John Liddiard

The clue is in the name. Rinse. Not soak. My usual strategy is to train the crew to put my camera straight into the basket beneath my spot on the kitting up bench. That gets it well out of the way from places it could fall from or get sloshed and knocked or otherwise be mistreated by other divers and their kit. Then once all divers are recovered and I am de-kitted and the general melee is over, I give it a few minutes rinse while twiddling knobs and pushing buttons. I never leave a camera unattended in a rinse tank for any period of time. I have seen many more (other photographer's) cameras leak in the rinse tank than I have seen leak underwater.

A neoprene strap or cover is a guarantee it will slip off in a back-roll. A plain rubber or silicone strap is more dependable for sticking in place. Just position the strap lower on the back of the head than 'text book' I have done many back roll entries with camera tucked into my chest and hand on mask. Never had a camera issue. My body makes a hole in the water and the camera follows me into it. On the right boat, it can also be practical to do a forward half-roll/slither/dive - start with the camera already danging in the water on lanyard and follow it in head first. Great for a seriously fast negative entry. In general, I have found that even for a negative entry boats position sufficiently up-current to allow for some faff, with the consequence that completing a seriously fast negative entry can under-shoot the target. For lenses, when I did a Galapagos trip a photo I took with a macro lens got a highly commended in the wildlife photographer of the year. The pic was more luck than judgement, but it wouldn't have happened without the macro lens.

Since photography went digital there has been software that aimed for similar with varying degrees of success and some of the software was marketed as intelligent or AI. Before photography went digital, folks did it the slow way with paintbrushes, masks, scissors, magnifying glasses and a lot of skill. Based on its training and the data available a generative AI makes a well informed prediction of what the missing detail should be. With good training such a prediction can be accurate. There will be cases where the prediction is plausible but wrong, and further cases where the prediction is stupid. All generative AI image 'improvement' has done is to take another step forward in a process with a very long history.

Consider what the lighting will be where the prints are shown. Different types of print and paper are suited to different kinds and levels of lighting. If framing, consider the kinds of glass available. For example, viewing a high gloss will be more susceptible to reflections. So it wouldn't be a good choice where a light or window would reflect when viewed from an angle.

Larger sensors actually have a smaller depth of fields

I suggest planning for 2 stages. 1 Put your TG6 in a housing. The Olympus housing is ok, and others are available. Add a strobe (or video light if video is your thing). Select the strobe and arm so they will be useful in stage 2. You could start with 1 strobe and move on to 2 strobes, or if you can get a good used deal on a matched pair of strobes get the pair. Practice your photography for what the TG6 is best for - macro and fish portraits. Or you could add a wide angle wet lens if you are looking ahead to stage 2 and are thinking of a wet lens system. The concept is that when you move on to a bigger camera/housing, everything except the housing for the TG6 will be re-used. You can then keep the TG6+housing as a back up. Get a year of practice in with this. You may find it suits you as-is, or you may continue to stage 2. 2 Later move on to an APSc or M4/3 or full frame as others are discussing.

Rather than adding up distance, add up travel time including required stopovers etc. That may change your perspective on where is viable.

How about New Zealand. Whilst the flights are longer, you can do it with only one change with the same airline somewhere in the gulf states, and you get bags checked and good aircraft all the way. The total travel time is usually less than many locations that are actually closer to Europe. Then rent a car in Auckland with diving to pick from including the Poor Knights. Plenty of other outdoor stuff. Easy to make it up as you go. Easy to rent (or buy) dive and outdoor kit in sizes to fit the whole family, so you don't need to take everything with you.

I moved from SLR and assorted lenses to m4/3 with a kit zoom and wet lenses a few years back. It works well for a journalist approach to a dive site. One site, get the wide angle to set the scene, fish in the middle, then macro all in one dive, then swap back again when the whale shark shows up! Then on to the next site. Wide angle is comparable to before the move. I find the main difference is on macro, where the CMC has to be close to the subject. A dedicated macro lens could achieve similar magnification from a little further away. In some situations that is a plus, and in some situations its a limitation. But its not a like-for-like comparison because I have never owned a dedicated macro lens for m4/3. If choosing again today my ideal would be a primary lens 60 or 105 macro (full frame equivalent) and a wet lens to convert that to wide angle. I would loose the ability to zoom for convenience at the extremes. But the balance of my diving has changed. I used to do a lot more wreck diving. Now I do more macro diving. Without travelling with a full shed of camera kit most of us need to compromise somewhere.

Seems to be a lot of duplication of capability. A main lens+ port for all types of shot. Then wet lenses for all types of shot. So as well as a bigger camera and housing, that setup also has the bulk of all that duplicated capability to carry on trips. If you want to convince your buddy, prune the upgrade to a bare minimum, leave out the duplication and file away it for 'later expansion'. The wet lens subset, single port and single main lens, will be an easier initial upgrade because it is closer in operation to what they already have. Then let them upgrade the primary lenses and ports slow time as they gain experience. Also to consider, they are used to using the camera screen to drive the TG5. Will they be using the screen or the viewfinder on the new setup? That can be a psychological hurdle, especially as most housing viewfinders get in the way of using the camera screen.

Back when I first started in underwater photography (1980s), I had a single strobe on a fixed arm. The advice I received was to try hand holding the strobe (disconnect the arm from the camera) to try different positions and angles. Looking back, that advice was the biggest single change in my photography and it didn't cost a penny on new equipment. These days everyone has multi-jointed flexible arms, but the same applies. Move the arm/strobe about relative to the camera and subject to experiment with different lighting.

Not for the hairy bloke who sat on that urchin.

I suspect the target market is more directed at surfers. For divers, maybe there are other benefits. Will it resist other puncture hazards? (I know someone who sat on a spiny urchin and perhaps this could have saved them) Will it last longer? How does the weight/buoyancy compare? Is it less compressible? Is it tear resistant - could it be used for a thin neoprene drysuit? And - how does it compare for cost?

Coron has a good spread of wrecks. Last time there I was defaulting to wide angle for the big wreck scenes. I noticed the deck of one of the wrecks was teeming with unusual nudibranchs. Next day I returned with a macro lens and all I could find was a few dragons. The others had all moved on.

Very neat. What translation of lens strength do you use from above to underwater?