Equipment

Most of the newer pictures on this site were taken with a Canon Ixus960is in the Canon housing.

After 1 month and nearly 4000 pictures, it has become apparent that the camera is not as good as I first thought.
The autofocus is far too slow for fish photography.
The 'manual' setting is anything but manual. You have no control over aperture or shutter speed, therefore it is a struggle to get nice, balanced exposures underwater.
What is written below was before I had a chance to use the system underwater.

The Canon is certainly compact, in fact it's tiny, yet packed with features, 2 of which caught my eye;

• 12 Megapixels
• Image Stabilisation

12 megapixels is more than enough, and whilst they aren't everything, the more the merrier I say, it gives me more options with cropping etc.

Image Stabilisation sounds like it might be a crutch for poor photography, but if Nikon put it in their high end lenses, then why not in a digital compact? Trying to take a macro photo of a 1" nudibranch in a current is not the best way to get a steady shot, so anything that can help is welcome.

Digital compacts generally produce pretty good middle of the range shots straight out of the box, but the places we are going will require that bit extra. So I have got some add-on's for the setup.

A Wide Angle lens is, in my mind, essential. So naturally I got one, but not just any wide angle lens, I got the Inon Fisheye lens, this has a 165 degree field of view, which means I can fit just about any subject in, very important for the mantas and, hopefully, whale sharks.

To use the wide angle in shallow water, I have bought some filters, these help the camera to offset the blue cast of the water, and put some colour back in, without strobes. I use Magic Filters, designed by Alex Mustard and Peter Rowlands, they really are good. They come in different 'flavours' and so far I have had some good success with the Greenwater magic. On the trip, I will be using the Original Magic, which is designed for blue water conditions.

I think filter photography has a lot going for it, no strobes, so no backscatter, nice even illumination and an easy to handle camera setup, I can't wait to try it in nicer conditions than I already have.

Strobes are required to get a lot of light, as water does tend to just soak it up, so I went the whole hog and got a pair of Inon Z240's. These are very compact, but hugely powerful. They take AA batteries, which is good, no dedicated charger needed. They also have S-TTL, which basically, is autopilot, the strobes look at how much light the camera puts out and do the same.

Macro was needed next, now that the wide end was fully covered, and a pair of Inon 165 macro lenses fit the bill perfectly. These are very powerful magnification lenses, and they are stackable, for the really tiny things, like some of the shrimps and the pygmy seahorses.

One advantage of this setup over an SLR in a housing, is that all of the lenses are wet-swappable, so even if I am out shooting wide angle, it would be possible to change to macro within a couple of minutes.

The older pictures, from Lanzarote, were taken with an Olympus C5000 in an Olympus housing, again with Wide Angle and Macro add-on lenses, and an Epoque strobe.