WooT! I am finally off!

Those of us who only get to dive 1-2 times a year will appreciate my excitment........

belize agressor trip starts in 21:12:08. (Hrs.Min,Sec) :-D

See you all in week or so......(as I pray for no flooded strobes this trip)

Awesome Bob, ya lucky Dawg! Looking forward to the photos/trip report!

I am baaaaaack!!!! :-P

Despite camera problems, I had 7 days of pure heaven on earth diving. As a group we saw a little bit of everything you would expect, and some of the most beautiful reefs I have seen in a long time.

Short summary....

We spent the entire week except for check out dives and Blue hole on 1/2 moon caye/Lightohouse reef. Walls were truely phenomanal. Zero current seas under 2-3 feet. Water temps 82-85, viz between 60-100ft.

We saw:

Eagle Rays, 1 hammerhead, Sea Turtles, Tarpon, barracuda, lobster, crab more fish than I have seen since Fiji. Oh did I mention coral, coral and more coral.

Nice trip to the bird sanctuary on 1/2 moon caye.

Typical day. eat...dive...nap..dive..eat..nap...dive...snack...dive....eat...dive...drink Bellikan beer...pass out....repeat. :-D

I will get some shots up over the next week or so...(uggh scanners) and have a web page up soon, I hope. I scanned one yesterday just to test out my old scanner. It blows....colors are way off so this may take a while. :-(

http://www.usefilm.com/showphoto.php?id=163199 This should be much more bright than the scan, I am still working on colors/adjustments, but I cannot believe how bad the colors are in the scans.

Well I havent figured out the scanner problem, but I did get the first image color corrected.

Nice shot Bob (insert something about the merits of no digital shutter lag HERE). What went wrong with the camera?

Mike

Hi and thanks Mike.

Mostly operator error! First time with two strobes and it took a long while to get the balance right. (The big Plus for Digital)

I bought a Ike 50 strobe to use as a second strobe and the battery compartment flooded in the pre-dive test (no Batts in thankfully). Anyone who knows me knows I think Ike's stuff is the best, but I got to say the design of that o-ring seal is the worst I have ever seen. I bought all new orings from Ike, the back cover for the batttery has a small groove that is basically square. The problem is you can't get the round o-ring to fit in the grooves and stay put when you screw the cover on the strobe. We had three photo pros working on it......

...anyway by the third day we got it sealed, and prayed the batteries would not die before the trip ended. I am sure there is a way to set the o-ring but we were all too stupid to figure it out.

As far as the camera, on the second day it developed an autofocus problem. It worked fine if I left all focus points selected, but if I set the focus point to the center point or any others it would not focus. At first it simply zoomed in and out trying to find a lock, than it just quit trying. (got tired I guess)

That really wasn't all that big a deal once I figured out how to work around it, as most shots were senics anyway. I will send it off to canon and have it checked out before the next trip. It would have been a huge pain for macro or extreme close-ups

Mostly the little aggaravations one would expect Mike. All in all I got some stunning shots, including the best sea turtle shots I have ever been able to get. Hope I can reproduce them in digital well enough to do them justice.

Thanks

Visited your site Bob - and it looks like you came back with some great stuff, despite your troubles. Colors look great. What film were you shooting with?

60% were taken with Provia, the balance with Velvia.

thanks Mark!