divegypsy

For sale - one Nauticam N120 x 20mm extension ring type 1 with lock. Excellent condition but alignments marks black, not white. Price $235 including free shipping to continental USA destinations.

Hi Brightnight, I have a used Nauticam N120 x 25mm extension ring that is available. It is a Type 1 ring with a lever lock. I'm asking $245 plus shiping costs. It is in excellent+ condition. It should easily fit into a USPO medium flat rate box which costs about $20 to recipients in US. Fred

Hi, I have a Nauticam N120 x 50mm type 2 extension ring with lock, near new condition, available for US $225 plus shipping costs. If you are interested please reply to me at divegypsy@gmail.com. Fred

I have the following Nauticam gear for sale. All are in excellent condition with only very minor scratches or scuffs on exterior surfaces. See pictures. Buyer pays shipping costs and paypal fees on all purchases. All Extension rings and macroport include Nauticam rear (o-ring protecting) port cover. Discounts available if you purchase multiple items. If you want to purchase any item or want to make an offer. Any questions please write to me at divegypsy@gmail.com. Thank you. Fred N120 Extension Ring with lock x 40mm $235 (new 439) N120 Extension ring with lock x 50mm $245 (New $448) N120 Extension Ring with lock x 60mm $260 (New $466) N120 Extension Ring with lock x 70mm $275 (New ???) N120 Macroport 87 with rear & front cover $295 (New $571) Single 67mm threaded Flip-holder (threads onto the macroport) $160 (New $300)

Yes bghazzi, it was an incredibly lucky moment. But when those moments happen you have to be ready which is why I shoot so often with the 70-180mm Micro-nikkor. There is no equivalent lens for a Canon or a Sony, nor an equivalent lens that works with any mirrorless camera, which is why I shoot with the D850 and use my Ikelite 161 strobes on TTL. I shot several dozen shots of the squid and while they weren't all perfect, almost every one was within easy processing range. The only failures were when I made a mistake and shot from so far away that the strobes weren't quite strong enough for the aperture I had chosen. In the next day or two or three I will post a "portfolio" of pictures I shot on my 2023 Bali trip. I took five other lenses on the trip (8-15mm fisheye, 16-35mm, 24-85mm, 105mm Micro-nikkor and 200mm Micro-nikkor)and shot with the first three of those lenses on about eight dives. On the other dives I shot with the 70-180. Didn't use the 105mm or 200mm.

My favorite underwater subjects are the cephalopod mollusks and I had several nice ceph encounters during my Sept/Oct dive trip to Bali. My favorite was with an incredibly co-operative squid. I first found it near a tangle of anchor ropes as I was returning to shore and use my last four hundred PSI shooting one shot of it after another. Several time it came so close I couldn't get the whole squid in the picture. But my air lasted for only a few minutes and when I went ashore for a new tank, I yelled for my dive buddy to get ready for the squid. It was there. And as Mark shot his first shots of the squid, I shot him shooting it. Then the squid darted down to bottom to grab something. It was a peacock mantis shrimp. And the incredibly co-operative squid allowed both Mark and I to shoot it dining on the mantis shrimp. The last shot in this set is my favorite shot of 2023. All pictures were taken with a Nikon 70-180mm Micro-nikkor zoom and a small dome port. And two Ikelite 161 strobes on TTL.

Here are three shots of a beautiful moray eel that I shot at a dive site called Kalanganyar in Bali a few years ago. The area where I took the picture was a sediment bottom, sand and mud with some small patches of coral or seaweed. I thought I'd found a good ID for it in a French language fish ID book that was in the Ocean Dreams dive shop in Pemuteran, but somehow I lost that ID and couldn't find the book when I was in Ocean Dreams in 2023. The moray was about 18" long (50 cm.). I have a lot of fish ID books, including Fishes of the East Indies by Allen and Erdmann, and it is not in any of them. The end of the tail in the full length view is particularly distinctive looking. If anyone can give me a positive ID I would appreciate their help. Thank you. Fred

Amazon has this book for $32.50 which doesn't seem like much for a 160 page hard cover book.

