Malapascua, Philippines

[Fat Bob]

I'm off to Malapascua, 'Peens later tonight, and will hopefully take a photo or two of a thresher shark. Or at least see them, and sod the photos!

Will also be playing with my new camera, the Canon 960IS in underwater housing. Should be fun!

Then off to Manila next friday for the Manila 10's, first time I'll have been there and certainly looking forward to it all!

Will report back on the bits I can report on!

[skank-la]

Malapascua was one of the best kept secrets of the Peens

Flight to Cebu -then drive up to the NE tip of the island then a ferry ride ot Malapascua

Enjoy one of the most laid back places left in the world.

FB in Manila for the 1st time
The mind shudders....

This should be a good report later

[BFG]

Manilla 10's are a load of fun - just remember the "Changi Rules"...

[Fat Bob]

I'm back! Great fun, both the diving and the Manila 10s, top time had!

Photos from the diving are here, though there doesn't seem to be any photos from the rugby yet.....

[BFG]

I'm back! Great fun, both the diving and the Manila 10s, top time had!

Photos from the diving are here, though there doesn't seem to be any photos from the rugby yet.....

The "no rugby photos" is a good thing. Trust me on this...

[Fat Bob]

Cool! One of my photos has been used by the dive company I went with in order to promote their new course, the PADI Thresher Shark Course on the Aussie Scuba Diver blogspot! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!

(With my permission, of course!)

YAY! Feel dead chuffed!

[Burbage]

The PADI Thresher Shark Course??

PADI gets more ridiculous by the day.

Not to say that your photo isn't incredibly brilliant of course, FB.

[Fat Bob]

Agree, the number of Specality Courses now available is gone way over the top. And of course, to become a Master Scuba Diver, then you need to have taken 5 of these courses. Bag o'shite!

But my photo was used!! YAY!!!

[cromasaig]

Those photos are incredible FB. So cool.

[BFG]

Nice one, big fellah, nice one...

29 days and counting!!! Tee Hee!!!!!

[Rosbif71]

I'm back! Great fun, both the diving and the Manila 10s, top time had!

Photos from the diving are here, though there doesn't seem to be any photos from the rugby yet.....

The "no rugby photos" is a good thing. Trust me on this...

what goes on tour stays on tour!

[Rosbif71]

I'm back! Great fun, both the diving and the Manila 10s, top time had!

Photos from the diving are here, though there doesn't seem to be any photos from the rugby yet.....

am quite jealous. havnt been able to dive since i got out here. Used to be a simple 1.5 hour drive up to the Indian Ocean when I lived in Dubai. Bit more complicated here especially as I arrived during monsoon season

[Fat Bob]

Rosbif, don't now about your personal circumstances, but I've done LOADS of diving in "monsoon" season. Options are Phillipines, Maldives, Phukets (and rest of rest coast Thailand) and Sipidan. And Bali isn't too bad. All good all year around.

And I'm currently planning Layang Layang in April....YAY!!!

Feel free to ask more, I know all the right places! Thought I'm sure others do. Suggest http://www.finsonline.com forum is a good starting pont.

[Burbage]

FB, remind me again, what is your camera set up? How did the 960 compare with your previous camera? I might look into getting one. What do you use and if you we're to buy a similar set up right now what would you buy?

[Fat Bob]

It's a Canon 960IS with the Canon housing, so nothing particularly special and can be got for less than S$1000 (please check local listings for costs! )

Compared to the 800IS, then it's got more Megapixels. Personally, I could have stayed with teh 800IS but I had upgraditis.

If I was buying now, I'd again go for a Canon Ixus, either the 870IS or the 980IS. The better zoom with the 870IS comes with the trade-off with less megapixels, (10MP with 870IS, 14MP with 980IS). However, I would try one thing for these two: shutter lag. See which one is shortest. The 960IS is slightly longer shutter lag than my older 800IS, but that's a trade off (I think there was a huge jump in megapixels at the time, along with upgraditis that I've spoken about!)

I have a friend who went for the Canon G9 and housing from somewhere else: if you are doing anything more than recreational diving (bottom limit of 40-50metres) then I wouldn't bother getting anything than the Canon housing. If you plan to do much deeper dives then get the better housings that various people provide, I've never looked into this past the main companies, but hey.

The reasons for Canon: good lenses even on their cheap stuff, they mostly have housings, the IS is a great plus for divers, the screen is pretty good underwater, and the shutter lags are some of the best out on a point and shoot.

One reason for a G9 instead of Ixus is the extra functions like recording in RAW format. But hey, none of my photos were recorded in RAW and there's some good ones there. And hey, get the highest resolution setting in JPEG and they do the job without getting too large a filesize.

[Dinosaur]

I'm back! Great fun, both the diving and the Manila 10s, top time had!

Photos from the diving are here, though there doesn't seem to be any photos from the rugby yet.....

am quite jealous. havnt been able to dive since i got out here. Used to be a simple 1.5 hour drive up to the Indian Ocean when I lived in Dubai. Bit more complicated here especially as I arrived during monsoon season

Was that in Sultanate of Oman? Someone told me there's great diving there... and of course Oman is the best kept secret in the Arabian Gulf.

