Comeback!
It has been a while since I’ve had a reliably functioning underwater SLR setup! First, my Hugyfot housing for my Canon 5DII was urgently in need of service and went on a lengthy postal trip to Euroland and back to Australia. Then I was busy getting my PADI instructor certification & doing some teaching, and did lots of fun, but camera-less dives. Once I got back into the water camera-ed up, I found that there was still a small, but scary leak going on – it turned out to be the o-ring sealing the front glass of the macro port, which had not been serviced. Many thanks to my mate Gaetano for helping me figure that out, and changing the glass. It takes a good amount of technology, none of which can be malfunctioning the least, to be able to take nice pix underwater! And it feels good to be back in this state.
So I and a few really nice friends headed up North to Nelson Bay (read about it in my article in Issue 79 of underwater photo mag) and took my rejuvenated setup underwater. I could tell that I was a tad out of practice, but I am still happy with the shots I got (a few others I should have gotten as well!). Capturing an elusive moment of animal behavior, wide angle shots of sharks under difficult light and visibility conditions, and finding rather rare marine animals: good times!
The scorpionfish shot above I liiiike – I am always excited about capturing behavior.
I had seen these beautiful fiddler rays a few times before, but never gotten close enough with a camera.
A pleurobranch, a rather large mollusk. The Canon 50mm macro lens was just right for this slug.
One of the highlights of diving the Aussie east coast: grey nurse sharks! This time I used the Tokina 10-17 mm fisheye zoom for them, set at 16 mm, the widest it can be for a full-frame sensor camera without showing the metal vignette around the edge of the lens in the image. I really needed to get close to the sharks to take pix with that configuration, but in contrast to many sharks in the tropics these fish are not shy.
By the way: In 4 weeks I am heading to scuba paradise, otherwise known as Malapascua Island, Philippines, for the 3rd annual Evolution Photoganza. Please join me, we still have spots available, and a discount if you join with your dive buddy.
