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As long as the media jumps on every shark attack like its the 2nd coming of Jaws, they will keep the general uneducated public in fear. Thus the demand for "shark nets" will be high. I watched a show about the US shrimping industry the other day and how its shrimp techniques are strip mining the sea.

I wasn't aiming for it...but it matches the housing...

B) As my underwater housing for my SP350 arrived today, I couldn't contain myself...I went to work immediately. Camera Olympus SP-350 - online through Dell $305 bucks...no shipping. Camera Housing by Olympus - $199 Memory Card - $70 through Ebay Flash (fl-20) and Flash housing PFL-01... $210 on Ebay...new through Olympus Ebay Reseller. Arm - ??? its marked TUS and pat pending. I purchased it for $20. DIY part. Had to make this arm designed for something else fit this oly outfit. Used a grinder and a few plastic and stainless parts in the garage to come up with the pictured rig. The nice thing...its almost fully articulating due to the ball joints. I can place the flash over my left shoulder and angled down at about 5ft. The camera sits on its own arm and also articluates. Its really versatile and easy to adjust. Now for the bad. Its pretty heavy. I'm not sure exactly how much it weighs but I'm picturing myself doing a headstand in the water...

350 pounds is about $575 US? Olympus SP-310 Olympus SP-350 Both are around $500 with Olympus Housing. Canon A520 Canon A620 Canon S70/80 are well regarded here on Wet pixel and have a decent track record. They also have some Canon Housings that are inexpensive. Fuji 810, 910. Fuji 810 has some followers here that have had excellent results from a point and shoot. Sea Life 5 MP camera is around $450 on Ebay and comes with a housing. My suggestion is to read through some of the threads here on the subject as this has come up a great deal. Also read some good questions from fellow freedivers on the same subject (lighting has some good freedive questions as well).

Nice pics in challenging conditions Larry. I really like that last pic with the starfish and Metri. Well, my January Dive trip has been whittled down to a snorkel with the Manatees on January 27th. I'm taking my rig in the pool to work out the kinks next weekend. Housing is suppose to arrive today. I fabricated an arm out of one I purchased on Ebay really cheap and it turned out really well. I'll have to post a pic on the DIY thread. I've also got some of Alex Mustard's Magic Filters on order from Ryans Reef Photo so I'll get to try those out as well. Gary

Welcome to wetpixel Joe, Try this forum for underwater digicams...Later, http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showforum=1 Gary

Thanks Julian, WA will me my next objective along with a bigger strobe after trying some fish portraits and macro. ...actually my first digital adventure will be a pool somewhere with the kids...just to get the hang of things. BTW..I also purchased the Magic Filter to test out on my new digicam. Gary

Thanks James, Like many old Minolta 35mm users, its with great sadness that I part with this great camera. However, after reading other wet-pixel posts concerning this matter I've ran across two people who wished they had gone Canon or Nikon. Since I am an avid ebayer as well, I'll take a peek. Cheers, Gary

Marcell, If I'm not too late with this. How does someone in the US get their hands on the 7D housing? How much is it? I will be in much the same boat you're in when I go to upgrade to a DSLR. My analog Minolta Maxxum has served me well and I have several lenses and accessories for it that would run me an extra $1500 to buy the same with Nikon or Canon.

"what do you do with them in an airport that does not have a shipping service?" As I often travel with tools which are forbidden in the cabin of aircraft, and have more than once forgotten to check these in luggage, I can tell you that they go to the local county lost and found in most places if the airport doesn't have one themselves. Good luck on retrieving anything valuable.

Thanks Jonas, Great photos on your site. Loved the cuddlefish. On the strobe issue, I was looking down the road a year, or two, and thinking I might need something different so I was starting to research some options. Does the TTL work for you well? I suspect with macro you use the manual option more often? Thank you for your time. Gary

"There are no predators that have evolved traits which allow them to feed on Lionfish" The only thing I've seen take one out is a large Moray Eel. Because he swallowed him head first, the spine was no issue. Who knows if he ever ate another one..haha. Seriously, I heard that fishermen were given the no-return-to-water order for Batfish. Has anyone heard the same for the Lionfish?

I knew one day my affection for the National Geographic Channel would come in handy! These small starfish feed on algae Someone touched on the answer here but according to the documentary I watched, here is what they found. Again the bread trail lead back to us human beans which isn't surprising. They've discovered that the COT blooms usually occurred after a major period of heavy rain and water run off. This washed chemical and natural fertilizers off of farm land into the rivers and eventually into the ocean. Immediately following this an algae bloom would occur. The normal survival rate of COT Larvae is very small due to the natural predation and competition for food. However, with abundant food, the Larvae matured rapidly into young adults who have virtually no predators other than Snails. Hence you get a COT bloom. Killing them. In many areas they are hiring divers to assault them. The ONLY way to kill them is to inject every leg and the main body of the starfish with a chemical poison. If you cut off a leg...you create another starfish. They simply regenerate the leg, and if I recall correctly the cutoff limb will generate into another COT as well. So unless you're armed with the correct killing device, you might be doing more harm than good by attempting to kill one with a knife. Furthermore, the spines on the COT are supposedly toxic to humans...handling one isn't the best of ideas. Take care all! Gary

