How much we know …

"Into the white wild"

I have been on snowshoe-hiking vacation for the past 2 weeks. We stayed in a beautiful hotel in the Wildschönau in Austria, not far away from Kufstein. Photos from the awesome trip and hikes we made can be found in my flickr account.

The hotel publishes a little morning news paper every day and one day they had a nice quote in there I like to share here:

"Only a few know how much you need to know to know how less you know"

From the "Fliegende Blätter", a humorous-satiric magazine, published in Munich between 1845 and 1944.

Crossing the Tramuntana Range on Majorca

Last week I have been travelling to Majorca again, this time together with my wife, to do a more advanced hike than I did last year there: the crossing of the Serra De Tramuntana from the Southwest to the Norteast, from Andratx to Pollenca in 6 days.

My Wife Alex and I arrived early on Majorca on Sunday, May 22nd since our flight had been leaving Frankfurt quiet early in the morning at 05:50 am.

"Kathedrale in Palma De Mallorca"

We met our mountain guide at the airport – Jaume Torte – whom I hiked with last year already. He organized our transfer to our first hotel in Esselencs, where we would stay for the first 4 nights, a nice little hotel in a nice little Spanish mountain village with a great view out to the ocean at the North coast of Majorca. Since we have had plenty of time we basically just handed over our luggage to him and took the bus to Palma De Mallorca to use the day to visit the main city of the island.

We wandered through the old town, visited the huge cathedral on a hill with excellent view over the Bay of Palma and spend a relaxing day in cafes and in the narrow streets of the town. In the afternoon we took another bus out to Escellencs where we met our group and had our first dinner all together.

Our group consisted of 11 hikers. The oldest was a small 76-year-old lady who was in an amazingly good shape. She skipped a few parts of the hike, but I really would call myself lucky when being in that good shape at that age.

"Abstieg vom S’Esclop"

On the first hiking day a bus brought us to Andratx, a little town near by the Southwest cape of the island, from where we started the trip. We climped on top of a mountain called S’Esclop (928 m) and then descended back to the coast and to our hotel in Esscelencs. The hike had started 09:00 am in the morning and it took us until 05:45 pm to reach the end of the first stage of the crossing. We started to get a feeling what “Advanced” means in the description for this tour and Jaume promised that the next two days would be even longer.

On day 2 we left Esscelenc at 08:30 am in the morning and hiked to Esporles which we reached late in the afternoon. Already exhausted we realized we would have to cross another two mountains to get to Valldemossa, the end of stage 2. We got there at 06:00 pm, after having to climb a total of 950 m. Since it also has been quiet hot, a bit too hot for this part of the year, we also had to carry and consume a lot of water. The bus ride back to Escellencs took more than an hour, thus there was not much time left to quickly jump into the pool before dinner. Boy, you won’t believe how good the first bear tastes after a hike like that !

"Die Gassen von Valdemossa"

The next day we drove back to Valldemossa, which to me has been the most beautiful of all the villages we visited during that week. We have had some time to explore the narrow streets and old buildings and to buy some food, before hike 3 started with another climb to another mountain. The view from there over the North coast of Majorca was absolutely breathtaking. We found a nice resting place on the top of a stone wall above the little village of Deià and enjoyed water and food from our back packs and the brilliant view into the valley and out to the ocean. After the descend to Deià we walked to the lovely small bay there with crystal clear water and even we started again running out of time we spend there 30 minutes to jump into the refreshing waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The hike was not finished yet, our target for this day had been Sóller. For an hour or so we followed the coast line, before we climbed another 250 m to a mountain path leading to the valley of Sóller, which we reached at 07:00 pm. After another long bus ride back to Escellencs there was no time anymore for the pool, just for a shower before enjoying again the good cooking of the hotel and lots of drinks to re-fill all the liquid we had lost during the day.

