RogerC

if you have a mac and a .mac account, there is a lot of it for free on your iDisk.

they are very skittish and only seen rarely at the quieter dive sites. I saw them at la palma and la francesa last summer, after emily but before the big hurricane hit. Only one or two others in my group saw them at francesa, you had to be looking. I would not say it's always been this way, I'm sure once there were many.

good points, Joe. But you're probably at risk in the bath tub, too, those things are dangerous.

push up on the whole 1/2" internal assembly. if you latch and unlatch the lever as you look at the inside of the battery, you'll see it move. Push harder. it won't matter how it is rotated. I often push mine out and carefully rinse it off in the sink to get the sand out of it.

To me, a lot of things are competative with it in editing, but nothing touches it in selecting images from a shoot... but I take a lot of the same subject, and it's particularly good at letting you pick the best of a series quickly. It's saved me a lot of time, even if it does bog down at times (my laptop is old). And the easy backups are wonderful.

I did not like the screw on ss200 cap. The oring is back in a groove and it's hard to inspect and clean. Also, since it is a bore-sealing design and not a face-sealing design like the ds125, it needs grease, so it gets even gunkier. I think the ds125 design is superior, but I suspect ike stuck with the unmodified ss200 design because it was proven and good enough and backwards compatible.

You can service the oring on the shaft. Push on the shaft from the inside and the shaft will come out far enough to reveal the oring. Clean it with a qtip, get the lint off, inspect it for damage, lube it.

Carol, I agree with what you are saying. The only point I am trying to make is that commercial fisherman take more sharks and do more damage, whether they are targeting sharks directly for meat or fins, or getting them incidentally through bycatch. Look at how much time the commercial spend fishing, look at how many hooks they put in the water. In the table I posted above, they tabulate catch per unit effort. Their basic measurement, the basic unit of effort, is 10,000 hook hours. That's 1 hook in the water for 10,000 hours or 10,000 hooks for 1 hour. 10,000 hours is 1250 8 hour days, or about 3.5 years of 8 hour days. That's a basic unit of time for a commercial fisherman, it's a lifetime of weekends for a sportfisherman. And this goes on invisibly to us. Lost commercial gear is a problem, too. Take a look at these links on longlines and driftnets, here's some photos of longline gear. Imagine the damage they do when they are lost. And imagine the damage they do when they are not lost, just working normally. Sportfishermen have very low baycatch rates, and kill few, if any, turtles and sea mammals. http://www.seashepherd.org/longline/longline.html Some drift net, ghost net stuff: http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gho...5730846319.html http://www.hcseg.com/x98.xml http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/Fish/InNews/salerno2004.htm http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4673939 http://myfwc.com/Whatsnew/04/ghostnethelp-st.html

Sportfishermen are not the enemy that commercial fishermen are. This guy caught one shark. Here's a table of observed catches by commercials, landing in the US, in the Southeast, over a 10 year period. Some counts are big, some are small, and it is over a 10 year period, but remember, this is only a fraction of sharks caught in the southeast area and around the world. http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/csop/spcomp2.html This doesn't include illegals, finners, etc. If you could get rid of the commercials - and believe me, sportfisherman would help - we'd be a lot better off. Every year the scuba boards get upset about a single shark coming in on some sportfisherman's boat. This year it's a hammerhead. Last year it was a tiger, remember? Year before that it was a big mako, out here in los angeles. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather these individual sharks were still swimming. But behind the scenes, not making the news, the commercial guys, legal, illegal, finners, and through wasted bycatch, are killing many, many, many more sharks. That doesn't ever make the scuba boards radar, yet it does get on the radar of the sportfisherman, to their credit. The Pacific Marine Fisheries Council just passed regulation allowing an experimental longline fishing permit back into california and oregon water. I saw no mention of it in any scuba magazine or board, other than what I posted myself. It was well covered in the sportfishing magazines I subscribe to. Why do fishermen want longliners out but divers don't care? I don't get that. Don't get me wrong - I would really rather this hammerhead were still swimming, and based on what divers spend vs what fishermen spend, the florida economy would agree with me. But there are bigger enemies to apex marine life than sportfishermen. Sportfishermen work harder than we do to push commercials out, they lobby washington more than we do (now we get muddy, they are also lobbying against west coast protected area closures that divers would like, so divers and sportfishermen disagree on some issues). Get the commercials out, get them fishing sustainably with better methods, lower bycatch, and we're all better off.

I've had several maha chargers and am thinking about upgrading to this one. I like the maha chargers that can run fast or slow - no reason to stress batteries with a fast charge when there is no hurry. I also prefer the chargers, like this one, that charge batteries as singles rather than in pairs. I don't like the pair chargers, even though they do well in the Shootout. If the batteries have different resistance, the charger may charge the one with lower resistance with too much juice. I want them charged individually. Basically, it looks good to me. I imagine it has guts as good as or better than the older chargers (which have done great by me for many years), has the features of the chargers I like best, and has indicators. I've been wanting one, but I'm holding off. My next trip isn't for a while, they may come out with something better yet.

Yes, I'm certain of the slow focus on the E1. It's even hit me on land. Particularly when you have the 5050 on ESP focus, where it can look for contrast anywhere in the frame, it can be faster than the E1 with its more limited selection areas. The lag of the 5050 rarely frustrates me; the E1 frequently frustrated me. But it was really dark. No, no gallery yet. My day job keeps me really busy, and I never quite get time to sort through all my shots, and I keep getting out to take more. I'm not going to turn down a dive trip just because my hard drive is full. Someday, I swear...

