herbko

Thanks for the comments. Komodo and Bali has more muck diving compared to Wakatobi. Overall, I think I had more macro photo ops and Wakatobi had more large fan and sponges and soft corals for wide angle. A couple of the sites, Crystal Rock and Cannibal Rock were amongst the best I've ever seen for the shear number of fish there. There was nothing like that at Wakatobi.

I got a Sigma 24mm macro before my Komodo trip to try my hands at CFWA shots. The lens works quite well. In my pool test, I was able to focus all the way to the surface of the 8" Aquatica dome. I did the test at Lembeh resort of all places. The people watching me go into the pool with a dome port on my housing must have thought I've OD on Nitrogen. I'm not sure the staff there has ever seen a dome port. Here are a couple CFWA shots from the trip and a couple not so CFWA The biggest barrier to getting closer is getting strobe light to the front of the big 8" dome. I'll have to find a way to get a smaller dome for the housing.

Just back from a fun trip on the Kararu Voyager diving the Komodo and Bali area. I managed to do most of the image processing on the boat so the album is done early. http://herbko.net/komodo2007/ Here are a few highlights:

Agree. If the title didn't mention Puffer, it would be hard to figure out. Otherwise, a very interesting image.

Found this on a night dive near Komodo. Couldn't find it in the ID books on board. Any ideas? Sorry about the crappy photo. It didn't want to come out and play.

You are right, but I don't think there's much point to doing that. Just use a 15mm FE and crop away until you get to a cropped sensor size image. You'll have the equivalent of about a 10-15 on a cropped sensor, and you can have verticals without rotating the camera.

A quick update on what's happened. I'm writing from the Murex Lembeh Resort. My 2 bags totaled 40.8 kg. The lady checking me in told me there's a 30kg limit and then squinted at a chart by her keyboard and gave me a overweight charge. I think it was around 28000/kg, which is around $3/kg. Then she asked the purpose of my trip. I told her scuba, and she said there's another 10kg allowance and let it go. I let you know if it works on the way back. I'll have to make sure all my stuff is really dry.

Yes. Great. Looking forward to meeting you.

Thanks for the tips. I'm leaving later this evening. We'll see what happens.... I'm going on the Kararu after Lembeh and I asked Stein, their manager about this. He replied that the over weight charge on Garuda is $2/kg. So if they try to charge more I'll argue that the office told me it's $2/kg and try to make that hold up.

Thanks. I'm flying Garuda domestic only. I'll check on the business class upgrade when I get there. I'm not that concerned about a few extra dollars as long as everything gets there.

I'm off to Lembeh via Bali on Garuda Indonesia in a couple of days, and just read that they have a 30 kg limit on baggage. Anyone know how strictly this in enforced? Will there be an issue of getting over weight bags on the plane and what the charges are?

I finally had time to look. Interesting. It seems to be a sequence of streaming videos. I poked around a little. The "schedule" on the side lets the viewer go back to a previous clip, but does not allow skipping forward to clips scheduled "later". It's possible to skip forward to the end of the current clip, but that loops you back to same clip instead of the next one. Is the above the basic behavior that distinguishes an online tv station from a website with streaming clips?

What's an online TV station?

Berkely White at Backscatter suggests auto focus on one of your fins and lock focus. Sounds like a good idea to me.

I sometimes use the scheme developed by Craig Jones: magenta filter on the lens and the complement green filter on the strobes. This has the net effect of subtracting green ambient light while leaving the color of the strobe light unchanged. This is especially useful when the water conditions are less than the ideal tropical blue, and I think it also helps a little with sunball rendering.

I've alway felt a little guilt about spending all that money and time on underwater photo equipment that I only use occasionally. Last weekend over dinner a friend described her spring shoe shopping expedition. It's made me feel much better about my spending habits.

I use a Seagate 400GB USB/Firewire on a Dell 9100 laptop and tried both the USB and Firewire connections and not really noticed much difference. I'm not doing video, so perhaps I haven't stressed the cpu. One thing I find annoying about this external drive, and maybe it's only this one, is that it spins down after a short period of inactivity and take a few seconds to restart. Is there a way to modify the drives sleep settings in Windows or is it drive dependent?

The 100mm macro will be very different on the 5D vs the 300D. The FF sensor will give a 1.6x greater field of view and it'll be like using a 60mm on the 300D.

I have the Sigma 50mm. The lens extends quite a bit when focused to 1:1. Also, the front element is recessed ~1/2 inch from the front of the lens, a built in hood. The net result is that on my Aquatica setup, I have to add the same extension I use for the Canon 100mm to make it fit. That plus the large diameter of the Aquatica macro port makes it not practical to shoot at 1:1. I can never light a subject properly when focused that close with that lens. I find that I seldom use that lens with the 5D. The very few times I have, I've set the focus limit switch to 2:1 which allows a shorter port extension and increases autofocus speed.

Sigma 15mm FE. The fisheye takes a little getting use to, but it's now my most used WA lens for underwater.

Congrats Luiz! Beautiful shot.

Interesting idea. The Sigma 24mm macro has even higher magnification and of course wider.

Those were the settings I used on photoshop CS2. The raw file is here: http://herbko.net/misc/IMG_4410.CR2 if you'd like to have a look.

Just tried again with AI Servo and got the same black result.

A couple of friends of mine are planning a trip to the GBR this November and are trying to figure out when would be the best time and which operation to dive with. If it looks interesting I may tag along as well. Any recommendations? Thanks.