Lehua Rock & Niihau Hawaii

In the state of Hawaii, their are a lot of great scuba diving locations. One of my favorites is Lehua Rock. This a huge volcanic tuft cone located a few miles off the forbidden island of Niihau. The entire area is beacon for marine life and one can see schools of small plankton eating fish feeding in the water column, majestic mantas, white tip, grey reef, occasional Galapagos sharks, green sea turtles, and endangered Monk Seals.

The topography is dramatic too with steep drop offs, caves, crevices, walls, and canyons. For those that don't dive the closest way I can explain how it looks is to look at pictures by Ansel Adams of the rugged mountain ranges and canyons of the American west.

The site is only dive-able during summer months, and then it is at the mercy of weather. I think it is about a 17 mile journey depending upon the harbor, charter company and boat. There are three operators that go to Lehua Rock. They are Bubbles Below, Fathom Five, and Sea Sport Divers.

Over the years I have gone with each company. I usually prefer small dive boats following the thinking that less is more when it comes to underwater photography. However, when it comes to diving Lehua Rock, I prefer a larger boat. For me, its all about being comfortable on a 2.5 hour crossing in open ocean. As the seas can get rough, being able to sit back and relax rather than take a beating is priceless. Thats why I go with Sea Sport Divers. Their dive boat is very spacious, has a toilet, hot water showers, and plenty of space to store cameras dive gear, and dry gear. http://www.seasportdivers.com

In my gear bag

As a working professional, I get asked frequently by divers I meet what kind of gear do I use and why.

I will start with dive equipment. For at least 10 years I have used Sea Quest BCD's and been quite happy with the quality, construction, and durability. Five years ago or so I got an Atomic Titanium regulator. It was expensive and worth every penny. It is by far the best breathing regulator I have used. I have an oceanic wetsuit and set of split fins that are 4 years old, and while the fins still work great the wet suit is ready to be replaced. I also use a pair of Cressi free diving fins when doing blue water snorkeling with whales. I love the power.

For topside images, I use the Nikon D3 , D2X, D700 bodies. For underwater photography, I use the Nikon D300. As I do a lot of scuba diving & blue water snorkeling I found that I need a housing specific to each purpose. The Ikelite features ttl flash exposure compensation which is very cool and allows me to concentrate on composition. I can adjust the ttl exposure by 1/3 f-stops by rotating a dial, rather than reaching out and changing strobe settings. The only negative with the housing is the way ports attach. The system relies on pressure to seat the o -ring. When using the housing while scuba diving the pressure seats the port and there are no issues. I cant say the same when snorkeling with the Ikelite housing.

That why I also use the Nexus housing. Simply put its small and built like a tank. The quality of the 10-17 optical glass port cant be beat. The negative of this system is that to take advantage pf the glass optics, you need a port specific to each lens and that is expensive. The 10-17 port cost just under a thousand bucks. The system has 2 sync ports for traditional strobes and 2 fibre optic ports for high tech digital strobes.

I use the following lenses. The 10-17 fisheye zoom Tokina, 10.5 mm fisheye, 16 mm fish eye, 60 & 105 macro Nikon lenses. For strobes I use three Ikelite DS160's. The strobes have ttl and manual power settings. They are 5000 degree kelvin in temperature which produces lovely blues and requires less time spent in photoshop. I also use two Sea and Sea YS 300 strobes from the film days that only work on manual settings. I love using them as slaves, set 1-2 stops lower than the main light to create rations and dimension in my images. Too many times a ttl exposure will result in flat lighting. This is when there is an equal amount of light throughout the scene. When creating light ratios underwater the light is not even so there is more shadow detail and depth to the image.

When I travel, I use Tamrac back backs, Velocity 9x camera bag, and Rolling Studio case featuring plastic armor. These products are light weight yet heavy duty. The amount of equipment they accommodate is impressive as is the style and appearance. I bring a Mac lap top, 3 external hard drives for back up, 3 - 16 gig cards, 8- 8 gig cards, 3 - 4 gig cards.I bring an I-phone loaded with 2 movies and Skype .

Other bits include a small glass reflector for the BCD pocket, as well as a safety sausage and a whistle. These are items I hope not to use, but am glad to have with me. I use the Aladin Nitrox computer, but tend to keep it set on air for added safety.

The last thing I pack is a sense of humor and a bit of patience. The wonderful thing about traveling is that there is a lot of time spent waiting. Rather than get frustrated, I just go with the flow.

Tamrac Rolling Studio case for travel

Underwater photographers frequently ask what I use to transport my housings when flying to exotic destinations around the world. Back in the days when airlines were generous and gave divers large baggage allowances I used the industry standard pelican case.  It was both big and heavy duty.  The bummer if any is that it weighed a lot.

Over the last 3-4 years airlines around the world have dramatically decreased the number of bags and weight allowed. As spending hundreds of dollars on excess baggage is not something I want to do on each leg of a journey, I did some research and looked for heavy duty cases that were light weight.   In the end I selected the Rolling Studio case made by Tamrac, the leader manufacturer of bags & cases for professional photographers.  It is large and reinforced with light weight plastic armor.  Empty the case weighs about 20 pounds.

Today I did a dry run just to see how much I could put in and I was amazed.  I packed two u/w camera housings, 4 ports, 4 large strobes, 5 sets of sync cords, 2 extra strobe batteries, 2 strobe chargers, 2 camera battery chargers, tools, and spare parts.  The total weight was 55 pounds.  If I had to take 5 pounds of gear out, I could and put in my other suitcase.  

Cover of WDCS Spring 2009 Magazine

This image created in 2008 in Pico Azores, was selected while on an assignment for the WDCS and on a permit issued by the portuguese government. I provided a selection of several of species of dolphin, Southern Hemisphere Humpback Whales and Sperm Whale images to the portuguese government and to the WDCS for educational and scientific purposes.  One image from that trip is being used a the campaign called art for conservation and can be seen at douglasjhoffman.com   What a privilege it is to support such a dedicated organization.