"Blick von Biniaraix nach Sóller"

On the next day we checked out from the hotel. A bus took us to Sóller where we started hike # 4 and would pick us up later at the Cúber Lake, the fresh water reservoir of Majorca. After spending half an hour on the main square of Sóller we started our hike out of the hot valley towards the top of L’Ofre ( 1093 m ). It was hot again, but luckily on this trail we found plenty of water springs near by our path. From the summit we had again a great view and saw the Puig Major, the highest mountain of Majorca, the Cúber Lake and the Massanella (1365 m), our mountain for the next day. After getting back to the valley we had to do another 1-hour-walk or so around the lake to reach the road, where the bus was waiting for us. It took us to the monastery of Lluc where we would stay for the next three days in spartan but clean and quiet rooms, with a great restaurant providing lots of cheap drinks and lots of excellent food from Majorca. It didn’t take long until we felt very comfortable with this elementary and peaceful place.

On day 5 the bus took us back to that lake, we crossed the Massanella, the 2nd highest mountain of Majorca, and descended back to the monastery.

"Pollenca, wir kommen, früher oder später !"

The last hike during day # 6 was again a mountain crossing and a very long hike. It took us to the Puig Tomir ( 1104 m ) from where we could see the three capes of Majorca in the East, and then a partially steep path through lots of vegetation and rocks has been one of our many challenges during that week to finally reach Pollenca and thus the end of our crossing.

Part of my tour description sounds like this has been a quiet strenuous endeavor – and actually it was, but the challenge is part of the fun. My way of spending a vacation is not to relax at the beach, but to do some from of exercising for the body, which usually is parked in a chair in front of a computer most of the time. I want to explore new places and the best way to get there is on my own feet. And believe it or not, even our days have been packed with long hikes it has been relaxing for me, especially for my mind and soul. I believe I did not spend a single minute thinking about work, career or anything related.

We have been a great group, we have had a lot of great moments and laughs, views and new experiences. After three days of work I could right away start another hike like this. And as a matter of fact, my wife and I are planning a 3-day-hike on the Rheinsteig for the upcoming long weekend.

More photos from that tour are here in my “Mallorca 2011” flickr set.

My favorites for week 20, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about what kids care about nowadays

Moderately Confused nicely shows in today’s comic strip what kids care about these days. Well, honestly, what do we care about most when looking for a hotel ?

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about modern office spaces

Why we don’t throw paperclips at coworkers is nicely shown in the video "Why you don’t throw paperclips at coworkers". I mean – we know not to do this. See what can happen if you forget about it …

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Mallorca

"Bay at Cape Pinar" by axel_magard. Let me share another of my own photos here this week, taken during my stay on Majorca last year. Why ? Because again this year I will travel there for another week to go hiking, this time through the entire mountains of the Tramuntana Range from the West to the East, and this time together with my wife who didn’t join me last year but now after I told her how nice Majorca is for hiking she wanna see it as well of course. When ? Next week of course. Thus: see you again in 2 weeks from now !

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about books

Did you know that starting April 1st Amazon sold more digital than printed books: 105 vs. 100. Source: amazon.com

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about uncertainty

Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one. ~ Voltaire ~ People who are confident all the time and know an answer to every question and never ever say “I don’t know” or “I am not sure” are suspicious to me. I know, we have been trained to be like this. An IBMer always know an answer to a question, right ? When you give a presentation and someone asks a question, you never ever would say “I don’t know”, even you actually don’t know. Better to give some sort of answer – probably to a question never asked – than not giving any answer at all. ”A little bit of self-doubt is healthy. It gives you an open mind.”, is said in this Lifehacker article. I can’t agree more.

My favorites for week 13, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about Baseball 2.0

Things 2.0 are sometimes very different to how they used to be in the good old times, don’t you think ? How do you like this  “Moderately Confused” comic strip ? And since we have April Fool’s day, here is another one from Wizard Of Id:

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about a lighthouse keeper

Since a new version of Blender has been announced it is may be a good time to look at one of those awesome animation videos created with this software. Watch “Lighthouse” and learn a great message from this film. See for yourself … http://www.responsibilityproject.com/lib/flash/video-player.swf?videoID=13&location=remote

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about Parkopedia

Recommended by Lifehacker today: Parkopedia, a well designed site giving you a great overview and detailed and valuable information like prices and reviews for 15 million parking spaces in 20 countries. I was surprised to see that it covers Mainz, Germany, as well. Whenever you come to Mainz, this is my recommended parking space: Spacious and cheap, my recommended parking place when going downtown. Probably 10 minute walk to Dome and Old Town.

