As a guest speaker at the Heron Island Dive Festival I was able to enter photos that I shot at the Festival into the Shootout. What a great week it was, wonderful diving, great company and my FIRST “roll” of digital with my new Nikon D7000, Nauticam Housing and Inon strobes. I’ve written a couple of stories about it all that I will post after magazine publication, but just want to say here how excellent the diving was (even if the water was a bit chilly for my tropically acclimatised metabolism at 20 deg.C.) and how pleasant the resort was – especially with the dive guides minimalising the majority of the “Nanny State” rules so common elsewhere in Queensland.

No only did I have a good time, two of my photos won prizes. First prize for “Over/under” – Stingray in the sun.

Sting Ray in the sun

And Runner-up prize for “Behaviour” category – Whiplash

Whiplash

When you watch a good movie you can expect sex, nudity, violence and bad language – and that’s just in the audience! But here it is – the unexpurgated and sensational warbles of Bob Halstead as filmed by renown digital whizz Tony Wu aboard the good ship MV Golden Dawn under the direction of Captain Craig de Wit.

Planking is what deranged people do to get attention – so I obviously qualify. The opportunity for a world record turned up while diving from the marvellous MV Golden Dawn with Captain Craig de Wit. Craig took the certifying image.

World Record Plank on Gun Turret of B17 Bomber Wreck

One of the many superb dives we did was on the B17 bomber wreck “Blackjack” at Cape Vogel. It is 46m to the sand bottom. I decided to plank the gun turret on top of the plane at 41m. So I am claiming the “World’s Deepest Plank onto a Gun Turret of a Sunken B17 Bomber Wreck.”

You might think this is silly but, hey, they said John Cleese was silly too in his iconic film on fish identification.

My technique may not be the best – I could have straightened my legs more perhaps – but I must admit to being more a diver than planker. Otherwise people might say “That Halstead, he’s a real Planker”.

For the month of June I will be aboard MV Golden Dawn with Captain Craig de Wit and photographer Tony Wu, and friends. We will be cruising along the Papuan Coast from Port Moresby sampling the wonderful and rarely dived “Beautiful Bommies” that stud the Papuan Barrier Reef. I’m hoping we might also get a look at the 11,000 tonne shipwreck, Maritime Hibiscus, one of my all time favourite dives. We will check out the astonishing wharf at Samarai, and dive with the mantas at Gonubalabala Island.

There is a P40 aircraft wreck that needs to be found and we may have a chance to look for it guided by information provided by Graeme Houghton, the son of the pilot who ditched it. The pilot survived the ditching and the wreck should be in excellent condition. We will also be exploring the Star Reefs, diving some shipwrecks, rattling the sharks and generally having a simply magnificent time. We end the cruise in Alotau.

MV Golden Dawn, Bismarck Sea

My Beautiful Camera

Resist as I may, it is now time to retire my faithful Nikon F3, Aquatica housing and Ikelite strobes. My next cruise – 3 weeks on MV Golden Dawn cruising from Port Moresby to the remote regions of Milne Bay and ending in Alotau, will be its last.

But not mine. I now have to buy a digital camera. And Housing, and Strobes and, doubtless, other stuff. The worst part of all this is that all the Nikon/Aquatica/Ikelite gear works perfectly. As it has for 22years. I’m going to miss my (manual only) indestructible EO cords, the faultless and instant response and the great images. Damn, I’m going to cry. Well, almost.

THANK YOU to Nikon, Aquatica, Ikelite, whoever it is that makes EO cords – and while I am at it – Ultralight Strobe arms. You have done a superb job. This gear has made THOUSANDS of dives. I doubt that anything that I buy, or me for that matter, will be able to replicate that sterling effort over so many years.

WHY CHANGE you ask? I now have to get my film imported from the USA and send my exposed film to Brisbane to get processed. It is expensive and inconvenient but of itself not sufficient motivation. I’m mostly happy with 36 shots a dive as (a) I know how to use the camera so generally get results. (b) I aim to shoot just one perfect image per dive, not shoot 276 and hope one turns out. Having said this I have inevitably had the odd “Out of Film” emergency requiring a rapid ascent.

My main problem these days is WEIGHT. My rig weighs about 15Kg out of the water depending on what strobes and battery packs I am using, and although I can handle that , especially underwater, apparently AIRLINES cannot. Pathetic bunch. Or if they can they think they can charge me a fortune. Sorry to trouble you, I’m sure.

It even works upside down...

When I do buy my new digital rig it will be small, light, and have excellent wide angle optics and tiny strobes, all of which I will carry in my coat pocket (I’ll have to buy a coat of course). I am not going big, and to protect myself from marauding sharks and crocodiles I’ll just have to buy a large dive sword – rather like the old Scubapro “The Knife” – and forget about using my camera. The F3 rig would have stopped a submarine.

Instead of passing my camera to my (Ha!) buddy and watching him/her plummet into the sand, I will have to find alternate amusement. And I will have to stop trying to get those artistic “shoot into the sun” shots and remember, as we all did with our Box Brownies, to shoot with the sun behind me. It is going to be tough.

Now if any of you have a recommendation as to what I should buy, please let me know (bob@halsteaddiving.com). I shall be picking brains. And I know that, by the time I have made my mind up, another generation of cameras will be on the market and I’ll have to start over, so I will not be taking any 15Kg packages to the dump just yet. I’ll stock up on film and chemicals – same as I’m hoarding incandescent light bulbs – so if I decide again to give digital the finger, I’ll be just fine, and buy a coat with bigger pockets.