Puerto Rico

"Steve" <SPAMTRAPglawackus@hvc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:uU6Rd.9127$534.2429@twister.nyc.rr.com...

> Possibly significantly higher as a percentage of X, but still zero as a
> practical matter.

Maybe. Maybe not. It's not fair to compare y with the total number of
dives or total number of divers. What percentage is y of divers that dove z
hours before flying? The risk is still small, but not zero.

> Both my old and new computers have always shown me as being clean well
> before 24 hours are up. And I've usually been close to clean by the
> morning's first dive even after a night dive the previous evening. If the
> computer says I'm clean I'd be extremely surprised if a flight caused a
> problem after only 8 or 10 hours, but waiting 24 has never been a
> hardship. For a drive to 3000' I'd feel completely confident to get in the
> car an hour after the dive and head for 1000' and get above that after a
> couple of hours. As a practical matter if you do a morning dive, rinse
> your gear and change, have lunch, and then start the trip you should have
> a solid 2 hours of offgassing and be safe for an afternoon in El Yunque. I
> could be wrong, but I'd do it if that was a conveneint schedule.

OK. As long as your computer says it's OK, it must be OK. Too bad I can't
set my computer to time-to-drive-to-3000' mode. If I have beer with lunch,
does this change your calculations?

> I'll get around to starting a thread on my camera and the results but
> here's the short version. It's a Nikon Coolpix 5400, which is 5 MP (as
> near as I can tell the model number of all the name brand non-slr cameras
> tells you roughly how many MP). It's got full manual capability, but as a
> 35mm film user I find much of it inconvenient if not downright barbaric,
> largely complicated by a bunch of stupid automatic bells and whistles. I'm
> pretty happy with the results, though. I've put some stuff in an Ofoto
> album, and I'll get around to posting a link.

Yeah, post it. Here's mine:

http://users.adelphia.net/~gmossman/

These are all shot with a Sony DSC-F717 5 MP camera and single Ikelight
DS-125 strobe, using the camera's second-highest resolution so they're not
truly 5 MP. I always used the second-highest resolution so I could squeeze
in 80 shots per "roll". Practically, I've rarely shot more than 30 or so,
so from now on I plan to use the full resolution which limits me to 36 per
"roll". Unfortunately my housing is being rebuilt by Ike right now because
of my poor maintenance skills and I dread the thought of bringing both
camera and video on future dive trips. Janna wants to shoot video and I
prefer shooting stills, but that means overweight/overpiece charges for sure
along with extra headaches. I now bring our dive gear in two separate
Samsonite clamshells which gives us each another 'free' suitcase for
clothes. Jamming all the gear into one bag put us well over 50 lbs and
precariously close to 70 lbs, plus it was a pain repacking. We've tried
sharing one suitcase for clothes before but she just packs too damn much.
So one case for the camera already puts us over the limit unless we actually
can share a bag for clothes. Two camera cases and we're really screwed.

Greg Mossman wrote:

> OK. As long as your computer says it's OK, it must be OK. Too bad I can't
> set my computer to time-to-drive-to-3000' mode.

I heard they were going to offer that feature until their lawyer found out and said no.

If I have beer with lunch,
> does this change your calculations?

Absolutely. Drinking beer will give you extra bubbles right off the bat.


> Yeah, post it. Here's mine:

I'll be away until late Monday, but I'll try and do some minor editing and then post
the URLs by Tuesday evening.

> Jamming all the gear into one bag put us well over 50 lbs and
> precariously close to 70 lbs, plus it was a pain repacking. We've tried
> sharing one suitcase for clothes before but she just packs too damn much.
> So one case for the camera already puts us over the limit unless we actually
> can share a bag for clothes. Two camera cases and we're really screwed.

It's a slippery slope when you buy that first bit of photo gear. I went for the
DS-50 with the manual controller. Shooting at ISO 50 and F5.6 to F7.9 I don't think I
was ever less than full a stop below full power. The DS-50 is about the size of a
soda can, which is nice for traveling. I found a Canon camera bag that's about 11" X
11" X 14", which will fit under the seat even in cattle class. The main compartment
is big enough for the housing, camera, strobe and controller, with the sync cord
coiled on top. The spare camera battery and charger go in the zippered compartment in
the underside of the lid. A charger for AA NiMH batteries goes in a small compartment
on one end, and a PC card adapter, 8AA batteries and the camera and new dive computer
manuals went in the front compartment. Not exactly compact, perhaps, but not terribly
large, either. The wife's "personal item" was a small day pack with the laptop and
other important stuff. The strobe arm went in one of the carry on bags with the
important dive gear, but the handle for the housing went in a checked bag. I could
have shoe-horned it into a carry on bag but I was afraid TSA might think it would
make an excellent bludgeon. That's enough photo gear to make me tired just writing
about it.

Especially on a dive vacation I don't need much in the way of clothes, so we normally
get by with two standard size suitcases, and neither of them was over 50 pounds on
the last trip. If we were flying Island air to Cayman Brac the camera gear and carry
ons would probably have put us 60 or 70 pounds over the combined 110 pound limit, but
the last trip was all Continental so we had plenty of extra allowance if we'd wanted.

As for camera capacity you need bigger "rolls" or smaller pictures. The info I found
online was a bit ambiguous about card compatibility so I called Nikon tech support to
check and then bought a 1 gig card. I figured I'd be smart and get the $95 Sandisk
ultra instead of the $60 standard card, since it's faster. Once I got the camera the
manual said the standard 1 gig card was compatible, but only listed the 256 and 512MB
ultra cards. Oops. I spent one of the first evenings after the camera arrived taking
pictures of the living room while watching TV and filled the card then downloaded to
the laptop with no problem (other than the 20 minute download time). The good news is
the card is compatible, but ironically the camera is a lot slower than the card, so
it takes a good 30 seconds or more to write the file. If you've only got a 512 MB
card check to see if the 1 gig works. Even if it didn't when the camera was new,
there may be a firmware upgrade that will fix the limitation. OTOH, if you've got a
big card but high res means big tif files, there might be a firmware upgrade that
will let you shoot in RAW mode. I had to download the newest firmware upgrade from
the tech support site to update mine and add RAW to the options.

With the 5400 a tif file is almost 15MB, but RAW is "only" a hair over 8MB. That will
let me get about 124 shots on an empty card, and it also reduces the writing time by
about 40% (the 30 seconds is for RAW). I'm highly amused that at the lowest res the
screen says I have room for 9999 shots, and that's because the screen doesn't have a
5th digit. I think the most I shot was about 65 on a 2 tank dive, and on some the
battery went dead a bit before the 2nd dive was over. I'd download the card, swap in
the spare camera battery and put a fresh set of NiMH batteries in the strobe before
heading out for the afternoon dives. I ran out of camera battery twice, IIRC, and I
ran OOA, but I never ran out of memory during a dive.

--
Steve

The above can be construed as personal opinion in the absence of a reasonable
belief that it was intended as a statement of fact.

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