Northwest Dive Club

Here is a Grunt Sculpin from Browning Wall shot in 2005. One of my favorite shots of all time from one of my favorite places.

Transport it where? Car, plane, boat? When I fly, I use a rolling carry-on camera case that will hold an SLR housing, two strobes, serveral lenes and a flat port. Pretty much everything except my dome port. When I traveling by car, like to canada for an extended day trip I use a large pelican that h...

The V6 Limited Rav4 I have has a payload of 1045 pounds. The Rav4 was overhauled about 4 years ago and is considerably bigger than it was before the 2007 models. Bob, One thing to think about in terms of a new ride is payload capacity. People think if it fits in the car, the car is good to go, but y...

I am on my second 3 year lease for a Toyota RAV4. I just got a new Limited Rav4 for about $350 a month with 2K down. Leasing is not for everyone, but as a second car it gets low yearly mileage and it never gets old. Anyway, it's a great dive car and tons of space for gear in the rear. Drop down the ...

Lose the seals. The number of times I had a leak or glove issue is tiny and not worth the hassle of pushing in a straw, tube, towel, etc into your glove. All of that stuff is also another opportunity to get something caught in the seal and cause a leak anyways. Beshide, once you get comfortable with...

I just read this and considered posting it myself. I think that perhaps the ASPCA or PETA need to form a few chapters in Russia.

Wow, what a relief! Just a suggestion for the future, label everything! I am pretty religious about putting a label with my name and phone number on everything I would be upset about losing. Put a label inside your housing for example. Buy yourself $20 label maker from office depot and go crazy. The...

Peter Guy wrote:Thanks.

What would be a negative of going to Windows Live Mail -- which is what I appear to have on my Win 7 laptop.

Nothing really. It's just a newer, improved version of the same program. It can't hurt, may help. I would double check that all other internet functions are working well.

Is this Windows Mail that is part of Vista? It's not in Windows 7 anymore. I might suggest upgrading to Windows Live Essential, which is the latest version of the same email software.

Visit http://www.windowslive.com/Get to download just Mail or the full suite.

Is this a firmware update coming next week? What new with the software?

I bought a Shearwater Predator a few months ago and plumbed it into my KISS rebreather. About 40 dives later, I really love it. Beyond the great display, it also is simple to use with a very intuitive UI and setup process. The Bluetooth integration makes it a snap to sync your log data to your PC, n...

I really like the Mosshead. They are one of my favorite creatures. I bow to your shorediving accomplishment! I've always been too intimidated to try Sunrise from the shore.

Go to any shoe store or shoe department at a place like Sears or Nordstroms. They often have a pile of them from the floor display shoes they can give you.

Wow. When does the book come out?

I think that might have been from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! Was Douglas Adams a diver?

Jenbowes wrote:Don't panic! When things go wrong, always keep your head.

Don't forget to breathe!

Your best bet is to buy a good used system. People have so much upgrade fever with DSLR's there are lots of systems available. Personally, I have a D70 body, Ikelite Housing, several ports & a DS-50 strobe that I have used once in three years. I upgraded to a D300 at that time. It's a great syst...

Vest and Beanie that you can add on top of your regular suit is a good way to add more protection if you need it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/08/AR2010030803875_pf.html Enough panda obsession! Throw your arms around the new octopus By Petula Dvorak Tuesday, March 9, 2010; B01 It's our creepiest rite of spring, this annual obsession with panda procreation. Yesterday we were at it...

It's not too hard to find someone selling an affordable used dry suit. I'm surprised that the cheapest you encountered was neoprene, they tend to be more expensive than TriLam suits. As mentioned earlier, lots of folks upgrade their gear long before they wear it out. I'd be surprised if you could no...

Why not a drysuit? You'll be much happier in the long term if you plan to do any local diving. Most tropical locations are going to be best served by a 3mm wetsuit, which you might like to have available as well. The 7mm wet suit is the odd duck out. Not warm enough for the Northwest, too warm and b...

Filters are really only useful if you are doing natural light photography. If you are using a flash then you don't need a filter.

If you are using a P&S camera and plan to shoot wide angle scenes a filter may be nice to have however.

I constantly get comments and questions from people stating how they are "claustrophobic" and thus scared of diving. I am always confused about this because I imaging diving to be more like flying and open and free. I think a lot of folks imagine diving more like being buried or perhaps dr...

I really think you should try Shutter Prioirty and shoot 1/30 - 1/60. This will let the camera control the apeture along with you TTL system. Setting you apeture to 2.8 is going to result in your TTL flash being damped down and won't make the desired impact on the background. It looks like what I'll...

About everything I said applies to P&S. Greenwater is accomplished with a longer shutter speed. Pretty simple. Start with 1/60 or longer. Appeture I would set it lower than F8 if that is the max. Try f5.6 as F8 will shut out a lot of light and should be reserved for Macro. There is no ONE perfec...