Milne Bay, PNG

Just got back from a 10 day trip to PNG which was spent at the very nice Tawali resort. Probably didn't get in as many dives as we would have on a liveaboard but the dives we did do were quite productive from a photography standpoint. Not too many big animals but the reefs looked great and the boys really did a bangup job finding critters for us on the muck dives.

Have a look.

http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/album112

Clinton

Very nice. Your lighting on the w/a stuff is superb. What strobes?

Very nice. Your lighting on the w/a stuff is superb. What strobes?

Thanks.

My rig is a D200 in a Subal Housing with dual Sea and Sea YS 350 strobes. I was using the 16mm FE for wide shots and the 105 VR for macro.

Regarding the strobes one thing is for sure. In the tropics you can't have enough power. I'm used to shooting in cold water and rarely use more than 1/4 power. In PNG for some of the sunburst shots I found I was still blowing out the sun exposures even at ISO100, F22, 1/250th of a second and of course even the YS350s were having trouble providing light at those settings.

Clinton

Excellent shots. How many dives per day?

Excellent shots. How many dives per day?

We ended up doing 26 dives in 8 days of diving (10 nights at the resort). Certainly this was not as much as we might have done on a liveaboard. With the resort you end up spending more time going to and from dive sites, etc. and we found most days we were pretty beat after 3 dives. (And I'm the kind of guy who does 5 dives a day on a liveaboard.)

In the end though I think it worked out OK. The guides are very familar with the sites and we did more repeat dives than we would have on a typical liveaboard itinerary. Both of these worked in my favor as the dives we did do were very productive. The guides already know where the frogfish is, we already did the dive so we know where the best shots are, etc.

Clinton

What routing to and from Pt. Moresby did you take for the 10 day trip? Business class, ooh how comfy

What routing to and from Pt. Moresby did you take for the 10 day trip? Business class, ooh how comfy

SFO-NRT-SIN-POM and back. Not exactly a direct route but it isn't clear there is a good way to get to PNG from the states. In the past I've done LAX-SYD-CNS-POM and LAX-AKL-BNE-POM and those are a long way out of the way too.

Realistically for all that flying we should have stayed longer but it was already 2 weeks away from work.

Business Class was courtesy of my friend Sami who as a bajillion miles on United due to work. We're still negotiating how much that will cost me.

Clinton