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about bees

"A Lot Of Bees" by Will Merydith. Did you know that one third of our food needs the help of bees to grow, there are 20.000 different species of bees on the world. a swarm of bees consists of 50.000 bees in summer and 20.000 in winter; a bee swarm is an excellent example for swarm intelligence and an efficient social system; such a swarm can be seen as a new life form providing much more functions than a single bee could provde. one bee can dust up to 3000 blooms per day dusting 15 million blooms and 300.000 flight kilometer are needed for 1 kilo honey a bee queen lives 5 years and lays up to 200.000 eggs in summer RFID technology is used to track thousands of bees in a single swarm as part of the beegroup project run by the University of Würzburg, Germany Source: bild der wissenschaft 4/2011

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Queenstown

"pcp-39.jpg" by Paul Clark Images. Queenstown in New Zealand, where I have been 2 years ago, is a remarkable ski area, as Paul Clark proofs with this dramatic shot.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about tools

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Abraham Maslow "Hammer" by Markus Wichmann. I think we have the opposite problem today: too many tools to choose from, thus it is difficult to find the hammer for a given nail and thus we often use a different tool to deal with it.

My favorites for week 31, 2010

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about another cheap flight

We have had that topic already in week 25: the joy of travelling and cheap air lines. Here is another one: Welcome to Air Ma…. whatever. How about: Air Madness ?  Nice one from Herman.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about Ice Breaker

In week 27 I showed you Miniclip.com, a nice gaming site with lots of fun little games, ideal for a quick play anytime. One of my favorite games is Ice Breaker, a really new type of game for me. You have to cut Vikings out of ice blocks and depending on how you cut you get very different results. Either they get stuck or miss your boat. The physics of sliding and falling pieces of ice are nicely modeled in that game. So far I did not get beyond level 9, it suddenly became quiet challenging. The screen shot on the right shows level 4. Not so difficult, but you can easily fail with the left most guy: one wrong cut and it won’t work. It is one of those few games currently which makes me coming back again and again.

Something to learn: my favorite tip of the week – about some useful short cuts in MS Excel.

Recently I joined an interesting educational phone call about MS Excel. Most things I knew already, but here are three interesting short cuts I did not know before: CTRL+END allows you to jump right away to the last cell in your spreadsheet ever used. CTRL+SHIFT+Down or CTRL+SHIFT+Up allow you to quickly mark a block of data from your current position to the next blank cell. Without the SHIFT key to’ll just jump there. CTRL+SHIFT+END allows you quickly mark a block of data from your current position to the last row ever used in your spreadsheet. CTRL+SHIFT+HOME does the same thing up to the top most row of your spreadsheet.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about crew members from the Space Shuttle Atlantis

"P072610PS-0024" by The White House. The offical photo stream of the White House on flickr. is worth to check out once in a while.  Here is one of their last postings: “P072610PS-0024”. In the description to this photo we read: President Barack Obama greets crew members from the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station in the Oval Office, July 26, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about knowledge and wisdom

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. ~ Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724 – 1804) ~ Super quote by a German philosopher, don’t you think ? Especially since we can not simply rely on knowledge, no matter how good we organize it. It is actually the job of scientists to question existing knowledge every day and to probably turn what is valid today into the invalid knowledge of the future. Which might become valid again in a much later future. Anyway, knowledge simply can be wrong, and even the knowledge of the crowd can be wrong, as this great Lifehacker article this morning emphasized: “Think Twice About What "Everybody Knows"”. Part of wisdom probably is how you handle knowledge.

Back from the Saar-Hunsrück Climb …

I have been on vacation for three weeks and spent the first two weeks hiking the Saar-Hunsrück Climb, a famous German log-distance trail, together with my wife.

