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Yes, I have this problem with my original pair. It only started in late 2020 after they were not used for nine months due to lockdown. Changing the batteries sometimes works, fresh off the charger eneloops seem to be best but even those sometimes fail. No response from the strobes at all. it’s annoying and honestly I have stopped using them. Not worth the stress of both failing right before the dive even if they turned on at home. My contacts are fine and I don’t use the pilot light.

Sold on ebay, $80 plus postage.

Cleaning out the garage during lockdown, and I no longer have an Aquatica housing so no reason to have these old ports. The dome is lightly scratched inside and out, no dome shade, comes with a neoprene cover. No o-ring included. It was my old dome and had many adventures. Fine if you shoot in dark places or with the sun behind you or focussed in the distance, otherwise the internal scratches will definitely show up. The macro port is the non-zoom gear, AF-only one. I used it with a 100mm lens on my 5DmkII with extension 18453 which is attached and included. Extension and cap included as pictured. It has one small scratch in the glass on the inside which is not visible in 99% of shots, can be seen in the photo in the centre. Other marks in photo are dust. Neoprene cover and o-ring included. Must go, make an offer, plus shipping cost from Melbourne Australia to wherever you are.

Yes, I've had success in environmental/conservation competitions. Some of the categories can be very strange when thinking about them in an underwater context. I suspect judges for competitions that don't have an underwater category are not across the difficulty factor of some images.

Very non-tech. Obviously I spend too much time with ninja-all-in-black-drysuits-too-cool-for-school cave divers Retractable lanyards are a no-no generally for me.

What did you end up buying? Just a thought on "dim" primary lights. If you are shooting ambient light wide angle shots, even a dim primary light will need to be moved out of shot if you want to expose for any background sunlight. If you are shooting macro, in caves, or don't need any sunlight/greenwater in your shot, dim primary lights work great. I used a 750 lumen Dive Rite LED canister for ages and at shutter speeds of 1/160 or 1/200 it didn't show up. When I had a canister light I would clip the head to my chest d-ring and let it hang straight down. Now I have an all-in-one primary and I clip it to the handle of the housing so it hangs straight down. I can grab it for use as a focus light, or drop it to get it out of the shot. Plus enough scatter from it to illuminate approximately what's going on around me, and for my buddies to see where I am.

The magic word when flying Garuda is "scuba diving". Gets you the extra bag per person, very handy.

As a tech diver, I use a pair of Shearwater Petrels. As a photographer, I put eneloop AAs in them because I have hundreds of them. I get about 20 hours out of each battery I think. I don't really keep track - easy enough to pull the battery and charge it with the rest of the strobe batteries. The advantage of the newer Shearwaters (Perdix, Teric) is that they have an inbuilt compass. Helpful for consolidating gear when the boat driver tells you to swim a certain way to hit the wreck. I haven't seen anyone in the water with a console computer in a very long time, at least not unless they were a newbie using hire gear. And I tend to keep my primary computer on my right wrist as this is the one I hold the camera with for shooting. That way it's always out in front of me and easy to glance at. I guess this is a strange habit for those who wear watches in their dry life but there's not as many of those people as there used to be.

If you need both hands in a hurry and don't mind floating away, you can put your camera between your knees while you get sorted. I'm with the tether-free gang. Though I have a clip on the camera for clipping it off to myself, on a normal dive I wouldn't use it. Just carry the rig in my hands all the time from jump in to pass up.

PNG no longer engage in too much cannibalism so no need for the tourists. Cargo is relatively unaffected beyond a few extra quarantine days in port.

PNG citizens have no interests in dying, thanks very much. The PNG public are campaigning to close the borders to protect their health over the economy and the government has responded. No international flights inbound to PNG from Sunday. Qantas and Virgin have both cancelled all international flights from Australia from June 30. Australia is denying entry to all non-residents from 9pm tomorrow. NZ has already started this. For the minute, travel is off. I guess we'll see what happens with a grand reopening at some point later in the year...if this works.

Probably saving yourself hours of frustration I hope you take at least $170 worth of beautiful pictures with it!

I use semi-manual focus with my 14mm in caves, where it's usually too dark for fast autofocus. By this I mean I move to back button focus, focus once, then shoot repeatedly. On a normal dive I'd take 150 photos and refocus four or five times (mostly to check I didn't hit the focus button by accident and wreck things). I'm rarely doing CFWA so a focal distance of 1m to 5m works great. Usually shooting at f8 to f16 behind a dome. From that experience I would say that if you can find the focus point first, you're good. But it may be hard to find...as you know the focus above water bears no resemblance to the focus underwater.

I tried this domestically in Australia. The airline was fine with it but security really didn't like it. They said the whole thing was heavy, spiky and metal and therefore a weapon. I stopped myself from pointing out that if I put it in a non-padded bag it was still heavy, spiky and metal but now with an extra swinging handle. Smiled nicely, promised not to do it again and they let me through. That was in Sydney. I travel with mine fully assembled in an Osprey Porter 46 backpack which has good side padding/protection. It's heavy but fits fine. I can even get a few extra strobes in there plus a jumper and scarf. Laptop bag or "purse" as a personal item, shoulder massage on arrival and I'm golden.

I flew into PNG yesterday. All international flights must now land in Port Moresby for heath screening. This was a paper questionnaire and every passenger getting their ear temperature taken on arrival. They are asking about travel to/through China, whether you are a health care worker and whether you've had contact with a confirmed case. PNG is also re-routing all international boat traffic to three ports for a mandatory 7 day hold before being allowed to visit other PNG ports. Personally I think this is a good idea for PNG as they don't have a health system able to deal with a crisis. Three weeks ago I went to Canada (Vancouver) and there was nothing in arrivals despite being a major port for Asian travellers.