Lots of pics, I just got an underwater enclosure for my SLR!!

[Taqpol]

The camera that these were shot with was my Rebel T1i, still my main camera.

I had forgot about this thread, but apparently I promised to tell people how snorkeling with the underwater enclosure went. To say the least, horrible! The camera was extremely buoyant so I had to fight to keep it under water the whole time. Since I needed to have at least one hand holding the camera down at all times I was forced to swim with only my legs and one arm, something I don't feel comfortable doing while swimming around giant boulders and all sorts of spikey chompy things we find in reefs. On top of all this the enclosure fogged up almost immediately and the increased moisture in the bag broke my battery grip, which made all battery grip associated buttons on the camera go weird, so I thought I broke my camera and wasn't able to take any pictures with it the rest of the trip...

In short, if you want to take decent underwater pictures I highly suggest buying an underwater capable point and shoot for probably about the same amount of money as the enclosure was.

 

[Taqpol]

All that being said, I did get to take a few good pictures in Bora Bora:



I'm only two weeks late, its time for Bora Bora pictures! My camera actually started working again once I got it back to the states, but it was still behaving very erratically so I had it sent off to Canon for them to take a look at it.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday night we had dancers come to our hotel. Definitely a sight to see!

We stayed at two different resorts, but in both of them we had overwater bungalows. The first one was the best for snorkeling, as you walked right off your own dock and into a pretty substantial natural reef area.

On the walkway to the main hotel area you could look over the edge and see fish and corals right next to the shore! I don't know what these fish are, but there sure were a lot of them clustered around both hotels. Also notice the fairly large Acropora.

Walking along the beach there were corals not even two feet from the beach. It was a lower flow area then the reef crest zones, so the coral colors a tiny bit more drab and it tends to be dominated by only a few species.

In the above picture the island in the background was owned by the first hotel we stayed at. If I were ever to go again I think I would try to stay on it because around the backside is a very large reef where I took all of my snorkeling pictures. And yes, the water was actually that blue!

 

[Taqpol]

The longer I stayed under water the more my camera fogged up. Basically, most of the pictures near the end were pretty much useless, but on some of the really cool ones I doctored them heavily to try and show what I was seeing. I'll start with those first and save the best ones for last.

~five feet long Moray eel (bottom left):

School of baby Chromis living in the branches of an Acropora:

At our last place we had a pair of these Picasso triggers living under our bungalow. Really neat to watch them interact:

If anyone knows what the name of the wrasse in the bottom right hand corner is, please let me know! These guys were our favorites, they were completely fearless and would follow right behind you to pick out food from the sand we would stir up with our feet.

Clams EVERYWHERE!

Fun fact: One of the nasty damsels pictured here actually bit me when i got too close to its nest and didnt see it posturing.

Unfortunately, those are the only pictures from my camera worth posting. All of this was only a tiny fraction of all the cool stuff I saw, too. I'll take another look through the point and shoot pictures on land and see if there are any real keepers I might want to post up here.

 

[Taqpol]

Point and shoot pictures from Bora Bora!

The second resort had a man made "Coral Garden":

Me hand feeding Auriga butterflyfish in the above mentioned coral garden:

On our last day we took a Jeep 4x4 tour of the island. Nothing like going almost vertical up a muddy path!

While there we got to look out at the reef we went swimming in (little islands in the distance):

And visit one of the islands WWII Naval Cannons:

 

[ROCKMAN_1]

Wow!! This makes me want to take a vacation.

 

[TenKreefer]

Awesome pictures man. The fish you weren't sure of are mullet