Scuba – Page 2 – ::: jeffphillips.org :::

Vacation Planning

Once again it’s that time of year where we are dying for a vacation [well, isn’t that always, though?] and the destination of Belize has been chosen. It looks like we’ll be doing a fall dive trip to the Turneffe Atoll – which will be quite cool. It’s basically an island with a hotel on it – and a small one at that. That’s it. Just relaxation and diving.

For the second part of the trip, though, we’ll head inland into the jungle where we might do any number of things like canoeing, hiking, horseback riding, but certainly photography.

We have finally made our reservations.

It wasn’t easy, though. At first, we wanted to go to Cayman. However, the entire island is celebrating some kind of anniversary and all flights were sold out. Then, the search began in earnest with me looking from the Seychelles to Galapagos to the Marshall Islands – each of which was deemed too far. Belize finally won, but even choosing the hotels/resorts was tough. Each resort has different features and activities and prices things differently leaving us with a very difficult task of comparing apples to oranges.

It’s planned and booked now, though, and I’m ready to leave… but… I gotta wait a couple of months now.

Step Three: Diving With Sharks

Late Wednesday night of our cruise, we arrived in Nassau, Bahamas – our first shore experience began shortly after. We docked around 9PM and were able to push our way out of the boat a half hour or so later.

Everything was closed.

Well, not everything. The Atlantis resort was open. We all piled in a taxi and went to go see it. I have to say that it is an amazing place and the aquarium is … well, amazing.

After that evening, we got up very early the next morning [breakfast at 5AM is early, yes?] and met our dive boat owner at the front of the docks. She drove us to the other side of the island and we hopped on the boat and went out to sea.

I have to say I don’t think I’ve had another dive as relaxing and fun as this boat trip was. We originally asked for a two-tank dive, but they arranged it so that we had one deep dive and one shallow dive which used up only half of our air. There were quite a few lion fish in the water there – not natively, but accidentally introduced there.

Then, they took us to a spot where we could swim with sharks.

A previous boat had fed the sharks and they were clustered around the boats when we got there. That boat left and we dove in – well, I dove in, while the rest of the team followed slowly.

Some of the sharks came quite close.

I wanted to pet them… well, maybe not, but it was tempting to reach out and touch them.

The dive master said that there were about 30 sharks around us, but only a few were close at any given time.

I really like this one of Laura and our friends. Notice how they are tightly clinging to the rope while the sharks circle behind them… 🙂

This was a dive that I will likely never forget.

Then, we got out of the water and back on the boat. If the rest of the trip could have only been so good!

Cabo Dive Pictures

These are mostly diving pictures so far, but more will come later. It takes quite a bit of time to post them from here. Not the fastest of Internet uplinks.

Anyhow: we are now packing up and heading for the airport to go back to Virginia tonight. Then, tomorrow, we will be leaving our house yet again and going down to Richmond to visit friends for Thanksgiving. Lots of travel, but the next time will be much easier – no wet dive gear to deal with…

Hola!

We are in Cabo San Lucas. Life is relaxing. Of course, it wasn’t relaxing all week…

There were some hiccups while trying to find the dive shop. We actually missed our first dive due to construction and our inability to find our way around. However, we were able to find a place to call from and got detailed directions from the owner and signed up for the afternoon dive instead. Along the way, we were suckered into the time share schpeil. Yeah, we got a free breakfast, but sheesh! The sales pitch was painful. Ah, well. Live and learn.

Finally, we got to the dive shop and found that it was a hole in the wall. Literally. Talk about tiny. We even had to jump into the boat from the sand of the beach. I guess I’m spoiled. I like the Cozumel way of doing things. So – we dove 3 days and decided to call it quits. There was not enough visibilty or things to photograph and the water got real cold down deep. We decided that 6 dives was enough and that some relaxation time was what we really wanted. Tomorrow will be a sit-by-the-pool day. I might even have an umbrella drink.

Oh – and my dive computer died early in the 4th dive. Nice. I’m back to gages and tables now. I hope it was just batteries and when I can find some new ones, everything will be fine… I hope. If not, well… we won’t be diving for a while due to having to save up for some new equipment.

We have taken a good amount of pictures, but nowhere near what I usually do. I will post them here as soon as I can.

Short Timer

Two days and I’ll be in Mexico. We are really excited about the trip and it couldn’t come at a better time. I REALLY need a vacation. I need to get my mind off of work and come back with a fresh attitude.

