- Day 1 -

   I'm sitting in the dark, watching Travis (one of our dive masters) give us a slideshow on native Hawaiian marine life. After the presentation, we will to enter the water for our fifth dive of the day (a night dive). There are most definitely more cameras on board than the Aggressor staff has ever seen, and one of the dining tables has been taken over by battery chargers, computers, and a tangle of wires. The crew is exceptionally nice and professional, and the facilities are fantastic. As expected, Jim has been amazing us with slideshows of his photography and with his ability to capture great images regardless of what kind of camera is in his hand. All of the guests are great! Because the majority of us are digital underwater shooters, there are a fair number of techies among us. In fact, the words "inverse kinematics" were uttered at dinner (by David, I might add), and no one seemed to think that it was strange (including me). :)

   We dove Rob's Reef and Maruka Bay during the day, giving both film and digital shooters a chance to get their cameras wet for the first photo contest, which will hopefully be held tonight after the night dive. As expected, those of us shooting digital have been playing with our images in between dives, while film shooters have just received their first rolls of developed slide film. As always, I was excited by the instant gratification that digital photography offers -- at least, until Jim pointed out that had he been shooting film exclusively, he would be drinking a margarita by the hot tub instead of tapping away on his Powerbook G4 at the dining table. :)

   I have been playing around with Germany UK's Canon D30 housing, and my initial impressions are a mixed bag. I love that it is now possible to shoot underwater with a responsive digital camera that has virtually no shutter-lag, but the housing itself has a few ergonomic problems. We weren't sent a bracket or a handle, so we hacked one together using one of Dave's extra brackets, a screw, some washers, and a zip-tie. The right-hand grip is still a little too far away from shutter lever, but it's better than trying to hold on to the slippery aluminum housing itself. One omission that I think is very unfortunate is the omission of the exposure lock button. Using the exposure button for flash exposure lock is necessary if the flash is on and metering area is not centered in the viewfinder. Otherwise, the area of flash coverage is likely to be completely overexposed. Speaking of flash coverage, the Canon 550EX flash's coverage (it is contained in its own housing) isn't quite wide enough to be useful for anything other than macro shots. Unfortunately, we weren't sent a port that can accomodate anything other than Canon's 17-35 2.8L lens, so it's been extremely difficult so far to get proper flash exposure and coverage. Compounding the problem, no flash controls can be accessed from the outside of the housing. We may attach a diffuser from another strobe to the flash housing tomorrow to see if it helps coverage. Maybe Jim can work his magic and get some good shots with it.
- Eric Cheng, 7:43pm, Novermber 4th, 2001

   We're finally ready to upload today's photos of the day. The night dive proved to be spectacular, and everyone except for our fearless dive master saw spanish dancers. He did, however, find a Hawaiian spotted flatworm and then save me from the painful sting of urchin spines, which I appreciated very much. Due to first day time constraints and the lag of getting film processed and scanned, there weren't enough photos ready for a proper slide show (and thus, any sort of real contest), but we managed to scrounge up three shots for presenting. See you tomorrow!
- Eric Cheng, 11:00pm, Novermber 4th, 2001

      >> continue on to day 2