Finalists have been announced for the 2010 Raja Ampat Entrance Tag Design Contest, hosted at Wetpixel.com. Vote for your favorite image or design—the winning image will appear on Raja Ampat’s 2009 park tag!

Last year’s winning image, a manta ray silhouetted against the ocean surface, was shot by Marcio Lisa, who won a dive trip to Raja Ampat in addition to having his photograph attached to every diver who visited the park in 2009. The winner of the 2010 tag contest will be able to choose from a selection of premiere diving resorts and liveaboards for a minimum 7-day all-inclusive stay in Raja Ampat.

Public voting ends at 11:59PM, September 25, 2009 (Pacific time), and the winner will be announced on October 1, 2009!

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Photographers looking to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” should check to see if any of the applications they use have compatibility issues with the new OS. A good site that lists applications and compatibility is Snow Leopard Compatibility. In particular, photographers should note that Nikon doesn’t recommend updating yet, and CaptureOne currently requires a workaround.  Also, there were rumors that Adobe Creative Suite 3 (including Photoshop) wouldn’t work on Snow Leopard, but those rumors have been debunked.

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Visions in the Sea is a festival of underwater photography being held in Manchester, England in November. There is a fantastic line-up of presentations, in-water tuition, a competition, exhibition and gala dinner. The whole event is in aid of the Shark Trust. This exciting weekend is being hosted by Frogfish Photography and Ocean Optics.

There will be presentation by internationally renowned underwater photographers on both days with the guest speakers including: Cathy Church, Paul “Duxy” Duxfield, Martin Edge, Charlie Hood, Maria Munn, Alex Mustard, Jukka Nurminen, Tom Peschak, Peter Scoones and Steve Warren.

On Sunday afternoon delegates will have the opportunity to get some in-water tuition in the Manchester Aquatics Centre from some of these experts…

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In a rare trip only offered once or twice a year, dive instructor and videographer John Foxhall will be running a 5-day liveaboard dive trip to the Channel Islands aboard Truth Aquatics’ vessel, the Vision, this coming September 3-8, 2009. The vessel departs from Santa Barbara, but John will be driving a huge van down from San Jose, with plenty of room for guests.

This is a fantastic opportunity for experienced divers who want an extended trip to the Channel Islands. It is also a good opportunity to get trained in a drysuit (John has plenty of high-quality rentals, and he trained me in one!), or to check out underwater photography for the first time (John will be bringing some underwater point & shoot cameras from Intova). Continue reading for full trip details…

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The new Canon G11 has popped onto everyone’s radars and for some very good reasons. The Canon Powershot G11 features a RAW mode, 28mm wide-angle lens, 2.8 in. Vari-Angle PureColor System LCD along with the all-new High Sensitivity System and high-speed ISO. It also has some really hot styling around a very modern digital camera. In compact-camera underwater photo contests, images taken with Canon G-series cameras have almost always won, so this camera is one that underwater photographers will be really interested in.

The G11’s biggest talking point seems to be the drop in megapixels from the G10 and G9. However most folks who are discussing this think it is a good thing and will bring about improved image quality rather than focusing only on more pixels. Head to the Wetpixel forums and let us know what you think about the G11!

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