No, not yet, I rented the housing for that one trip. The low-light focusing on it is poor, in my opinion, worse than my 5050, which makes the focus-lag, at times, worse than the shutter lag on my 5050. I'm holding off for the E-1's replacement. I hope it has good color and can match the E1, particularly in the blues. If it turns out to be not as good, or insanely expensive, I'll probably try out the 330 or 500, but I'll probably buy a couple of the E1's at $400 and make it work. I'd also like the E1 to have lower noise at high iso, I'm an ambient light junkie, but the noise doesn't bother me as much as the focus.

in the US, no registration is necessary. You own the copyright as soon as you create the work. This is enough to sue for usage fees. Registration (google for it) is $15 or $25, I forget, and it can be for a CD full of images or even more. Regsitration gives you a stronger position in court and the ability to sue for damages.

DUI is as well made as any and is very popular here is SoCal, their service is also great. They have 4 materials. Neoprene is not worth considering, it's warm but fragile. Crushed neoprene is bulletproof, will last forever, insulates well, stretches and fits well, but is heavy and dries slowly. Then they have a light nylon trilam and a cordura nylon trilam. Many like the trilams as lighter and faster to dry, but I prefer the crushed neoprene, it's durable, warm, and stretchy. They also make a 50/50, crushed neoprene bottom, trilam top. They also have 2 or three models of each suit: an entry level with a back zip, a better model with a front zip, and a custom/signature line.

The Peace Dive Shop in ventura has a lot of DUI suits, and they are having a sale this weekend for their anniversary. Trip tip sandwiches and half price nitrox fills, too. http://www.peacescubacenter.com/ Definitely get a drysuit. The only local long-term divers that dive wet by choice are hunters, they like the streamlining of a wetsuit (and they swim a lot to stay warm) but even the serious hunters go with stuff thicker than 7mm that you can only get from good shops, and custom fits. I think JMJ has it, I know Aquaflite used to and probably still does. Plus, these serious hunters make the investment in new suits every year or two. So they are spending as much or more than you would on a drysuit. Learning curve depends on your number of dives. For me, many hundreds of dives when I got mine, there was none.

I'm an Oly shooter, I don't think you'll be disappointed. My choices would be: 8mm or 7-14mm for wide (I chose the 7-14 for the flexibility and because I prefer the rectilinear lens in more situations, particularly on land. Don't get me wrong, I *love* a fisheye, but I wouldn't put it on as often as I put on the 7-14) 50mm or 100mm macro (100 is not out yet but may be my choice, I prefer extreme macro). Sigma 50-500 for topside. I'm surprised there weren't more topside lenses listed. Hey, all you nikon guys that said 105, is that for digital, much longer film equivalent?

I typically end the dive when my buddy complains, and go up, and deal with whatever the problem was. It's usually a low battery or a full card.

One question, do you shoot TTL now? I never do, so I would never bother with C. When shooting wide angle, I can get by with the settings on the strobe - 1/8 to full power is enough for almost all my shots. When shooting macro, especially wide angle close ups, where lighting gets more creative, I am happy to have my EV controllers.

don't sweat it, get one of the little lexar firewire readers. And get one of the short, thin, limp firewire cables they sell at the apple store, 1/2 meter. Great for travel. I have one and carry an ipod adapter and a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter for it.

it's 34. There may be a CF reader, but it won't be internal.

Use it, enjoy it, don't worry about it. Take pictures and use the light all the way back to the boat. I've had mine for years and hundreds of dives and run them down plenty. My oldest pack finally got noticably weak, and Ike put new batteries in for, can't remember, maybe $40. That works out to about a penny a dive. Why give up the last couple minutes of a dive to save a penny? With a good charger 99% of your battery charge problems go away.

Thanks everybody and congratulations to all the other winners! it's a long and distinguished list. Jose, welcome to the tribe. I'm the webmaster for the LAUPS, I helped with the international, in particular receiving the digital entries that got emailed in. You entered a fantastic portfolio, and I'm glad to see that all my favorites of yours have finally been recognized in other competitions. Well, almost all of them... good luck in the future! Judging is funny, it's often said that even the same group of judges would pick different winners on different days. Your wins show that you need to have confidence in your own images and keep entering.

do a search on the web, there are benchmarks of it. I seem to recall specs on a process that take the very fastest G5 macs 1 minute take the macbook 2 minutes. So it really doesn't bother me and wouldn't hold me back from buying one right now. My old mac will probably be running in the 2 minute range, too. But, I don't spend a lot of time in photoshop, and I don't do anything in photoshop that takes 2 minutes of processing time. here's one, there may be others: http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/firstlooks...marks/index.php

boy, are you gonna be sorry you wasted your one wish on that: ASMP & TSA me, I still wish to carry my stuff on board...

if I were a baggage thief, like the guy in san juan working for AA getting rich selling dome ports, I think I'd open any case that said "lightware" on it, no matter what was stenciled on it. You might want to get that patch off the side of that bag. I'm going samsonite before my next trip. My nylon sided checked luggage got barfed on by some disgusting liquid on my last trip, soaked through to some clothes, and I had a mask (in a hard case, in the bag, between my jet fins) get mashed and broken, 3rd mask I've had broken in checked baggage. From now on, hard sides, washable exteriors.