Another wonderful trip with Bluewater Photo and their people. Had a good time out diving and got some good shots in. I was using my A6300 with dual strobes and the 16-50 lens. Next time I will be trying out my 18-70 f4 lens with the dome port and see how those shots go for me.

What dive trip to the big island would be complete without a Manta Night Dive. My wife, son, and I all did the Manta Dive with Jack’s Diving Locker. We did the late afternoon dive and then the Manta Dive after the sun set.

We met up with boat and took our Dramamine just to make sure that we didn’t get sick being out on the boat at night, with no horizon or reference point. Once the boat got to Keauhou Bay we then dropped into the water to do a dive while waiting for the sun to go down. This was a nice warm up dive for us and we we’re excited to see more of the big island from below. There wasn’t a lot of difference between diving here and diving in Oahu. We didn’t really see anything that we hadn’t seen before. We surfaced for about an hour and then descended down after dark hoping to see some mantas. We were not disappointed we had a couple that came around to visit us and swim through and eat. It was really a cool experience to see these majestic creatures swim through the water and effortless glide around and do loop de loops over us and around us.

While this is a dive done at night, it really isn’t. With all of the light above by people on surfboards, the baskets of lights on the sea floor, and all of the people down below with lights, it is basically brighter than the day. In fact when you swim around you see balls of light that I am pretty sure are brighter than the sun and just as blinding. So really you don’t need to be an advanced diver to do this dive, just the ability to dive should be enough to enable you to experience this truly exceptional experience.

Third last weekend I went diving on Anacapa island. Well rather beside the island and a little bit under it. Good trip taken with Bluewater Photo and on the Peace dive boat out of Ventura. The visibility wasn’t great, but the nudibranchs and other things were worth the trip. Below are some of the shots taken on my a6300 camera in the nautical housing with the 16-50 lens. Some I used the bwp macro lens attachment.

    

I participated in the shootout again this year and dove the rigs to get my shots for submission. Not my best shots and probably not a winner in them, but I decided to submit the best of what I had. Needed to have some more practice before the event and just didn’t make it out this time to be ready for the shootout. Diving the rigs was nice though, 3 really good dives in nice water.

I learned some new tricks for editing my underwater photos and put them to work on these two photos. So much happier with the result, now I just need to get out and get some more shots and make some new images.

Just upgraded my dive computer and decided to go with a wrist mount computer. I am upgrading from a Suunto Cobra Air Integrated and going with something a little smaller that I can take with me when I travel and use when on vacation, without needing to bring my regulator and other gear.

Some of the reasons that I ended up with the Oci was the good reviews it got, the features and functionality it had, and the form factor. I also looked at the OC1, but couldn’t justify the extra price just to get the additional features that it had along with the metal shell. So when it came down to it the Oci met all of my needs.

I didn’t want to lose the option for Air Integration if I wanted to do it. The Oci does it wirelessly while I don’t have the transmitter for it now, I do have the option to buy it and turn it on eventually.

The Oci also comes with a digital compass, not sure how much use I am going to get out of that. I tend to wear my compass on my  BCD up by my shoulder which is where I like it. I once used a wristmount compass and what I found was that I needed one more bend in my arm to make it truly useful so that it could be in front of me while swimming.

The interface is cleanand easy to use, the watch has 4 buttons, but one is a light. The other 3 are a combination of single click and click and hold for 2 seconds and it will take you into different menus. I was able to easily walk through the menus and configure the device with what I wanted. In most cases the defaults on the device were perfect for me and should accomplish what I need.

 

The watch is big, bigger than it looks like in the ads. It also includes an extension strap so that you can use it when wearing a 7mm wetsuit, but then the extension strap can be removed when either wearing it without a wetsuit or with a smaller wetsuit.

The watch comes with a USB cable, but you have to pay for the software for a mac to manage the computer. Kind of lame that it costs money to get the software, especially after you have paid so much for the computer.

Overall I am happy with the purchase, I am still testing it out in comparison to my Cobra, so I haven’t retired that yet and moved over to just an SPG gauge on my gear. I will probably give it a few more dives just to make sure that I trust it. This is my life we are talking about here.