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Philippines / Cabilao Island / Macro

Started by ktwse ·

  • 9Posts
  • 9Replies

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Philippines / Cabilao Island / Macro

9 posts
  1. Just got back from a two week trip to this tiny, lovely island. The diving was excellent, surpassing our expectations.

     

    After a trip to Lembeh last summer I decided to take the plunge and house my topside 5D mkII. Got a Sea & Sea housing and ports but kept the same strobes. Couldn't afford a WA setup so stuck with my 100/2.8L for all dives. Anyway, this was the first time I used the setup and I have to say I quite enjoyed it, even if I still have a lot to learn.

     

    Feedback much appreciated.

     

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    Thanks,

     

    Tom

  2. Excellent set of photos. Pretty incredible for your first time out. My favorite is the frogfish, but I like them all.

     

    Looks like a great trip, too.

  3. Whoo hoo! Wonderful images Tom. Congrats!

  4. Great pictures Tom, thanks for sharing them!

     

    Nos 2 and 7 are my favourites!

     

    Adam

  5. Just got back from a two week trip to this tiny, lovely island. The diving was excellent, surpassing our expectations.

     

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

    Nice images ! my favorite is the frogfish.

     

    Good to hear you liked Cabilao ! since i have plans to go there in May . I didn't found much information about the place so will be great to have some imput from someone that went so recently and spent 2 weeks there .

     

    Here i go :

     

    How is the place for wide angle ?

    Any signs of coral bleaching ?

    Which dive sites you liked most ?

    Any potencial for topside shots (landscape/wildlife ) ?

    Which dive operator / guide you use ?

    You did afternoon and night dives ?

    Any shore dive ?

     

    I will only be there 4 nights at Polaris ,as part of a longer trip to different island so i need to "squeeze the juice" from Cabilao , any suggestion /tip will be greatly appreciated

     

    Regards

     

    Jose Alejandro

  6. Thanks for the feedback, everybody! Having spent an arm and a leg on the gear I need all the reassurance I can get it was the right decision... :)

     

    How is the place for wide angle ?

    Any signs of coral bleaching ?

    Which dive sites you liked most ?

    Any potencial for topside shots (landscape/wildlife ) ?

    Which dive operator / guide you use ?

    You did afternoon and night dives ?

    Any shore dive ?

     

    Jose,

     

    1. There's a few scenic places, and you might come across a small school of jacks, the occasional turtle or barracuda, but mostly I'd say this is a macro location.

     

    2. A little, but overall I'd say the reefs looked quite nice.

     

    3. Cambaquiz Slope (harlequin ghost pipe, dragonet, frogfish, devil spine, etc), Viewpoint (pygmy seahorse, best place for "big stuff", sea hare, squat lobsters etc) and House Reef (denise pygmy seahorse, orangutan crab, leaf scorpionfish, lots of cowries).

     

    4. Not much... There's a small lake, but don't bother spending time walking there. You can do stuff like this from the resort, basically:

     

    5441567232_5eb7eb0601.jpg

     

    5. We used Polaris and were very happy with them. They're the only resort with WIFI (if that matters to you), they've got good dive boats and most importantly excellent dive guides who really understand and cater to do photographers. We mostly got a guide of our own and were allowed to stay down as long as we wanted, which is really helpful when you have divers on the boat who run out of air after 45 minutes while you can stay down for 90 minutes...

     

    6. Yes, we did three mandarin dives and one night dive. All quite nice, especially finding a baby clown frogfish during the mandarin dives (we harrassed the poor fellow on every single one of those...). The mandarin fish were almost more shy than normally, however.

     

    7. We didn't do any shore dives, there's really no point, but I suppose if you absolutely must cram as much diving into a day as possible, you could wade to the House Reef, without a guide. Dives are normally 9 AM and 2 PM but they can also do one at 11:30 AM.

     

    Hope that helps,

     

    Tom

  7. Nice dark backgrounds. What were the settings you used?

    Peter

  8. Mostly used f16 and around 1/100 at ISO 200. Used strobes to control foreground light.

  9. Thanks a lot Tom ! very helpful .

     

    Nice sunrise .... i hope to get such flat seas conditions ,while there !!

     

    Regards

    Edited by elbuzo
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