Maldives, my kind of government

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

So it has happened. The world's first cabinet meeting under water. When the Maldives' cabinet held a plenary session under water they definitely raised my interest in the country. I don't think we will see Joe Hockey and Kevin Rudd getting into their wet suits to discuss climate change in the near future.

Whoever votes to move part of the cabinet work under water gets my vote in the next election.

Hmmmm, practicing for long deco perhaps

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Apparently, there is a Guinness world record to break for spending the longest time under water. Yesterday, the Irishman Sean McGahern spent 27 hours under water to smash the previous 24 hours to pieces. The record breaking took place in Malta. One may wonder what the point of that is, but then again, people seem to do just about anything to break a record.

I had better rethink my thinking that 15 min deco is boring if I wan to get into that sport.

Video at:

Tech gear

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

It may be a late revelation, but it seems to me as if the tech dive industry is moving towards a low cost breakthrough. I was searching a bit yesterday and found some threads on fora such as scubaboard about new tech dive gear. For example, EDGE-HOG, Highly Optimised Gear. It seems there is a factory somewhere in Taiwan that makes much of the techie gear and things are re-badged under different names. For example, look at this regulator from HOG.



This looks surprisinly much like an APEKS to me.

Tech Diving Limited is selling the HOG second stage plus a first stage that also looks much like an APEKS first stage together with an SPG and hoses for $249. The Wings on the HOG web site also retails for $199 about half of what looks like a standard OMS or DiveRite wing.



Does this signal the start of a price collapse for tech dive gear? If it is possible to manufacture and retail for such low prices and the gear is very similar, interesting development. It will be interesting to follow the development and see if there will be any reviews of this stuff.

New Canon G11 - even better for Underwater photos

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Canon has just released the new G11 compact and it has some interesting features for UW shooters.



Most notably, Canon has reversed the trend of hunting for increased pixel density and instead gone for image quality. The new G11 has a 10 Mpixel sensor which is significantly down from the G10's 14 Mpixels. Canon wanted to create a camera that can truly work as a replacement for a DSLR in some situations, such as journalism where photographers may want to take photos without being too intrusive. This camera is built to provide much better low light and difficult light results. For an underwater photographer that sounds heavenly.

I am waiting for dpreview to test its capabilities. It is clear that it will be much much cheaper to go G11 and housing than any dSLR and housing / ports.

Canon D5 Mark 2 Underwater video review

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Backscatter has posted a review of the Canon 5D mark 2. There are lots of reviews around about its capabilities and pros and cons but what makes this one stand out is that it is a dedicated underwater review and also about the specific task of producing underwater video. Who would have thought a couple of years ago that DSLR would come this far.

The resulting video is stunning



View the 720p video for some nice shots of dolphins and sharks in the Bahamas. I know this is a bit of a promotional video urging us all to open up our wallets, but it is clear one can create very nice video photography with this gear. Unfortunately, the initial setup cost (without the scooter) is around USD 10.000, a new car.

Well, one day when housings get cheaper perhaps.

Olympus E-620 Underwater test

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

DPreview has released a test, well a story more than a test, of the Olympus E-620 in the PT-E06 Olympus housing. One of their reporters went on a dive holiday to the Philippines and brought this setup along, together with two sea and sea YS 100 strobes.

The general opinion is that the setup is working well, the housing is of reasonable quality and she also seemed happy with the new 9-18 mm wide angle lens. My friend Taso has the E-520 in the PT-E05 housing (almost identical setup) with the 50 mm macro lens and dedicated INON magnetic manual focus ring port and he took it diving for the first time last weekend. It was clear, looking at the first photos that the macro lens can yield some very good results, especially with the two INON strobes he uses, even spread light etc.



I am getting more and more interested in this combination as the upgrade path from my current Canon G7 in Ikelite housing. First, the Olympus body seems to be very reasonable with many features that are nice for underwater use such as fast focussing and inbuilt image stabilisation in the body. Second, the housing is cheap compared with most other housings on the market. Third, with the catering for popup flash one can use any strobe, in my case I have an INON z240.

I have been toying with the thought of buying a housing for my Canon 40D. The only reasonable housing seems to be the Ikelite but since it does not allow the flash to pop up and the TTL circuitry only supports Ikelite strobes, I would have to buy two new Ikelite strobes of many $100 a pop. The Olympus alternative sounds more reasonable.

Without having searched for the the cheapest prices, BHphoto lists the 620 housing for USD570 and the 9-18mm wide zoom is USD510. The PT-E06 housing is AUD 1200 or so locally and the PPO-E04 dome port plus the PER-E01 spacer ring is about USD1100 at BHPhoto. I bet you need some gears etc. on top of that.

Not cheap, but still cheaper than going Canon.

Getting the iPhone to work with Exchange and Google

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

Thanks to some new features in OS 3.0 I finally managed to get my iPhone to synchronise both with my work email and Google calendars.

The problem with the iPhone is that it can only have one exchange account active at the time. Since my employer (the University of Sydney) mandates the use of Microsoft Exchange, I am forced to synchronise my emails using this server and that has left me without any means of synchronising with Google calendar. Google mail has been easy for a while using an IMAP account.

The new trick that works well is to use CalDAV to Google, and even though there are some rumours that this only allows one way synchronisation, I can create new events on the iPhone and they show up on the Google web interface so all is good.

Here is what I had to do.

1)
I created an exchange account to the University and set up mail and contacts but I deactivated the calendar option for this account since I don't use the corporate calendar. If you leave it turned on, the entries will be merged in iPhone. You will also have to set the default calendar in settings>mail, contacts, calendar down the bottom, settings for calendars.

2)
I created an IMAP account on the iPhone:

settings> mail,contacts,calendars> add account

select Gmail account type
enter username@gmail.com as address and fill in password
set outgoing server to smtp.gmail.com

3)
Create a new account for the calendar
settings> mail,contacts,calendars> add account
account type other
select CalDAV

Server name www.google.com
user name your.name@google.com (your gmail account name)
password (your password)

Now, the email client should have two accounts, one for the exchange mail and one for the Google mail. The calendar application should have your Google calendar contents and you should be able to create and read events on the iPhone as well as the web.