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Gear Used

For my underwater shooting, I used an Aquatica housing for the Canon 20D. I had taken with me the Tokina 10-17 fisheye, the Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom and the Canon 100mm macro. Lighting was provided by 2 inon Z240 strobes and a Fisheye focus light.I I had also packed a 100-400mm lens, a Sigma ringflash and a Sigma 500 Super flash for topsides shooting. Pritha was shooting video with an Ocean Images housing for a Panasonic GS500 videocam, and we had an Olympus UZ-SP550 compact camera for everyday shooting - its poor reviews notwithstanding, it is a very handy little camera for travel photography, especially if you shoot RAW. A Macbook and an external HD made up the rest of the gear and together, all of this filled up a Lowepro Computrekker, a Lowepro Photo Trekker and 2 small daypacks - which we managed to carry aboard without too many problems.

One new thing I was trying on this trip were the Stix buoyancy arms, in an effort to reduce the weight of my underwater rig (especially with the macro lens). These, I am happy to report, worked like a charm underwater. Topsides, the arms wobble quite a fair bit and do not stay in place - forget Internet reviews which suggest otherwise. So you will have to fold in all the arms when lugging the gear around on land. Underwater, however, they lock into place and do not move unless repositioned - which is exactly the way it should be. And they make a big difference in buoyancy. The arms themselves are inherently lighter than the TLC/ULCS arms, Add in the floats and I was able to get te rig to be more or less neutral in shallow water. As you go deeper, the floats do compress visibly, and the rig becomes a wee bit heavier - but only marginally so. Overall, these products work the way they are supposed to and every owner of a metal DSLR housing should consider getting these.

The 100-400 was less than ideal. At the Orang Utan rehab center, even 100mm was too long on a cropped sensor. On the other hand, for the birds and beasts of the Kinabatangan river, 400mm was too short and I was only able to get environmental shots - which is not really a good thing when shooting objects in shade with grey skies for background. I really missed my 500/4 and teleconverters, but there was no way I could have packed it AND all the underwater gear.

Another item I did miss was my Sigma 17-70 for underwater shooting. While the pelagics were common, they rarely came close enough for a 10-17 fisheye or the 10-20 rectilinear lens. Even at a distance of 3-4m, a typical reef shark was too small in the frame.

Which explains how I pulled off the rather unique feat of going to 2 destinations known for large pelagics and ending up with mostly macro shots.

Still, I find the macro life more interesting than umpteen reef white-tips, so in a way, it reflects what I enjoy shooting anyway.

Conclusions and general thoughts

Some random thoughts that stick to my mind after this trip:

Air Asia is a great way to travel. Cheap tickets and regular flights make them a real good value if you are looking to string together different destinations. Their baggage allowance is a miserly 15kg per person for checked luggage, and they do charge for extra kilos. So plan accordingly.

Semporna is also a great way to dive Sipadan on the cheap. We ended up diving from there due to our last minute plan, and I was initially a bit worried about what we'd miss compared to staying in Mabul. However, as it turns out, we got a great guide, virtually a private boat and diving the way we wanted. Big thumbs up to North Borneo.

I am probably selling Layang Layang a little short. We did see 3-4 schools of pygmy devils rays, a manta and a whaleshark in 4 days of diving there, That's quite good by any stretch. What was less than exciting to me was swimming in the blue looking for hammerheads. Now I realize that this is the only way to see hammerheads in the area, but personally, I'd rather see things for the entire time, even if those things are humble fusiliers and jacks, rather than nothing for 50 minutes and a brief glimpse of hamemrheads. That being said, I am still very glad we went and dived there - it was very enjoyable all in all.

One revelation to me on this trip was the sad state of the habitat in Sabah. I had an image of Borneo as being a wild place, not too long ago inhabited by headhunters, and covered with dense mysterious forests. Yeah right. it is one big palm tree plantation - atleast, the Sabah portion of it anyway. Very little endemic rainforest remains - which bodes ill for the endemic wildlife there, including the orang utan and birds like the storm stork. That was quite a depressing realization.

The other revelation - the good one - was how impressive the diving around Mabul was. While Sipadan gets a fair share of attention, and with good reason, I found that the diving at Mabul was probably more special, in terms of seeing unusual things.

SOME OTHER PHOTOS

In no particular order, here are a few more shots from the trip: