Posts posted by TimG
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In salt water your gear displaces approx 2.4% difference to fresh water and is more buoyant. So you’d need to reduce buoyancy by broadly 2.4%. That may possibly be so little in practical terms that it’s not worth bothering.
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Hey Hadley
Great to have you with us. A warm welcome to Waterpixels. We hope you really enjoy the forum
Best wishes
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Hi turriffk (love the user name!)
Ive organised trips a few times to Egypt. I'd advise strongly looking at the southern Red Sea. That's a bit less crowded than the northern area which has tons of day boats in addition to liveaboards.
I always use Emperor Divers liveaboard fleet who I have found to be very good. Take a look at their trips out of Marsa Alam heading south: St Johns and the Furys is very good and not crazy busy - well for the most part any way. Last trip we had Oceanic Whites and loads of dolphins.
The itineraries that have The Brothers and Elphinstone Reef tend to be busier but the diving is pretty good.
The Red Sea gets pretty cold in the winter, say November to April with temperatures in the celsius teens. In the summer it gets into the very high celsius 20s or even low 30s.
As for travel, Marsa Alarm is fairly easy to get to via Europe especially via the UK or Amsterdam. Cairo is easy of course and there are 2-3 flights a day from Cairo to Marsa Alam. We've found those reliable and inexpensive. A couple of days sight-seeing in Cairo is a bonus and well worthwhile. I can recommend a company who can arrange a car, driver and guide for you. Similarly, if you use a Marsa-based boat, a 2-3 night side trip to Luxor is very worthwhile. You can then fly from Luxor to Cairo.
I really like diving in the Red Sea (and Egypt more generally), although, have to say, I did notice a drop off in reef quality from 2023 to 2024. I don't know if that was seasonal or more long-term. The colour vibrancy was just not as good.
Any follow-up questions, just let me know.
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How about which lenses underwater are excellent underwater but are horrible topside? Tokina 10-17, anyone?
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Yeah, I’m with Caolla. The more gear you carry, the more the distractions. One lens: you know then what you’re shooting and can concentrate on that. It’s a lesson I learned the relatively hard way (lots of unused kit), but it pays dividends, saves faffing about and avoids gear loss underwater.
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13 hours ago, dentrock said: Sorry, can't ship to buyers in the US. It's just too hard.
Remember the time when US sellers wouldn’t sell to potential buyers in Europe? Best of luck for 2026, my US friends…..
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Yep, I’m pretty much with Dave on this. I seldom remove them - especially the housing main o-ring - unless there is obvious sand or grit visible. Shore diving can create this. But week diving from a liveaboard rarely requires an o-ring removal with the potential for damage or mis-placing.
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I’m off to the Maldives next year and was mulling over strobes or no strobes for the classic manta dive. Waters are usually turbid, I guess, so backscatter would be an issue.
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Yep, the Nikkor 8-15 works really well on the Z bodies with the FTZ. I use it both with a Z6IiI and a Z9.
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diving with a non photgraphing partner
in General Chat
My partner became part of my dive images and is now terrific at positioning herself really well to enhance wide-angle shots. When its macro time, thankfully she has a fair amount of patience, will help find things and generally keep an eye on the general direction of the dive. I usually get an earful at the surface for a variety of offences but, hey, life rolls on, eh?
A personal dive guide when feasible is a great option.