Here are some shots with the Canon G9 I purchased just before the trip. Fantastic camera, underwater scene mode is amazing.

TOTALLY awesome Thanks for sharing.............

MORE!!!

And some more..... Also, I meant Ikelite.

And more.....

Absolutely awesome! Love those burrfish shots!

Oh and the turles too!

Anyone know what the one in the middle of the last set is?

Another favorite of mine.....

Chris, I believe it is a smooth nosed puffer. Very rare to spot on Bonaire. Great catch. If I am wrong in my i.d., I am sure someone will correct me, but I have seen this fish and believe it is a puffer of some sort, maybe have the wrong first part of the name, I have seen this fish around Yellow Submarine area in the past.

Thanks for the ID Debbie! Found a few of them cruising along the bottom in about 10 feet of water near Harbour Village. About 3 - 4" long with reddish eyes if that helps. Just seemed so unusual I decided to take a few shots of them. Unfortunately no frogfish graced my lens this time.

Terrific shots, ChrisA!! That's amazing you were able to see so many great creatures in the shallows. We love snorkeling, too.

The camera works very well. Have to check that one out myself.

Thanks for sharing your underwater fun! Carole

Thanks! It is an amazing camera. Ikelite case excellent once you get comfortable using it. Not much skill, just luck and a lot of time looking at the LCD, which is huge and easy to see even in bright daylight. Excellent zoom and 12MP. I tried some of the custom settings recommended by cameraphiles but ended up using Underwater scene mode. No retouching at all! Only down side is battery life. Highly recommend buying a spare. Needed to recharge every night, sometimes running out of juice altogether at the end of the day. Hit at least 3 snorkel spots daily for 1.5 - 2 hrs each. I did take lots of shots. Filled 2x 8GB cards with the video too. Takes high res video. Had to delete blurry ones each night but ended up with over 1500 "good ones".

Your pictures are awesome! I'm the owner of a Canon G7/Canon housing and absolutely love it. I get really great pictures and video in the underwater setting also with its 10 pixels. Didn't Canon make a housing for the G9 or was the Ikelite a better deal?

Awesome pictures!!
The id on the middle fish in the last set is a Bandtailed puffer

Got any more shots???

nice pix
I bought the G7 with Ikelite housing and DS 51 strobe, one year ago. the ttl is not impressive, but the camera, on land and u/w, is great

we'll be there next week! can't wait

Evan

great pics .. thanks for sharing :-)

Traci,
Canon does make a housing for the G9 but I decided to go with the Ikelite in case I ever want to add an external strobe.
Becky H,
Thanks for the ID!

And a few more.....

And another question. What are those critters on the staghorn coral? I purchased a photo of them at Fisheye last year and when I spotted them, had to take one myself. Little did I know how hard the shot would be - surf was up.

Chris,

Thanks for the extra photos. They are awesome. The critters are flamingo tongues. Really great photos, I'm even trying out the last angelfish as a screensaver. Thanks! Do you know what Evan meant by ttl is not impressive?

Traci,
Glad you're enjoying the photos. Thanks too for the ID. It's amazing how much of my time in the water included looking at the camera display. It was definitely worth it!


As for TTL, I believe that since Evan is using a non-Canon strobe, its ability to fire the correct amount of light based on information the camera is gathering "through the lens" could use some improvement. Canon works very well with some strobes and not so well with others. The good news for me is that I really don't need a strobe snorkeling during the day, which is why the shots came out so well.

Here's a good explanation on TTL:

Through-the-lens (TTL) metering is a photographic term describing a feature of cameras capable of measuring light levels in a scene through their lens. This information can then be used to select a proper exposure, and/or control the amount of light emitted by a flash connected to the camera.

Through-the-lens metering is most often associated with single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras. A light sensor can be incorporated into the pentaprism (or pentamirror) used to form an upright image of the view out of the lens. However, TTL metering systems have been incorporated into other types of cameras.

In TTL flash metering occurs after the shutter has been opened — the sensors record the amount of flash-created light returning to the camera through the lens and automatically shut off ("quench") the flash when an appropriate amount of light has been produced.

What I meant was that I'm not favorably impressed with the my results with the TTL function. Ikelite claims: "Special conversion circuitry built in to the housing provides true Canon eTTL exposure connected to any current model Ikelite DS Substrobe." I don't doubt that it's true, but mine gets fooled a lot. Maybe I'm on the steep part of the learning curve, since I've only done 14 dives with this set up.

My testing will continue, starting Sunday. I can hardly wait! I will post photos - but only the well-exposed ones. It has a tendency to over expose.