Melanie and I are off to Bonaire again for the 7th time in 4 years. We'll be staying at the Carib Inn for the first 3 weeks of May. Clay & Lee Lansdown, friends we haven't seen for a while, will be staying next door to us. As usual, the company, weather and shore diving should all be excellent. We've also booked another stay in October 2005 for the coral spawning. Several friends have also booked their vacations at the same time, so it should make for a great trip. The October trip may be our last visit to Bonaire for a while. We're planning a live-aboard trip to Fiji in 2006, and I'm slowly persuading Melanie that a cave diving trip to Florida or Mexico would be both fun and safe. :-) As a pre-cursor, we'll probably take a GUE Tech-1 course over the summer in Kingston (a few hours away by car).
After our last vacation in May of last year, Melanie asked me to look at upgrading her photography equipment. She's been using a small Sony P&S with a single DS-50 substrobe for a while, so it was definately time for something better. I wrote an article called Digital Cameras with TTL Support Underwater documenting my search for a TTL Flash capable setup. There were several contenders, but the Canon 20D with an Ikelite housing came up the winner. I figured we might as well upgrade my setup as well, so I sold my Sony F717 housing, Ikelite substrobe arms, etc. and bought two Canon 20Ds with a variety of lenses, two Ikelite housings with 5 ports, ULCS substrobe arms of various lengths, and two additional Ikelite DS-125 substrobes.
Curious about the lens/port combinations we chose? Keep in mind that we're using two cameras simultaneously, so there's some overlap in focal lengths. I also expect some lenses and ports will be more popular than others. :-) One of my goals was also to keep the focal lengths (and therefore subjects) of both cameras compatible on any given dive.
- Canon EF-S 10-22 f3.5-4.5 USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 17-40mm f4.0L USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM (#5503.90 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 II USM (#5503.55 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM (#5510.80 Aquatica 8" Dome Port or #5503.50 Dome Port)
- Canon EF 100mm f2.8 Macro USM (#5508.45 Flat Port)
