John Liddiard

How often do boats 'nudge' the reef without becoming stuck and without any official report? In my experience, it is not unusual. Even for a highly skilled boat captain, there is always an element of randomness in the behaviour of the boat. Then we have to admit that boats are under commercial pressure to give us divers the perfect drop off to start a dive and then have to pick up the those who ignore instructions and surface too close to the reef or do not swim out after surfacing or limit the captains ability to manoeuvre by swimming into danger areas such as by the propeller before being given the all clear by the crew. Whilst captains bear ultimate responsibility for their boat, divers often do not help them to realize that responsibility.

In the past having everything powered by sets of 4xAA batteries was useful for all the reasons given by others. The universal AA has saved me on multiple occasions. But cameras now have manufacturers' dedicated batteries, most decent dive lights have dedicated batteries. The benefit of commonality has been broken, so strobes also having dedicated batteries would not deter me. As an old school Inon user, I have 4 x Z240s. About 20 years ago I replaced some woefully unreliable S&S strobes with a new pair of Z240s, then more recently obtained a second pair used 'just in case'. None of my Z240s has ever failed. The most I have needed to do is clean up battery contacts. The UI is awful. I still don't have my phd in Inon. But reliability trumps everything.

First off, I am glad Tim and everyone else escaped. There must be an enormous temptation to "just nip inside" for passport, wallet and $X,000 of camera system. Every time I hear of a boat fire or sinking on a reef, I am shocked by how often I realise I have dived from the boat concerned. Is that a statistical thing, or just a bit of sub-conscious psychology and my mind kidding me? Same for how often we hear of boat fires, reef sinking and capsizes. Has the frequency increased, or is it just better reporting now we have the internet? I did a tour of a boatyard in Egypt where Red Sea dive boats of all sizes are built and repaired. Most are constructed of wood frames and planks, covered with thin sheets of ply and an epoxy based paint to achieve that polished hull look. By contrast, in 'pure' GRP construction the hull is usually moulded as one or more panels, then joined and strengthened with ply or composite frames. I would guess that there are many hybrid variations, especially once repairs are taken into account. The inside fit with both constructions will be predominantly wood. I doubt if there is much difference in flammability, toxicity or unstoppable progress once a fire gets established in the basic structure.

I got tired of trying to educate old-school publishers of this years ago. The other stupid thing they asked for was 50 Mbyte files. 50 Mbytes of what? I suspect (and could be wrong) that the stupidity came from film and the default output from drum scanners. So I just gave them files tweaked to match the stupid specifications.

I clicked the link. £36.80, €46. Is that a regular razor blade in the image of the cutter? I am guessing that a 1-off use of a fresh razor blade will give an even cleaner cut than a stanley blade. Maybe one of our 3-d print experts could come up with design for printing such a block. I don't have a printer, but expect I could machine similar from aluminium or delrin. For individual use, it wouldn't need to last for 1000s of cuts. Edit - seems there are plenty in the £10+/- range on ebay

A friend once built a pressure pot by cutting in half an aluminium scuba cylinder that had failed test and making a perspex lid for the bottom half, then tapping in a pressure feed. It was only for a few bar, so a cylinder that had failed a 200 bar + test pressure was not a bad risk. It was part of an undergraduate engineering project. The trick on safe use is to completely fill with water, then only use a little air to pressurise - just like they do when cylinder testing, but only to a few bar. Unfortunately it wouldn't be big enough for a real camera housing, but could probably have worked for a compact. He used it to test and calibrate old analogue depth gauges against a lab quality guage.

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.