After years of thinking about it, I finally bit the bullet and bought myself an underwater video camera. I've always wanted to get an underwater video setup and have been seriously considering it for the last 12 months or so. I came very close to buying a camera just before my trip to Sipadan in July. Since that trip I've been wishing that I had gone ahead and bought a camera, as I'm sure I would have been able to get some half decent footage at Sipadan.

After months of looking around and researching camera's, I ended up purchasing the Light & Motion Bluefin HC7.  Even though I ended up going well over budget for my new "toy", in the end I found the L+M HC7 to have all the features that I wanted without having to go to the "professional" and more pricey cameras on the market. The L+M housing may be more expensive than some of the other housings on the market for the Sony HC7 camera, but it is the only housing I could find that could access all the features of the camera that you would expect to find in a high end underwater video setup. It is also smaller and alot more compact than all of the high end cameras, which was another deciding factor. I can fit the housing, monitor, lights, accessories, spare parts and tapes all in a Pelican case that can be used as hand luggage when travelling on commercial airlines (although weight may be a slight issue if they check).

Over here in the west, I'm always wanting easterly winds, as this usually means great diving conditions. I planned to go out and test the camera on Sunday and as it turned out, it was easterly all day. Unfortunately the winds on Sunday morning were blowing a bit too strong, and conditions were a bit too rough to dive off our little 17ft runabout - especially at the site we wanted to dive. It is quite unnerving watching the wind creating swell heading out to sea ontop of an already 2 meter swell.  After taking the boat to the site and realising that there was no way we were going to dive, I suggested plan "B" - a night dive in the river.  As it turned out, the afternoon provided perfect diving conditions on the ocean, but we already committed ourselves to a night dive and all had things to do in the afternoon (for me that was to have a very lazy afternoon)

Even though I was eager to test out my new toy, I was a bit hesitant to take the camera out on a night dive first up. I've heard some horror stories in the past about night dives and new gear, but the camera had been in my possession for 5 days and I really didn't want to go another week before I got another chance to get it in the water. I put my hesitations aside knowing  (or hoping) that I had just purchased a well built camera and that everything would be fine - there would be no horror stories!!!! Plus it gave Dave and Ricky a chance to head out and catch a feed of prawns.

As fate would have it, I have no horror stories to report. In fact, I can report that I am very happy with my (very expensive) toy. The conditions in the river were pretty poor. It wasn't the worst viz I've seen in the Swan River, but I've definately seen it alot better and there was a slight current flowing (which Dave and Ricky proved after surfacing so far away that it seemed to take forever to surface swim back to shore). After for first 4 or 5 minutes, I spent the dive alone as the Dave and Ricky were off chasing prawns. This was actually a good thing, cause it allowed me to take my time to play around and experiment with the settings on the camera and get to know the controls. I actually had to go on memory, as I was only using the video lights, I couldn't see the controls of the camera. Surprisingly I still have a few memory cells left (especially after the last few weeks), as the controls all appeared to be where I remembered them to be. Actually, I think I was more a case of the controls were where they should be rather than were I remembered them to be. I didn't end up shooting alot, but what a did end up shooting I am very happy with for my first outing - especially at night and in average conditions.

I'm still trying to figure out the whole editing side of things and the best way to convert HDV for the web, so the following footage doesn't appear great - it is pretty low res -  but hopefully it gives an idea things!

Note: I updated this video with about 5 new shots (and took a few out) on 28/11/07 after my dive at the same site on 25/11/07

I've just arrived back from a week diving Sipadan Island off the east coast of Borneo. After doing only half a dozen dives for the first half of 2007, it was great to actually do a full week of diving. In all, I did 18 dives for the trip. One of the dive sites at Sipadan is called "Turtle Tomb" which I managed to put together a small video of the dive (see below). Turtle Tomb is a cave dive that starts with a big cavern in about 20 meters that heads in towards the island for about 80 meters, followed by a tunnel around 1.2m high that continues about another 15 meters before opening up into a large cave under Sipadan Island. It is called Turtle Tomb because of the turtle skeletons that are found inside the cave. There are two theories as to why the turtles die here. The first theory (and most obvious) is that the turtles enter the cave through a small opening in the reef known as the window during the day, fall asleep, wake up when it is dark, then can't find the way back to the window to exit and end up drowning. The second theories is that it is a place sick and elderly turtles go to die. The second theory is definately the more romantic of the two, and there are a few people that actually believe this to be the correct one for various reasons. It wouldn't be the first time that wild animals seek out a specific place to die. It is rumoured that there is a place called The Elephants Graveyard where elephants go to die. This place is said to be either in Africa or in Saudi Arabia deep in the desert near Yemen. Whatever the reason, Turtle Tomb is an excellent dive, and makes for a nice change to the usual dives encountered at  Sipadan and other great dive holiday destinations.

 Note: This was shot on my Canon IXUS 850IS digital stills camera in Canon underwater housing