Lynne's 400th Dive

Lynne's 400th Dive

A wonderful winters day dive at blairgowrie pier today, with little wind and sunny conditions the diving was superb with calm conditions & good visibility.  Blairgowrie has a great array of soft corals and growth and is also home to a wide variety of fish and sea creatures.

Big congrats to Lynne for completing 400 dives in 10 years.  Not bad effort for a non professional diver.

Angus discover scuba dive, and blarigowrie

Blairgowrie and Rye pier

Two great pier dives today, with Lynne , Simon  and Craig. lots to see, the spider crabs are back, the octopus were out to play, the rays visited and there was the most fish under rye that  I have ever seen.  

The spider crabs are back!

Also tried out new video light  , seemed to work well in reducing shadows.

Blairgowrie pier

Blairgowrie Pier

with Craig and Simon , one of the best pier dives I have ever done, great conditions , vis and sea life

Sony RX100 1st dive

1st dive with Sony RX100 camera

This is the first dive with my new sony rx100. configuration is:

• Sony RX100
• Recsea Camera housing
• Ikelite Af35 flash
• (fitted sync cord cover to recsea as if to fit sync cord , and the flash still works without the sync cord using the af35 normal sensor , so a very nice neat setup for flash)
• Ikelite pro 2800 video lite

Bought the camera as the compact size , large sensor promised to be a  just what i wanted in a camera.

Highly portable yet taking reasonable quality shots, with good dof etc.

The shots on land have been excellent and the shots from this first dive are outstanding (considering first dive and i am very much an amateur)

first things, the setup worked well, fits nicely in hand without being too big, (mounted video battery on bcd) 

speed and ability to deal with low light was very good, although i did use flash for most, but had to dial down compared to s95 i used to use.)

Video was excellent (see sample at bottom) as was the ability to take a still during video recording), can see the difference the bigger sensor and 20 meg pixels vs 10 on s95 make.

Next is the i-dive fish eye and macro lens to try out. 

Note: conditions at Blairgowrie were good , but still reasonable amount of silt in water

note some images more for camera than interesting.

Blairgowrie

Blairgowrie 
with Craig and Simon
still a great place to dive.


 

Blairgowrie with JJ

Blairgowrie Pier
Another great dive on a nice calm summers day
Buddy is JJ and entry is from the pier rather than beach
so we can spend more time on the breakwater

Blairgowrie

Blairgowrie
A great dive full of seahorses and fish.

Blairgowrie fish count

A day at Blairgowrie for fish count day.
But lots of great sights in very good conditions

Blairgowrie Pier

Blairgowrie Pier Dive
Another great dive at one of the best piers in Melbourne
trying our new video light while peter tried out new side mounts

New camera setup is
Canon s95 with Ikelite af35 as strobe and Ikelite 2800 as video lite.

Blairgowrie Pier

Blairgowrie Pier is an excellent pier dive inside the bay, generally reasonably calm due to the marina but it can also lose visabillity if there is a current running due to the silty bottom. but can be the best bet on the inside if others are a lost cause.

To access, park at the carpark above the marina (just past the marina driveway toward portsea) and then either do a shore entry via the stairs at the front of the carpark or a pier entry via the stairs on the city/roadside  of the  car park . As this is a marina which can be busy with boats it is highly advised to stay under the two main parts of the marina (ie the main outward pier and the top finger at the end of the marina) which is where the best stuff is anyway.

Many different creatures and plant life can be found and night time diving is also varied and quite safe.

Blairgowrie google map