"Die Saar-Schleife"

We started at the Saar loop in Mettlach and did the hike to Idar Oberstein, a German city famous for gemstones and their church built right away into the rocks. We came by several lakes, castles, leftovers of old Roman and Celtic buildings and walls, climbed over rocks, crossed swamp land ( using comfortable board walks ), hiked along the border between Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate.  We continued the hike to Trier, the oldest city in Germany with the oldest German bridge, crossing the river Moselle River. In total we hiked about 225 kilometer in 12 days. The trail is very nice and a bit challenging here and there, leaves comfortable pathes quiet often and climbs over various little mountains so that it really deserves to be called a “climb” in the context of a Mittelgebirge, not the alps of course. It avoides villages most of the time and leads through forest and moor landscapes.

We carried everything we needed for 2 weeks with us in our back packs, thus together with some food and water we ended up with roughly 10 kilogram on our backs. We stayed in little hotels or taverns over night and did not book anything in advance; sometimes when we had made the plan for the day in the morning and knew we would get into an area with only a few beds we called in advance to ensure we would get a room at our planned destination.

"Felsenkirche, gesehen von unserem Zimmer in der Schloßschenke"

It has been an awesome experience to “survive” with only a back pack, a few clothes and a minimalistic “beauty case”, without any car, computer and TV for 2 weeks, often without knowing where we would end up at the end of the day, to travel free like a bird from one place to the next only as far as our feet would get us. Of course we have had our credit cards and mobile phones with us . Weather was nice most of the time with 3 rainy days

A detailed report will appear in my German blog these days. My photos are on flickr and a slideshow would appear below if WordPress would support iframes. Anyway, you can launch one from here.

http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?set_id=72157624911540307
Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Back from hiking on Majorca

 

"Pirate Watch Tower"

Last week I have been on Majorca, the largest island of Spain, located in the Mediterranean Sea and belonging to the Balearic Islands, two flight hours away from Frankfurt, Germany. I have been traveling on my own since this year my wife has to safe a few vacation days for an extra education she is taking and thus I was free to do something on my own. I booked six guided tours organized by the German Alpine Club.

We stayed in a good hotel in Port de Sóller in the North of the island behind the mountains, located at the coast. If you visit their web site you see as a first photo the old part of the hotel with a massive stone tower. That’s where my room was located. The hotel was fully booked and thus I got this room which was a bit difficult to reach through a very narrow spiral stair case, but quiet calm and very special. This building actually is from the 16th century when pirates from Algeria attacked Majorca attempting to kidnap members of rich families to bring them over to Africa as slaves and only returned them after their family had paid a huge amount of money.

"Bay at Cape Pinar"

Many people never returned to Majorca and inhabitants of Majorca tried to protect themselves by building watch towers and houses like fortresses. That’s why I spent my vacation in such a watch tower, which has been an interesting experience. The hotel itself was nice and offered a large swimming pool and excellent breakfast and dinner, good wines and a good location; only 3 minutes walking distance to the harbor.

Our travel guide was a Majorcan who had worked as a druggist many years ago, thus he know very well about all the plants you find on Majorca. But he also knew a lot about animals, geology, history and culture and shared a lot with us while a bus took us to the starting points of our hikes each day.

We climbed on top of two mountains, the Galatzó (1027 m) and the Massanella (1365 m), the second highest mountain on Majorca. The highest one is the Puig Major (1445 m), but this one is protected by Military.

"Olive Trees"

We did several coastal hikes with the opportunity to enjoy the 20°C cold water of the Mediterranean Sea, we visited a few of the small mountain villages, tasted a lot of olives and fresh orange juice and discovered the old stone trails  built by Arabians. We also explored a cave used in former times to hide smuggled tobacco, and we hiked the Canyon Torrent De Pareis with 300 m high walls, the highlight of the week, and a bit more than just hiking.

Great week with a lot of walking, but much better than hanging in front of a computer all day long, I tell you. A bit strenuous for the body – not too bad; they called it easy hikes and I would rate it as moderate hikes – but relaxing for the mind, for me a better way to relax than just doing nothing during my vacation days. I simply love this mixture of sports and discovery with a little bit of adventure. And I love to be a hiker, not just an ordinary tourist.