Hi Gang, On my last trip to Bali, September and October 2023, I finally got around to trying a pair of home-made snoots on my Ikelite 161 strobes. For years I've had a few delrin parts that bayonet onto the front of the strobe, but only recently finished the project with some short lengths of PVC pipe, some swimming pool noodle and small round sections of Paul C Buff grids for their studio strobes. The Buff grid is listed as reducing their strobe light to 20-degrees. The first shot shows a rear-view of my snoot. The second shot shows the snoot attached to the strobe and also shows a piece of styrofoam I put on the back of the strobe which makes it neutral in the water. Both are hooked to the strobes sync cable bulkhead with monofilament leashes so that if they come off of the strobe, they won't float away. This is especially important for the snoot because I can easily take it on and off underwater. The blue pool noodle on the snoot causes it to float above the strobe and not interfere with the strobes full wide-angle beam when I want to shoot normal lighting. With the easy bayonet mounting and monofilament leash I took the snoots on almost all of my dives though I didn't use them very much. Maybe because I'm an old dog and don't learn new tricks easily. The third shot is of a Devil Stinger, Inimicus, where I found it ans shot with a combination of ambient and flash light. In the second shot I've bugged the Stinger to cause it to raise its venomous spines. The third shot shows the stinger lit with the snooted strobe from the left and fairly strong fill from the right strobe. The fourth shots shows the stinger with the same snooted strobe on the left but with less "fill" on the right achieved by moving the right strobe farther from the stinger. The fifth stinger shot is with the "fill" strobe even farther away, but still providing a little detail in the shadows. I feel this really accentuates the venomous spines of the fish. Next a shot of a nudibranch using first no snoots and then snoots on both strobes to darken the background. And finally a small lionfish shot with two snooted strobes to separate it better from the background. The camera for all shots was a Nikon D850 with a 70-180mm micro-nikkor zoom lens. When shooting the little lionfish I added an Inon wet-diopter close-up lens in front of the zoom so the lionfish would fill the frame. Overall I'm pleased with the results of my "budget snoots" and especially pleased at how easy it is to attach and detach them from the Ikelite strobes. Fred

Hi Chris, Where I go in southern Australia depends a lot on how much time I have in Australia and how much money I have to spend. If I have a lot of both I can range as far east as New South Wales where I have had some very nice macro dives in Nelson Bay and especially like to dive with the guys at Southwest Rocks Dive Center who run trips to Fish Rock which is a great place to get shots of Gray Nurse Sharks and lots of other fish. Sometimes I make it to Blairgowrie jetty and other jetties in Victoria. But on many trips I spend all of my time diving the jetties of the South Yorke Peninsula, especially the Edithburgh jetty. Haven't made it to Oz since the pandemic. Was intending to go in 2022 but a minor disaster at home forced me to cancel Oz. Maybe next year.

Hi, My name is Fred and I use "divegypsy" as my title here because I used to spend almost half of each year traveling and diving. I'm 78 now and have slowed down a bit. Usually one long trip to Bali each year and sometimes a second long trip to southern Australia. I have made my living selling my underwater pictures to magazines and through photo agencies for the last thirty-five years. My favorite topics are animal behavior and relationships and my favorite underwater critters are the cephalopods. I've never met an octopus I didn't like. My best stories have sold widely in major magazines around the world which include National Geographic, National Wildlife, Geo Germany, and Geo France. My primary photo agency is Minden Pictures in the US and recently, Nature Picture Library in Great Britain. I currently shoot with Nikon D850s in Nauticam housings. The lens I use most is the Nikon 70-180mm micro-nikkor zoom. I've been using Ikelite DS161 strobes for the last 8-10 years and shoot almost everything using Ikelite's iTTL system which works beautifully with Nikon DSLRs. Maybe I'll run into one or another of the waterpixel crowd on my next trip to Bali. Happy to share information on the gear I shoot with. Fred