I am still experimenting with "Magic Filters" . This large loggerhead turtle was eating a hermit crab when we found it. It was at 90ft which caused a few exposure problems with the filters but I still managed to get a couple of shots worth keeping.

I got back from a day out and found this small snake woven into the fabric of the chain link fence around my yard.

David Cvet, a friend of mine from Canada, turned up with an Ocean Reef Neptune full face mask to try out. The mask was generally given the thumbs up but had a few unusual features that needed to get used to. The comms were temperamental and the jury is still out on them. He'll be back in June and hopefully will have overcome all the small start up issues.

More magic filter experiments

Yet another trip out with Magic Filters and still unable to set the w/b below about 25 feet.

I have come to the conclusion that the camera is unable to set a custom w/b so far out of range for normal settings.

Using a white card and shooting in raw I later reset the w/b 40ft shots (9400K) and 50ft shots (11250K). Therefor eI think the technique best suited for me will be have manually set the w/b for 10ft ranges below 30ft.

Photoshelter

I have started to experiment with filters to attempt to restore the colour balance when shooting underwater stills. Magic Filters is the barnad name of the filters that I am using. On my first outing I bumped into a hawksbill turtle allowing me to take this shot.

My only problem with them is adjusting the white balance when you change depth by more than aobut 10ft. But I am working on a solution to this.

Large animal encounters are where these filters are going to excell. I will be using perfecting the use of them in the coming months ready for Whaleshark diving in the spring.

The year started with a strong "norther" cancelling diving for a few days.

But this week the weather improved allowing some great diving. This feather duster worm was on a small patch reef on The Barrier Reef and is one of the largest I have seen. It is about the same size as my hand. I had no way of conveying it's size so I contented myself with a few macro shots.

Olympus E500, 50mm f2 macro, Ikelite housing, DS51 strobe