Now, back to work, waiting for the next nice trip .

Again: back from snowshoe hiking

My wife and I have been snowshoe hiking last week ( a detailed report is here in my German blog ), this time with the German Alpine Club in Austria in the Zugspitze area. "Auf dem Weg zum Höllkopf" We stayed in a nice hotel in Lermoos. After we have had heavy snow falls in Germany and Austria recently the last week before we arrived weather changed to become pretty warm and snow had been melting away in the valleys, nevertheless we still found sufficient snow at an altitude starting with 1.500 m, thus we could do 5 nice hikes climbing between 400 and 800 meters to mountains above 2.000 m. We were lead by a nice mountain guide who not only gave us a lot of useful hints and tips how to do snowshoe hiking right and even manage steep ascents and descents, but who also provided some basic training how to use avalanche transceiver to rescue people hit by an avalanche. Our first tour was an easy one along the border between Austria (Tyrol) and Bavaria (Germany). The second one was on top of a mountain called Upps – opposite to the Zugspitze. For this one we had to carry our snowshoes on the back for the first half of the climb and descent later on, but used them to get to and back from the summit. Tour 3 started at the Ehrwalder Alm and we hiked towards the Wetterstein mountain and the Gattl, nevertheless it became too warm throughout the day and snow too wet so that we had to abort the hike before we reached the target. "Blick von der Zugspitze" Tour 4 was the highlight of the week, the hike started at the mountain station of the Biberwier chair-lift and we climbed the Höllkopf ( “Hell’s Head” ), then did a steep descent into the Hell’s Valley until we reached the Lehnberghaus. Only disadvantage of that tour: it took us quiet long to find a Glass-Beer-Shop. After our hike down into the valley we had to walk for another view kilometers before we reached a hotel where we could enjoy our Weizenbier on their sunny patio while waiting for our taxi to get us back to Lermoos. Tour 5 was supposed to get us up to the Coburger Hütte and then around the mountain “Vorderer Tajakopf”, but we only reached lake Seebensee since snow conditions were bad due to a night too warm and avalanche risk too high for doing the steep ascent to the Coburger Hütte. Also changing weather conditions had been forcasted and thus we returned earlier – a good decision by our mountain guide since at 03:00 pm mountains suddenly disappeared in between clouds and it started to rain. On Saturday my wife and I were supposed to travel back home but since weather conditions had improved already we first did a cable car ride on the top of Germany – the Zugspitze – and enjoyed a breathtaking view across the snow covered alps – an unforgettable experience !

Back after 5 weeks

You think a 5-week-vacation is a long vacation ? Yes, it is, for most of us. No, it isn’t if you become aware how many beautiful places there are in this world to discover and how many exciting things to do. Nevertheless, no matter how long a vacation can be, at some point of time it reaches its end.

"Auckland"

So did mine, thus back to work. My first Monday started with 400 e-mails and a surprising calendar entry: a class starting on that day at 09:00am for the entire week, every day from 09:00am to 01:00pm, a class about Cognos 8 Framework Manager my boss has sent me to, not because I need it right now, but simply because it is available. The class is interesting but challenging and slows me down a bit to catch up with things like e-mails, blogging, capturing the status of my current project. 

So, what did I do during the last 5 weeks ? My wife and I traveled to New Zealand and explored both the North and South Island for 3.5 weeks, then flew over to Fiji and spent another 5 days there to relax at a beautiful beach of a little island and do some scuba diving. Roughly 4 days were needed to fly around the world, that’s why we ended up with a 5-week-vacation.

