bvanant

I really like the idea of a variable diaphragm but am too busy to try to make one myself. Cheers BVA

Long ago the DAN camera insurance was inexpensive and covered all kinds of loss. Every time a new camera came out there were a ton of "my camera/housing fell overboard and was lost" claims. After a couple of years of this camera loss was no longer covered. The DAN insurance used to let you decide how much to cover an item for, but I haven't looked for quite a while. Bill

Depends a lot on your home insurance. Many folks have reported that their homeowner's insurance premiums have increased after they made a dive housing claim. We live in Los Angeles and it our homeowner's rates went up since the fires. We self insure by creating a small ($15K) investment account that we keep mostly liquid. Over the last 10 years and 1500+ dives with no major user errors, we are quite a bit ahead of the game but also recognize that we are quite lucky. Bill

Will you be selling them? Bill

My take is that strobe EV control is aspirational, not real. But the difference as noted is tiny. On some cameras you can set the EV gaps. Bill

I love "egowank" will have to steal it from you. Bill

"I have a friend who had tri-focals done a while back, I believe he had them changed to mono-focals, apparently a common side effect is visual disturbances at night, some people get used to them and some don't. There is also an enhanced depth of field option which keeps a wider range in focus. " I am quite skeptical of this. IOLs can be removed and replaced, but this is both tricky and quite rare. My opthalmologist says that while he does 600 to 700 implants a year he does one replacement every 7-8 years and then only if the original IOL has moved. I just had both eyes done, great distance vision, sucky reading. One interesting observation, I had bad astigmatism and I still have some but it has rotated 90 degrees. Cheers Bill

Here is the last set (before the pool controlled experiment). These are with the OLY 90 macro lens (in 1:1 mode). In general the focus speed seems about the same, but it already was super speedy. These Tenelia sibogae are from Triton Bay. I THINK I can see a very slight difference but it really is hard to tell. Bill

Love the pompano. Guides do what they think will get them tips. If at the beginning of a trip you talk to the guides and say "every time you manipulate a subject your tip will go DOWN" you won't see bad behavior much. Years ago there was a Michael Aw (I think) photo of an octopus in a sunball. For years afterwards, divers showed the pic to the guide and said "I want that". Guides regularly took occtopus up to the surface for the shot. As long as you tell your guide before the dive what behavior you expect, I think you will get what you want, as long as the guide is for a small group. Bill

Underwater gear is an investment kind of like Bernie Madoff was. Every year the Southern California UPSs do a booth at the Long Beach scuba show. Everyone gets to put up 2 pictures. I don't want to calculate how much it cost to get those 2 pics for the show. My wife is a videographer (still shooting Sony Handicam in a Recsea housing), I don't try to convince her that I NEED new stuff. Bill

It might be AOI, it might be that Backscatter is taking a worst case approach. In any case, AOI is now competitive with Isotta (or the other way round). Bill

Longer distance focusing ends about seems less than a meter. At flasher beach the MFO and without the MFO were identical, zero shots in focus (par for the course). We went back with the close focus WA and still nothing. Bill

When we get back home, I will bring a tripod and target to the pool for some more scientific tests. Bill

The MFO does add a bit of magnification in my hands. Here is a weird sea cucumber (I thought it was a Phylidia) at first. The top photo is without the MFO the bottom with ( you can see a bit of magnification). I tried really hard to keep the camera/subject distance the same but we are in Triton Bay at full moon. This is with the Oly 60 macro, OM1 and two AOI RC strobes in RC mode. Differences are indeed subtle, the focus speed improvement is quite noticeable.

Which is which? Bill