Dave_Hicks

On my last visit I put dive gear in a big Pelican bag, and camera gear in a standard rolling suitcase. I took all the dive gear through the checkpoint, and my wife took the suitcases. The inspectors flocked to the Pelican bags and ignored the suitcases. So, a "Decoy strategy" might work for you too.

Yes, but then you have to put a dome on it. The extension would be huge. It is a 77mm filter size which is very broad to get in a port. As mentioned, this is not ideal for wet optics.

That is a very large lens for underwater use. I have never heard of anyone using the 24-70 in a housing and doubt if this one will be much different.

Thanks for the great trip report and excellent photos!

A few people have asked me for custom Nauticam Focus Gears recently. I designed and sent them a custom gear. As usual, I have shared the designs on MakerWorld: Nauticam Focus Gear for Nikon 60mm 2.8G Macro Lens https://makerworld.com/en/models/1824725-nauticam-focus-gear-for-nikon-60mm-2-8g-macro-lens#profileId-1947944 Nauticam Focus Gear for TTArtisan 100mm Z-mount https://makerworld.com/en/models/1804480-nauticam-focus-gear-for-ttartisan-100mm-z-mount#profileId-1924490

I have both of these and am not willing to sell! I think these are vastly undervalued. I see them selling for cheap quite often, but I think they are similar in quality and provide a more useful focal range than the Nauticam variants. The +10 is quite a big nugget of glass, however.

I have personally re-soldered broken connections on two other divers triggers during a trip. Maybe a soldering iron is a good alternative to a spare trigger?

I had to look that one up!

I like making Nauticam gears and adding to my collection. I have a bunch of designs on MakerWorld but not this one. I have the lens, so I can design and print a custom focus gear. It will save you a bundle. Message me if you are interested.

Lightroom is a real powerhouse these days in my opinion. It has vastly improved in the last 5 years. The AI feature that is most useful is not even generative like Remove. It is creating Masks. Masking a complex shape, like that Warbonnet, allows you to make adjustments to a target selection in an image. Brightness, clarity, sharpness, black level, etc. The recent addition on AI denoise is another big improvement. The are the types of AI we can all appreciate as they just make the tools you already used quicker and easier. Masking use to be a painful experience and now its effortless and powerful. Anyway, i feel like i get my money's worth. PS- I can't imagine handling 1000's of photos any more without Lightroom's tagging, triage, and organization capabilities. Shudder!

Maybe we can send you some Wolfeels!

With the amount of money underwater photo enthusiasts spend on lenses, ports, and strobes, etc an Adobe subscription is cheap by comparison. I'm still paying $120usd a year for Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, and it is a better enhancement to my photography than any lens, body, or port I have ever bought. In the distant past I used Nikon's apps (what was that called) and other photo editing tools over the years. Lightroom was an instant upgrade to my output and made my workflow so much easier. I have no qualms about paying a subscription for the best tools available. Meanwhile, I pay subscriptions for my News, TV, internet access, mobile phone service, amazon deliveries, Car (lease), health care, and a dozen other things. At least Adobe gets better over time, unlike most of this other crap that just stagnates or gets worse every year.

No, that's lunch! Wolfeels love urchins and the reefs are overrun with them since the Sunflower Star near-extinction even a dozen years ago. Wolfeels help to keep the urchins in check.

Agreed, there are many ways to solve any photo editing challenge. It is a lot more difficult if the reflection is not on open water. If it ends up on a complex surface cloning is not going to work as simply. Plus, Photoshop Remove will do the job in about 10 seconds

In my opinion, that picture really didn't need a BS scrub. Just some brightness adjustments or masks. The backscatter was pretty mild. It's okay to show a little bit of reality in your images. The AI based remove tools in image apps will do wonders on those reflections, however.

Here are a couple of more shots of the Mosshead Warbonnet.

Thanks! They don't make it easy tucked back into those holes!

The Remove brush in Photoshop is going to work about 1000X better than Gimp. It is also better or more precise than remove in LRc.

Red Irish Lord: All from the same dive.

And a Jellyfish:

Oh yeah. Love Wolfeels too! This one was right next to the warbonnet.

Found an absolutely gorgeous Mosshead Warbonnet (Chirolophis nugator) on Sunrise Reef in Gig Harbor. (About 1 hour south of Seattle in Puget Sound.) This is one of the most amazing fish of the Pacific Northwest. With it's ornate and detailed camouflage mossy head dress, bright red color, and patterned body it's got a lot going on. This one was quite large at about 20cm and more colorful than most of its kind. So of course I had to shoot it! I was carrying a wide-angle lens setup, hoping for big GPOs and Wolfeels. Nikon Z8, 24-50mm, WWL-C port, so really not ideal for this small subject. The WWL-C optics closed the gap however! I zoomed to 50mm and flipped the sensor in the DX 1.5x crop mode to achieve a near-macro framing. My big, high-power HF-1 strobes were powered down to 1/8, angled in, and didn't blow out the scene. I'm happy with the result! Even though I forgot to roll the ISO down toward 100 for a macro subject I can't see anything negative at ISO500. Nikon Z8 w/24-50mm, @50MM, WWL-C, f13@1/200s iso500, Pair of Backscatter HF-1 strobes: I found a Giant Pacific Octopus too, snuggled in a den: Nikon Z8 w/24-50mm, WWL-C, f11@1/160s iso500, Pair of Backscatter HF-1 strobes: