Underwater shots

I was quite pleased with my new camera - it's a lot less bulky than the Intova and so slips very easily into a pocket or handbag. The zoom is perfectly adequate for the sort of holiday we were on, though I would have missed my Canon if we'd been doing any serious sightseeing.

The LCD screen is much better than the one on the Intova, and I really was able to see it quite well even in sunlight. It took a little bit of getting used to underwater, but the main frustration was that the screen dims after a few seconds with no buttons being pressed to save power, and if you're following a fish and trying to focus on it, you can get quite frustrated when the picture on the screen disappears at the crucial moment.

Once I was used to it, though, the main problem was that the fish wouldn't necessarily sit still and pose for me!

Although a lot of the scenery reminded me of Hawai'i (another volcanic island with beautiful blue sea, where we spent our honeymoon), the fish were nowhere near as bright and colourful - but there were certainly plenty of them. At one point I was swimming amongst a school of fish and some of them started to nibble my toes, which freaked me out a little bit - though at least they weren't piranhas, and I still have the requisite number of digits.

Here are some of my favourite underwater shots from last week.