"Urupukapuka"

In New Zealand we started our trip in Auckland, visited the War Memorial Museum especially to learn a bit about Maori culture, and explored this largest city of New Zealand where roughly 1 of the 4 million kiwis live. in Auckland we also picked up our rental car, a Ford Territory, and drove to Pahia, from where we did a boat cruise through the Bay Of Islands. Two days later we drove over to the West Coast of the North Island to do a hike through the Kauri forests. Then we headed south and to the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula with wonderful bays and beaches, and the famous Hot Water Beach where you can dig for boiling water directly at the beach. Also we hiked to the Cathedral Cove and then continued our journey to Rotorua, to visit the two thermal areas there: Whakarewarewa and Wai-O-Tapu, to see geysers, mud pots,  steaming and colorful lakes and boiling springs. Next stop was Lake Taupo. We then headed to the Tongario National Park, but again, like 9 years ago when I was there the first time, the volcanos were hidden behind clouds and thus we continued our trip right away to Waitomo to visit another natural feature: the glowworm caves. After that we travelled further south to New Plymouth, where we stayed for two nights and some mountain hike at Mount Taranaiki. The weather was nice now and we even could see the Tongario mountains far away.

"Picton and Queen Charlotte Sound"

Now it was time to get to Wellington and take a ferry to the South Island. When we got there it took us 4 hours to find a room and finally we ended up in a village called Lower Hut Valley I never had heard about before, simply because New Zealand tried to qualify for the soccer world championship and played against Bahrain and thus all rooms were booked in the Wellington area.

After a nice ferry trip over the Cook Strait and through the Queen Charlotte Sound we ended up in this little village Picton, where we spent our first night on the South Island. From there we traveled to the Abel Tasman Nationalpark for a beautiful day hike along the Coast Track, from Bark Bay to Marahau, where we had booked a chalet for two nights and a water taxi to get us to Bark Bay in the morning. Another spectacular hike we did in Nelson Lakes Nationalpark afterwards: around the Lake Rotoiti in 8 hours. After that we got to the West Coast of the South Island and visited the Pancake Rocks, another awesome geological feature of New Zealand. So far the weather had been just great, not really warm, lots of winds most of the time, but lots of sun as well. This changed when we got to the Franz Josef Glacier, nevertheless this area is well known for its many rain days.

"Mitre Peak in Milford Sound"

So we stayed there just for a short hike and continued our trip southwards. We reached Wanaka, a nice and peaceful alternative to busy Queenstown, and decided to stay there for two days to do another great hike: the Rob Roy Glacier hike in Mount Aspiring National Park. After a quick stop in Queenstown we drove to Te Anau, the gate to Milford Sound, the only of the 14 sounds in Fjordland Nationalpark you can reach by car. A trip to and through Milford Sound is always a highlight, especially if you have as nice weather as we had. A ship cruise took us through the sound, which actually is a fjord, out to the Tasman Sea, and back to the head of the fjord. On the next day we drove to Dunedin and visited an Albatross colony there. North of Dunedin is Moeraki with the famous Moeraki Boulders, another must-see in New Zealand.  And then we reached Christchurch, our final destination in New Zealand.

"Matamanoa Island"

From there two flights took us back to Auckland first and then to Nadi on Fiji. From the main island it was a 1.5 hour boat cruise out to this little beautiful island Matamanoa, where we spend the next 5 days with relaxing, snorkeling and some scuba diving. The journey back home afterwards was a 38-hour-trip: boat tour back to the main island, transfer to the airport, flight to Los Angeles, wait on airport, flight to London Heathrow, wait on airport, flight to Frankfurt, Taxi ride home.  It took us almost 1 week afterwards to overcome jet lag.

It has been a fantastic trip with so many awesome impressions and more than 2.300 photos I took. Some of them can be seen on my flickr account: here is my set of New Zealand photos and here is the one with photos from Fiji. Or simply watch a few photos in my slideshow attached below. Our more detailed travel diary will be published in my German blog, so if you can read German you might want to check this out; I plan to publish this day by day in the next weeks.

First experience with underwater photography and the SeaLife DC800

As promised in my last posting about my scuba diving safari through the Southern part of the Egypt Red Sea here now comes my report about lessons learned and first experience with underwater photography in general and the SeaLife DC800.

SeaLife DC800 Underwater Housing

I purchased the SeaLife DC800 from divestore.de for around € 700 as a package together with a flash light SL 961 and a bag. It is supposed to be a camera suitable for beginners as well as satisfying advanced photographers. The camera comes with numerous programs especially also for underwater photography. A “Sea” mode allows taking good pictures also without a flash light and further options allow to specify whether you are in the blue ocean or green river water. It is a 8 mega pixel camera and allows capturing videos in VGA resolution. The flash light has the great advantage to support an automatic mode as well as adjusting intensity manually – which turned out to be a real important feature.