[Burbage]

It's a Canon 960IS with the Canon housing, so nothing particularly special and can be got for less than S$1000 (please check local listings for costs! )

Compared to the 800IS, then it's got more Megapixels. Personally, I could have stayed with teh 800IS but I had upgraditis.

If I was buying now, I'd again go for a Canon Ixus, either the 870IS or the 980IS. The better zoom with the 870IS comes with the trade-off with less megapixels, (10MP with 870IS, 14MP with 980IS). However, I would try one thing for these two: shutter lag. See which one is shortest. The 960IS is slightly longer shutter lag than my older 800IS, but that's a trade off (I think there was a huge jump in megapixels at the time, along with upgraditis that I've spoken about!)

I have a friend who went for the Canon G9 and housing from somewhere else: if you are doing anything more than recreational diving (bottom limit of 40-50metres) then I wouldn't bother getting anything than the Canon housing. If you plan to do much deeper dives then get the better housings that various people provide, I've never looked into this past the main companies, but hey.

The reasons for Canon: good lenses even on their cheap stuff, they mostly have housings, the IS is a great plus for divers, the screen is pretty good underwater, and the shutter lags are some of the best out on a point and shoot.

One reason for a G9 instead of Ixus is the extra functions like recording in RAW format. But hey, none of my photos were recorded in RAW and there's some good ones there. And hey, get the highest resolution setting in JPEG and they do the job without getting too large a filesize.

Very informative. Thanks. One other thing, what camera settings do you use? What options are there on these cameras for manual control? Would that reduce the shutter lag? Does having an external light and switching off the flash reduce the shutter lag? Seems to me that, having had a go with a rented camera at the weekend, shutter lag is the biggest problem... Particularly in a 5 knot current when both you and the fish are moving!

Now, Nudibranchs. It seems to be a Harlequin, but the gills are on the front of the body, rather than the back. Do you know what it is? It's not in my book.

blue_black_nudibranch.jpg

[Fat Bob]

Have asked several people about having a light (not a strobe) external to the casing and they are all "no no no". However, some night shots I took in Sipidan last year are pretty good with my hand-held light and flash. So maybe they are talking bollocks. I've never managed to get a slave-strobe to work with my Ixus, found just too many poor shots with over- or under-exposure.

I take my photos with teh "underwater" setting on the Canon cameras. This has been out for a while, I suppose they will do it on new ones. You can put the camera to full manual, but then I'd have the issue of setting the full manual setting into an underwater mode setting....not easy.

Supposedly you can use a white-board to set the white-balance of pictures, I've got no idea how to do it, but I suppose it would work if you had a bit more control say on the G9 as opposed to the Ixus. That'll work on your nudibranch but not in the 5knot current.

the shutter lag is all dependant on the camera. I've been told the shutter lag on the Canons are good in comparison to others (I think Sony and Panasonic both tried to do underwater housings and they didn't do well because of this). This is where you might think going for less MP might be better as there's less shutter lag, or that's what I noticed between the 800IS and 960IS. If I'd have really known about the increase in shutter lag on the 960IS, I would have gone for the 850IS (I think that's the model that was out at the time), but with the 860IS at 10MP, this should be enough unless you are taking a nudi from 10m away and cropping.

Will have a look in my bok: I tend to just call nudis nudis, and after that not worry too much!

[Morrolan]

fab pics, every time i look at them.

oh, and i missed the post where you said your thresher pic was used by the diving company (which one exactly?). belated congrats!

[Burbage]

Hmm... I would presume that the use of the flash on these compacts would increase the delay from activating the shutter release. You don't notice any difference i the time from hitting the button to taking the picture wih and without the flash?

White balance can be fixed afterwards. The range of the flash on these things underwater is only going to be a couple of metres anyway. And the same rules apply re the absorbtion of different wavelengths, red light won't even go that far.

Anyway, useful comments. I'll bear them all in mind.

[Burbage]

Well, thanks to FB's advice I got the Ixus 870 and case. Still trying to figure it all out, but here's a picture from the first outing:

IMG_0096.jpg

[Fat Bob]

Nice pic indeed. I'm taking it the fish is in the foreground? Otherwise you got a monster bump-head parrot fish there!

Enjoy, it's bloody good fun. Don't let the photo taking take over your dive though!

[Burbage]

It's a giant wrasse. I'm sure you were just testing. The pilot fish right by its forehead are about 2cm long. The diver isn't all that far away. I guess it was about 2m long. Followed us for most of the dive. Also saw a 2-3m bull shark, which checked us out for quite a while, but never close enough for a photo. Happy enough with that frankly. Made sure a japanese tourist was always between me and it.

[Fat Bob]

Course it's a wrasse! DOH! Fool I am!

Saw a bull shark? Bet your sphincter was twitching then! One thing to remember, have a sharp, pointy knife with you. Then you can stab your buddy/japanese diver and swim off whilst the shark gets attracted by the bleeding diver. When at a safe distance, turn around and grab a couple of shots of "nature doing what nature does"

[Burbage]

Did pretty well to get a dive in this weekend, there was a cyclone round the corner, but a friend from Paris was in the region and she wanted to go. Vis was pretty poor. Still, got to play with the new camera. Parents here this week, might be back at the reef next weekend. It's visiting time at the asylum.