Lembeh

Greetings from Indonesia and Manado.

Craig, Herb, Todd, Stephane, David & myself have had a fantastic couple of weeks in and around Northern Sulawesi, including the famous Lembeh Straits.

The creatures we discovered and captured on film & pixels were truly extraordinary.

These include WA, Macro & Supermacro images. Record number of frogfish finds - upto 7 different types on a dive!!! Many types of ghost pipefish too - Did't know there were so many!

Craig and his D100's realised some impressive work as well as the 5050's of the rest of the guy's - Even shot some myself for once - But mainly film. Hopefully fullframe shrimp heads at 5.5:1!!!

David and I are off to Sangalaki tomorrow at 05.30 for the Mantafest. The rest of the guy's back on line by Monday.

Thanks for sorting the Photocomp James!

Cheers, Bob

Thanks for the report Bob. Look fwd to seeing some photos soon!

Cheers

James

Herb on the case... B)

Bob - Please repost the image. Only part of it got posted.

Hey guys,

I'm in Perth, Australia and working on the pictures, I should publish them in a matter of days.

I had a great trip during the liveaboard and most of us were able to see critters that we never saw before: all sorts of frogfish (giant, clown, painted, hairy, weedy..) and ghost pipefish, star gazer, etc... and a damn ugly crocodile eel that makes Freddy Kruger a beauty.

On the bad side, my Ikelite DS-50 stopped working in the middle of the trip. Kudos to David for giving me his own DS-50 (who was working erratically but better than nothing) while he was using his Inon D180.

I apologize deeply for being responsible of the atrocious crime of a ghost pipefish. When I was shooting it, a wrasse came to stop between my mask and the viewfinder (Todd was apparently laughing his ass off at this time) staying still probably 10cm from my mask. I kicked her away and she came back to swallow the pipefish !!

Kudos to Bob for the trip !

Cheers,

Stephane

Cheers Stephane...

David & I are up to our eyes in Manta here on Sangalaki, only managed to see around 30 UW yesterday. Hope today is better!

07.00 now and back on the job at 08.00.

Excess weight charges on flight from Manado - Balikpapan/Berau exceded 800,000!

Allowance is only 10 kg's!!!

Hope Darren's Ass recovered from the sink incident eh!

Cheers Stephane...

 

David & I are up to our eyes in Manta here on Sangalaki, only managed to see around 30 UW yesterday. Hope today is better!

07.00 now and back on the job at 08.00.

 

Excess weight charges on flight from Manado - Balikpapan/Berau exceded 800,000!

Allowance is only 10 kg's!!!

 

Hope Darren's Ass recovered from the sink incident eh!

Hi Bob,

Tough job!

How's David doing with that Inon Dome. Looking forward to some great Manta pics.

Got back without problems this morning. I'll have some pics up in a couple of days.

If you think Darren had plumbing problems, you should ask Heather about her run in with a toilet.

If you think Darren had plumbing problems, you should ask Heather about her run in with a toilet.

More details please.

Glad you survived the long trip home Herb, suppose Todd's still getting there.

I missed out on the 'Toilet Humor' too

David is going through the apprenticeship, but getting the hang now.

Got some in your face manta today, but viz was too poor to monopolize on a lot of sightings unless they came in close-up as the above did.

Hopefully, the new fresh tide will bring better viz and op's this afternoon, as will a brighter stretch of sunshine.

Did see 24 manta in a line feeding, but only from the boat before lunch.

I still have Lembeh withdrawl symptoms!

"Lembeholics Synonymous" :ph34r:

Online !

I've got some pics online, some are still in the uploading process but hey, this is Oz, not Indonesia, so it's much faster. That's very welcome considering that there is about 25MB to upload.

You will find it here

Retrospectively, I'm a bit disappointed with the results as I failed a lot of pictures with overexposure. I actually figured out in the middle of the liveaboard thanks to David that when the controller was on 'manual' the GN button was simply ineffective and it has to be in TTL... eergh , I rebrowsed quickly the manuals but could not find a reference to that I will have to look better.

Anyway, this is the reason for my constant overexposure problem and the fact that I needed to shoot at f8 1/2000 for macro.

Once I changed this to TTL there was a much better result for the time that the strobe actually decided to work (it maybe did not like being on TTL )

I also feel like too many pictures suffer from abberation with the macro lens.

And finally it also tells me that I need 2 strobes as one is definitely not enough to get good exposure result. (Ok, I'm in no way discovering hot water with that statement)

Ok all in all no serious problem as I have been shooting with a strobe, macro and wide angle lens only a dozen of dives previous to the liveaboard, so this is the learning process.

Stephane

If you think Darren had plumbing problems, you should ask Heather about her run in with a toilet.

More details please.

You'll have to ask her. I couldn't do the story justice.

Great job Stephane! Lots of these critters look famililar for some reason

Wow! I really love your Wonderpus shots Stephane. Of course the pygmeys and the frogfish are nice too...

Hoping to see some topsides pix of you clowns soon as well.

Cheers

James

After about 34 hours without more than 2 hours of sleep I am back. And, damn at work first thing in am.

I don't want to see another airplane for awhile now.

My pics will get up in a bit as they are still in jet lag with myself. Only a 14hour time change to cope with right now.

As for my trip comments in brief. Stephane, Herb and I became the three muskateers on dives searching and finding every possible subject.

Bob, looking forward to the shoes from Sing!

As for the bathroom incident she was up to her elbow! That's all I can say.

Lembeh, well bring lots of storage. Ran out before I could get the picture of the dead dog floating by.

Some great great people on the trip that I will certainly keep in contact with and hope to dive with very soon. Craig is the critter expert folks. I learned so much I was finding my own after he left us.

First use of the Inon macro lens with some great pygmy results. I now know why they win contests. Not easy to shoot.

Whomever gave the boat the Egyptian money, they said they could not exchange it.

Lastly rooming with Herb for 2+ weeks was a blast. Unlike Davids previous experiences he does not sleep in the nude. Thanks for that Herb.

Thanks to all for the great trip!

OK guys let me start the ball rolling...

As discussed maybe one subject per day due to the volume of subjects we have to go through.

Today's subject for posting will be "Let it rain Pygmy's"

one more

And Cybergoldfishes favourite of my pygmy's is not one of these two.

You can’t spread such partial details here!

We want the all story without censoring.

Great macro shots!

Todd, woohoo! And w/ polyps open even. Nice shots.

Cheers

James

Thanks, 60 foot dive at night for dive number 5 of the day got the polyps out.

And, thanks to Ryan Canon for the fast shipping to get me the add-on Inon macro in time for the trip.

If only I had a 105 with a 2X on it...Or, maybe somebody did....Who was that shooting beside me that night?

To be continued.

Hmm...could his initials be CRAIG JONES perhaps? :-)

I'm sure Craig will take like 3 weeks to go through all of his photos...then he will post like 10 for us to enjoy...:-)

Cheers

James

I'll tell him not to post any, half of Wetpixel already saw them anyway.\

But, wait till Bob posts a little friend he took with 6x.