for background lighting and depth of field. I shoot raw with auto white balance but I change the white balance in Lightroom with a preset I created by shooting a gray card with the set up. i.e. the white balance I use at the time of shooting is largely irrelevant as I will always override it. I mainly go with auto white balance of when I'm using the camera in other situations and forget to set the white balance. I always get as close as possible to the subject to minimize backscatter, as well as pointing my strobes to minimize backscatter in front of the subject. If necessary, I clean up backscatter in Lightroom. We have some really stunning organisms down under down under, especially seadragons, seahorses and nudibranchs. We get some really cool cephalopods, too.

I did 10 dives off Sipadan last October and it was fantastic. I can highly recommend it. So much to photograph! I was shooting with my D300 at the time (see the photos in my dive log) and only housed my D7000 after returning.

I suspect what is happening here is that when you are in full auto mode (and I assume you mean one of the scene settings) that it is also setting the white balance for you, perhaps Auto White Balance. I really don't understand how it does it but I have found with both my D7000 and D300 that Auto White Balance is pretty damn close to what it should be (using a gray card) (It doesn't make sense it would get it right, especially when using a flash but it does.) So... when you are on full auto, you get a pretty good white balance and so things look right. When you switch to aperture priority, it is using your manual white balance which is off, giving you the red cast. Just try putting it on auto WB and see what happens. Also, as you are shooting raw, you can always adjust the white balance after the shot has been taken with no loss. For macro you really want at f/11 or smaller (as in the aperture is smaller, the f/number is larger). Most of my macro shots are done at f/16 or f/22. You also want fully manual so you can set both the aperture and the shutter speed. Ideally, you set the aperture to get the depth of field you want and then set the shutter speed to get the desired balance between foreground lighting (with the flash) and the background (ambient light). If you want black or dark backgrounds, go with 1/250s (as you can't go any faster). Use a longer shutter speed to lighten the background. Use the exposure indicator in the viewfinder to determine the impact of the background lighting and adjust the shutter speed accordingly. For example, about 1 f/stop under exposed gives a nice amount of background lighting. Just try changing the white balance to one of the preset ones. e.g. try "Flash" and see if that helps. If you know your DSLR well on land, you should be fine underwater. The principles are the same, just that you have to factor in the effect the water has on the light and so you need to get as close to your subject as possible.

Let me address the pop-up flash issue first, because it is easier. The pop-up flash will only pop itself up automatically when the camera is in Full Auto, or some of the scene selections. If you use it in P, A, S or M (Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Manual) mode, it will never pop-up up unless you press the flash button. Further, if you have a iTTL flash connected via the hot shoe (including the Ikelite cable connected to an Ikelite strobe which is powered on), the pop-up button will not pop-up the flash. You should be using M (Manual) mode for shooting underwater with a 105mm lens with a flash. I believe switching to M will solve your problems. You can test all this above water (and even without the housing). As to the colour cast, you'll need to answer some questions... * Are you shooting raw or JPEG? * What setting do you have for White Balance? * What mode are you using? Ideally and as above, you should be using M and setting the White Balance to something close to what you want. I always shoot raw and use Lightroom for my processing and raw conversion. I always shoot manual (M) and have white balance set to Auto (mostly because I don't care that much for white balance as I shoot raw). I have a preset in Lightroom set for shooting with the D7000 and 2x DS161 strobes which I created by shooting a gray card with the D7000 + 2x DS161 strobes.

Without being able to see the skeleton, the best you can say is they are from family Dendrophylliidae. They could be either Tubastraea or Dendrophyllia.

There are no springs in the control knob for exposure compensation (and a number of others). To use the housing control you turn it until it is over the camera control - and conversely when you don't want to use it, you make sure it is not over a camera control. I've had my Ikelite D300 housing regularly to deeper than 20 metres and had no issues with the spring loaded buttons at all. When I was new to my housing I did have a couple of incidents where the housing control was on the camera control but once you know about it, it is easy to avoid.