Gear
Sony DSC-P9 and MPKP9 Marinepack.This was the first camera I ever took underwater. It is a simple point and shoot with all the good and the bad things. It was a fantastic easy camera to use and it taught me some of the basic stuff you needed to master to get the good shots - like a steady hand. It had quite a long shutterlag which ment that getting a good shot of a clownfish sometimes ment taking 15 pictures before getting a decent one. The setup was sold to a girl from the local diveshop. In the gallery you can see pictures taken with the setup. Look at Australia 2003, Egypt Marsa Alam 2004 and Egypt Sharm El-Sheikh 2004.
Olympus WZ-C8080, Ikelite Housing and Ikelite DS50 Flash.
The Olympus C8080 was the next step up from the Sony. More pixels ( 8 instead of 4 in the Sony ), a larger housing and an external flash.
I chose the Ikelite housing and flash over the Olympus housing because of severa cases of the Olympus housing breaking. The
price was around the same. I found the quality of the lens to
be quite good. Nice colours and sharp images. With the external DS50
flash you suddenly had the chance to get pictures without too much
backscatter and a different selection of fish because of the higher
amount of light. The only think was that you still had quite a long
shutterlag and diffeculties with focus in low light. The set later got
sold when it wasn't used anymore because of the Nikon D200. For
pictures taken with this setup have a look in the gallery at the trips
Egypt Hurghada 2005, Egypt Sharm El-Sheikh 2005 and Egypt Brothers 2006.
Nikon D200, Sea & Sea DX-D200 Housing and 2 X Sea & Sea YS110 Flashes.
I suddenly got a fantastic offer to get a DSLR at a fantastic price to
which I couldn't say no. Gone was the shutterlag and whole new world
opened up - with the good and the bad things to follow. I soon got the
Sea & Sea DX-D200 housing, 2 YS110 flash units, TTL Converter and dome and macro port for the 12-24mm and 105mm lenses.
I learned to use the camera on land before heading to Egypt, and thats where I experienced the first negative thing with such a large set-up - getting it all into one bag and getting it on a plane as carry on ! Got myself a hard case and managed to get it on the plane even though some of the airport people looked at it a bit. Later I got a Loewe Pro Wertex 300 bag that goes on your back. That doesn't look that much out of place when boarding the plane. I used the first couple of dives getting use to the larger setup and made some mistakes with the settings on the DSLR but it soon resultet in great images. The clownfish never looked so good ! This is still the setup I am using but now there is a Nikon D300.............. :)
In the gallery look at the trips to Egypt Marsa Alam 2007 and Thailand 2008 for images taken with this setup.