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showt...968entry75968 Please take a look at my reply on this thread before making some changes...later,

I just had the opportunity to do this again and wanted to share the results with you. This wasn't exactly scientific because I started out the day as a dad just taking birthday shots. Here's how it went. I loaded some 2500mah (Kodak brand) batteries the other day. I took a few shots on RAW purely experimental because I was testing some photo editing software. I can't be 100% for sure but I want to say between 5-10. I then used these same batteries today at my daughters birthday tonight. I formated the card using the camera and batteries to start the birthday. Over the course of the next 4 hours I filled the card completely (43 RAW photos). Battery status was in the red (but not flashing) most of the day. These photos were taken with the internal flash! I then downloaded the card to the PC, reformatted it again inside the camera and filled the card a second time. This time it was a mixture of Jpeg and RAW. I download the 2nd 512MB card and again formatted inside the camera. As a curiousity, I then began firing more RAW photos to see if I could make the batteries expire. After 25 more RAW photos with the internal flash, I pronounced this battery nonsense dead. Even though the batteries inside were....well still going, I still decided to quit. There's no way I'd exceed 1G of data underwater in 1 day (I can't hold my air that long...haha) moreover, the camera fired another 256MB over 1G while using the internal flash which will be shut off while diving. Furthermore, this is on top of using it for an unspecified short period the other day. I'm now supremely confident that these AA rechargeables will get me through a days worth of diving. Some notes of results - red battery warning was on most of the day. 2. BAttery warning began to flash during the first part of the 2nd card. 3. internal flash was used the entire time!!! 4. When battery power indicator started to flash, the internal flash recharge time exceeded the RAW write times. 25 seconds between shots 5. During the day when pictures were taken, several shots (25?) were played back so people could see them. (it didn't occur to me to be scientific because I had no intention of testing the battery time when the day began). However, as the day progressed and I realized the batteries were holding up fine, I began to note the process. In conclusion, I can only say that the indicator in the camera itself might be flawed. I've also heard of people having issues with the CR-V3 where they had to shut off the camera and restart it in order to get it to work correctly. I've not yet experienced this with AA rechargeables. If it helps, I purchased my camera in October. I'm uncertain of the firmware revision level.

Marli, If durability is a concern, and manual controls are not, I'd look into the sport point and shoots like the waterproof Canon Elf series. These cameras would likely take a fall or two without problems whereas most of your consumer models will not. The side advantage of these sport models is you can introduce them to underwater photography inside a pool or through snorkeling. Anyway, just a few thoughts.

I've noticed with mine that the low battery icon is almost always on even with 2500mah AA's yet I've gotten through an entire 512 card before they truly expire and give you the battery dead blue screen. While that's fine on land where you can pop in fresh batteries any place, any time, I would only trust a fresh CR-V3 battery on a dive.

Where does pie fit into that?

I just had a flash back to high school math class after asking a dumb question. The self-imposed humiliation is too much to take....haha. Thanks,

James, That's a little confusing. My Oly says the same thing in the specs however when you've got it fully zoomed it allows you to choose a f2.8 all the way up to f8. So does it mean that anything I choose below f4.9 is irrelevant?

Well, I may have that opportunity here shortly as well; however, I'm going around Jan 22 .. My choices will be Saturday the 21st or Friday the 27th. It looks like Birds may be my best choice on such short notice and lack of any plan. Thanks for all the tips. One question....someone said use natural light..ie no flash however many of the pictures look as though a flash was used. Whats the general recommendation?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Olympus-PT-027-Underwa...1QQcmdZViewItem Sorry for your loss. I'm also on a tight budget so I can imagine how frustrating that must be. I just purchased an Oly housing because no one else had one out yet and I have a dive coming up in January. I've learned more on this thread than I ever imagined over the last 4 months and my "2nd" rig will definitely heed the advice I've learned on here.

Then I can tell you that the SP-350 has f2.8 similar to the canons. It comes with a built in infrared for focus in low light but I'm not sure how that feature would work underwater, if at all. Seems the Inon with a focus light is the way to go.

I've noticed there aren't any vendors of the Inon stuff. Are you suppose to buy everything direct through the website?

Sounds like the S70 is a nice camera that is faster than the SP350. I did find that the 350 will take two RAWs in about 2 seconds with a flash. I think I posted before that it was without flash. In any case its not lightning quick between RAW exposures with about 10 seconds of write time. Canon definitely made a mistake not allowing the S-80 to have a RAW mode. What is a fast 1.8 lense?