"My very first underwater shot with the SeaLife DC800"

Befoe using the camera under water I tried it out on land, as recommended in the instruction manual, without and with housing. The first pictures I shot to me appeared to be less brilliant and sharp than the one my Sony Cybershot DSC-S90 delivers, which of course is well known for its good quality photos.  The results however I now brought back from my scuba diving safari have convinced me that I have made a good purchase with a good cost/performance ratio. People who know what you would have to pay for a professional underwater camera or video camera probably would agree with me.

I spent almost the entire last Sunday to create a slideshow with Windows Movie Maker including combining my video clips to a 8 minute video, burned it on DVD and watched it on my LCD TV screen: absolutely nice and convincing ! Throughout my slideshow one can see how my skills taking underwater shots improved. At the beginning I had some problems with using the flash light properly and lots of photos are too dark ( see my lessons learned further down below ). Later on photos turn out to have more light and color and some time I also got the idea to use the zoom function and take closer shots.

A few of my photos and some video clips are available on my flickr-Account.

As I mentioned in my last posting here underwater photography is more complicated than taking photos on land.

Too dark shot

First of all on land you usually stand secure on both legs ( most of the time ) while under water you first have to maintain a proper buoyancy before pushing the trigger. Additionally you try to find a nice view angle to your motif and may be a point at a rock or reef to hold to for a more stable position. During that you have to avoid hitting the sand with your fins since then the sight very quickly might turn into a milky environment ruining your photo.

Another challenge is the proper adjustment of your flash light intensity. The SL 961 as most probably most flash lights has of course an automatic mode but this turned out not to work well in all situations. As long as you take a picture of a fish may be 2 meters away in blue water it works quiet well, but as soon as you are getting closer to something or in case you have sand or light corals as a background the flash intensity appears to be too high. Luckily – as a real valuable and important feature – the SL 961 comes with a control dial to manually adjust the flash intensity on a scale from 10 to 1. In those situations I just described a setting of 2 or 1 turend out to be sufficient to get a photo with the right amount of light.

Shot with too much light

As many beginners I went through a couple of mistakes at the beginning I like to share here with you:

• Wrong adjustment of the flash light angle. I assumed wrongly I should have the flash light arm adjusted in a way that the flash light was more pointing downwards to get a good light for a photo in 2 meters distance. This yielded photos being too dark and it turned out to better have the flash light more pointing straight forward or just slightly down.
• After the first re-charge of the camera and putting it back into the housing I forgot to set the slider on top of the camera to the “capture” position; I left it in the “display” mode. In this situation there was no way to get the camera into capture mode under water. (Unfortunately this happened during the dive when we met a shark under our boat ). This is mentioned in the instruction manual but a good hint for further dives is: turn on the camera once before jumping into the water to see whether it is in the correct mode, especially after you had taken it out of the housing before the dive. Once the slider is set right the camera is in a mode where you can change to all other modes through the DISP key: you can view all your pictures under water and you can also put it into video capture mode.
• One time it happened to me that accidentially I pushed the power switch instead of the tripper to stop a video capture. This caused the camera to hang up completely thus it became unusable for the rest of the dive and after getting back on the boat I had to remove the batteries to fix that situation. Luckily this happened towards the end of a dive.

I noticed the following two strange behaviors of my camera :

• When turning on the flash light initially the red light does not turn on and I am not sure whether the flash light actually operates properly. Only after moving the slider to the TEST position once the red light then turns on right away after setting back the slider to ON.
• Below a depth of 30 meters my camera started to behave real strange:  When pushing the DISP button it started to ask me whether I want to delete pictures.  Hmmm ….

Overall I am happy with the SeaLife DC800 now allowing me to capture nice remembrances of my dives. It is handy and delivers good pictures, especially the quality of videos surprised me in a positive way, and in combination with the flash light SL 961 it is a real powerful equipment to take nice underwater photos.