What I’m really looking forward to is the opportunity to take some underwater pictures with my new camera setup, but also to have no responsibilities except for choosing a place to eat. It’s been far too long since I had a real relaxing vacation – one where I can sit on a beach with an umbrella drink in my hand and not worry about what time it is or if I have to write a document when I get up in the morning… I’ll just have to remember to get up and go diving. That’s not hard.

New Ikelite Case

2012-01-08 23:30:18

Last week, I received my Ikelite case for the Canon G9. This case is brand new. So new, in fact, that I am probably one of the first people to get one. I bet that even the underwater photography product reviewers got theirs no faster than I. It was released on October 17th and in my hands in the afternoon of the 19th. That’s what I call fast.

This came well ahead of time, since for a while, we were worried that the case wouldn’t come. The Canon case, which is much smaller and has less features, will not be released until Nov. 15th… and we leave on our trip on Nov. 14th. That wouldn’t work. So, for a while, I was nervous since I had no idea when I would actually get the case. But, I have it now, so all is good and I’m completely psyched up for our dive trip now.

I have to say that this will be unlike any underwater photography experience I’ve had to date. Previously, I carried only a pocket camera and a relatively similar sized case. Now, however, this case and external strobe is… well, HUGE. It is not, of course, that large in comparison to other Ikelite cases [especially since those are geared for D-SLR cameras], but it’s not a pocket camera case even though the G9 is a pocket camera. I’ll have to post a picture of me holding it since it’s rather larger than anything I’ve used so far. The stobe is nice and powerful [I got the DS-51, which is the bottom of the line, but it still works great – better than I expected] but having it mounted so far up will take some getting used to.

Underwater Photography, Third Try

With the upcoming arrival of the new camera, we will begin our next attempt at underwater photography. We have tried this multiple times with two different cameras so far, but with one setup: a pocket digital camera and an underwater housing. We have not yet tried it with a strobe.

So – it could be that we didn’t give the poor little S80 a real chance to shine, so to speak. In that vein, I’m glad we’ve ordered the G9 since it is usually handy to have a pocket camera instead of just the big, honkin’ DSLRs. I’ve ordered a housing and strobe setup by Ikelite specifically for this camera. The strobe will be delivered tomorrow, but the case is on backorder. I HOPE it will be here in time for our departure. I have no guarantees, but they say it will be shipped to the distributors on October 17th, who will then ship it to us. We leave on November 14th, so I hope that the case gets here well before that.

New Underwater Camera?

We’re going to try out a new underwater camera: the Canon G9. We were planning on renting a housing for Laura’s Rebel XTi, but found out that for the same price as the rental [or perhaps a little more], we could BUY a great quality pocket camera. So we started looking…

Looking at the old standby, the A series from Canon with which were were so familiar, I shortly realized that the G9 [notice, that’s not an “A”, but a “G”] was brand new and that RAW image support was back in! This was one of our complaints with the S80 – the S70 had RAW capabilites, but the next version did not, nor did the G7. The G9 lists for the same price that the S80 listed for, but due to the vast number of discounts I get for working at Microsoft, I was able to get the camera for $30 less than the best online price.

This is very important for underwater photography for several reasons, but mainly the dynamic range of photos is usually quite different underwater than it is on the surface, so a broader capability in the image format is necessary. RAW is a 12-bit data format, while JPG is 8-bit. The extra 4 bits goes a very long way. This will allow some serious recovery of highlights in what tend to be blown-out pictures [which we saw a lot of with the S80, unfortunately].

Our challenge now will be to both find a decent strobe setup that won’t cost too much and to find the new Ikelite case. I’ll have to make some phone calls for that if I want it to be shipped before we depart on our dive trip.

Oh – and the camera is not only for underwater. It can do everything else, too…

Dive Turkey 6: Dead For The Year.

It’s official now. No Dive Turkey this year. So, Laura and I will be going on our own little jaunt to Los Cabos in Mexico. This is our first venture to the Pacific coast of Mexico and the Baja. It’s certainly possible that we could see some large sealife – even up to the Whale Shark. Now THAT would be exciting!

Now I have to find a camera to use underwater…

Dive Turkey 6: Not Dead Yet…

It looks as if we might be able to do the sort-of-annual Dive Turkey trip if we place the travel days beginning with Thanksgiving instead of ending with it. More rooms are available. Now, we just need to see if others are okay with the dates we’d like and then book it. It will certainly save us big money if we can do the trip by driving and using points.