cocos

I will be heading to Cocos in the end of May/June. Can anyone provide general (or specific) tips for shooting there? Thanks.

A wide angle zoom lens , something around 17-35mm , powerful and fast recycling strobes . Be ready to slow your shutter speeds or to increase your iso , because a lot of times is cloudy or raining and the bottom is dark .

Make a least a couple of dives with a 60 mm macro or similar lens . Bottom is full of interesting subjects also you can make some portraits of sharks , morays , etc.

Use nitrox and be conservative with your diving ( depth /time ) because that's is truly in the middle of the ocean .

Don't miss the night dives

Take a look in to the blue often and be prepared , anything can happen ( i'm talking about interesting subjects )

With the hammerheads ( specially Alcyone ) look from above where are the creole fishes as soon as you enter the water , they are always facing the current , do the same yourself and stick to the bottom better if behind a rock , be patience , hold your breath ( if you can use a rebreather, better ) wait until the hammer is really close then take the picture.

Sunrise and sunsets offer great photo opportunities at Cocos .

Mainland Costa Rica is great for wildlife photography .

Good luck

For the 60mm when they dive the Silver Tip/Red Lip Batfish site you have a 50/50 chance the sharks will be there. If they do it 2x you may want to take the 60mm on one of the dives. The 17-35 is a little wide for anything at that site but the Silver Tips. Choices, choices, choices...

Also there is a way to set your camera and lens to focus on anything say 6ft to infinity. (I am trying to figure out how to do this) But due to viz this would be a good thing to know as the viz sometimes makes it tough for the auto focus to work.

I have a 10-22mm for my 20D which I can manual focus if needed. Sounds like that will be the primary set up (similar to Bahamas shark dive).