John Liddiard

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?

Reviving an old thread. Has anyone tried these https://www.see-deep.com/ ? Apparently they were on a crowd source a couple of years ago, so maybe an underwater photographer on these forums has already tried them from the crowd campaign.

Its OK, found it under > My Activity Strems > All Activity.

Maybe I am missing something. I can't find the 'Latest Activity' link that used to appear (almost) top and to the right, where there was a list of all recent posts by age. Can anyone point me to where that is now?

Good to see the simplified controls. I like the robustness and reliability of my Inon strobes, but after many years I still have not got my phd in Inon. Moving the optical connector to behind the arm mount could also be good for protecting it.

I use the kit 14-42 pancake lens with a WWL. Very crisp at 14mm but needs to be perfectly aligned with the port. Whilst there are many other factors involved, I would guess the slightly wider 12mm lens could be more even more sensitive to alignment.

For a simple DIY, A cheap chunk of plastic - such as an old breadboard. Use a hacksaw to cut a block that covers the housing flash window (so no direct light creeps into the picture to add scatter). Find a drill size that matches the diameter of the plug on your fibre optic cable. Drill a hole through the middle of the block. Use duct tape or pvc electrical tape to tape the block over the flash window.

And don't forget the nasty category of competition - the rights grab.

The stats on sinking are just the tip. I have been on a Red Sea liveaboard where safety issues included diesel fumes being pumped through the cabins by a badly fitted AC unit and the crew denying there was any problem. Most customers ended up sleeping on deck. That was a boat booked by a major tour operator, so it is not just the danger of booking direct based on a web price. Its not just the Red Sea. I was staying at a resort in Raja Ampat where some divers turned up on-spec having jumped ship from a liveaboard they considered unseaworthy. There are safe and well maintained liveaboards. But in general, you need to accept that in many less developed countries none would match the safety standards expected of a boat operating in (for example) the UK, even if they do surpass the comfort/luxury levels of many UK boats.

If a macro lens focuses close enough, maybe its possible to do similar to what @Dave_Hicks suggests trapping bubbles on a flat port.

Unfortunately the proportion us underwater photographers represent of incoming tourists to Mexico is negligible. We could all simply refuse to go there and ... no-one in Mexico except a few specialised dive centres and the relevant 'tax' collectors would notice. Mexico has nothing to loose by letting this continue. If the same 'tax' rip-off was attempted in some other destinations, where the vast majority of visitors are underwater photographers, the drop in visitors would soon be noticed.

With all the technology, training and logistics pretty well handled by previous posts, the main point I would like to expand on is buoyancy control. Buoyancy control with open circuit can easily be fine tuned by breathing a little shallower or deeper. With a rebreather, the system of diver and rebreather has a constant volume. Breathing deeper or shallower has no effect. You control buoyancy by dumping or adding gas to BC, suit or loop. With hands full of camera, its not simple to do that while 'hovering' by your subject, and when you do it create bubbles or feed noise, in the same way breathing does, so negating one benefit of the rebreather. Hence the tactic is to get buoyancy perfectly adjusted before approaching the subject. Something we all should be practising, but more critical with a rebreather. That limits your approach to a subject being horizontal. Any up or down in the approach and buoyancy escalates in the wrong direction. As well as requiring a buoyancy adjustment, this can also have a dangerous effect on ppo2, another distraction. On a larger scale, this impacts dive plan. You end up avoiding even minor zig-zag, especially when shallower, because that affects loop volume. We should all avoid big zig-zag dive plans, but you don't notice just how much you zig-zag by just a meter or so without realising it until you dive a rebreather. From a more personal aspect, before I began using rebreathers my open circuit gas consumption was low. I was one of those divers who hardly breathed. After years rebreather diving, back on open circuit my gas consumption sucks, and no matter how much I concentrate I cant get back to my pre-rebreather rate. Perhaps it is the effect of +30 years age and more than a few kg weight. But I like to blame it on rebreather breathing habits.

For really cold water winter diving you could go the other direction. Narvik and surrounding Fjords have historically significant wrecks from WW2 and if you are lucky, killer whales. My Narvik article has become lost on Divernet, but it is available on Dyk.net https://dyk.net/art/bortom-narvik-–-bland-späckhuggare-och-vrak In the winter the visibility can be stunning, but the daylight hours short. Further north, in winter there is ice diving on P40 aircraft and a merchant ship Johan Faulbaum in Jarfjord near Kirkenes by the Russian border. My article on that has unfortunately also become lost from Divernet.

Yes, the lanyard clips to a right shoulder D-ring and I hold it in front of me or off to one side with both hands or one hand, which leaves it pretty much horizontal with me when in a nice horizontal trim in most situations. The camera is weighted a little negative, so moving it in and out can modify my angle in the water. If I let go of it, the base of the camera will be about an arm's length below me. If I am upright in the water, it will dangle at sporran height, so clear of my chest, but not in the way of my legs. If freediving, I wear the lanyard as a camera strap over my neck which keeps the camera tighter to me.