Cape Legendre Canon 10D EWA-Marine SCUBA Trip Report

Greetings all.

Today was an exciting day for my 10D - it got to go underwater again, in it's excellent EWA-Marine plastic bag.

Trip was to Cape Legendre, with the new boat 'Karratha Outdoors and Dive' have just bought. They're an excellent dive operation here in Karratha (that's a plug by the way, Beccy and Paul you owe me free stuff.) It was their first time out here too, so it was exciting all round.

I've wanted to dive here since I spotted it whilst doing aerial photography of the Dampier Archipelago late last year. Legendre Island is just a little too far out for me to get there in my little dive boat, and there wasn't a real dive shop in town until the last few months to take me there.

First dive was a deep dive to 30 meters. I'm sorry EWA-Marine, but I was never really going to take the 10D down quite that far in my crappy second hand E-bay plastic bag. Now given that I'm still asking Ewa-Marine for sponsorship through these forums (thanks Julian - have you clinched the deal yet?), I may need to edit that last sentence. Just in case it gives you the impression that Ewa-Marine housings suck.

I pulled out my 10D with my favorite wide angle zoom, the 17-40L prior to the second dive. Strobe light is provided by an external flash, the 420EX, which is also safely encased in the strong, quality West-German made flexible polymer housing. It's probably the sort of high-tech polymers that Nasa uses on the Space Shuttle, and I mean the ones that don't disintergrate on re-entry.

My dive buddy immediately looked concerned.

"I wouldn't put an expensive camera into that!".

Someone else gave my housing a funny look

"It doesn't look very waterproof..."

Look, it would be easy if I had this gear insured - I'd take the Ewa-Marine to 40 meters and happily watch the external pressure crush my Canon. There's a cool little valve on the back, exactly like an airmatress, that allows you to blow it up with air as much as you want. I reckon you could just about put some more air in at 30 meters down, without getting too much salty water sploshing around inside. On a good day.

So anyway, I wimped out and did the second dive without my camera either. But I couldn't come away completely empty handed, so after surfacing I grabbed my trusty ziplock and camera and redescended with my buddy for just under 10 minutes of extra photographic bottom-time. Here's a few photos and yes, my camera is still sort of dry.