RogerCarlson

send them a link to this thread.

I used to pack so that my stuff looked like nothing special. I almost started packing in coolers or rubbermaid like a lot of other photogs. Now I'm back to my pelican, I carry it on, and it's covered with dive stickers. For me, the rules chaged in 3 ways: 1. The TSA is going to repack my gear, whether it's checked or carried on. That means pelican cases with nice foam cutouts for fragile items, and it means that carryon is really better, since I have a chance to repack. Gone are the days of carefully packing your gear in a cooler and padding it with clothes. 2. My crucial gear is my camera. Therefore, it's my carryon. 3. My carryon should look like scuba toys, not mysterious stuff. As a carryon, it's a lot more likely to be taken/damaged by the TSA than by theives or baggage apes. I need to decorate the outside to deal with that threat. The days of hiding fgrom thieves are gone. So, therefore, I covered my case with happy dive stickers. Some folks say to hide your pelican case in an old army duffle. Too terrorist for me. I want even the dumbest TSA to recognize me and my gear as happy scuba dive vacation stuff.

$3.95 from Photo Access. I've been happy with their work. they also make digital size prints, with a 3:4 ratio. http://www.photoaccess.com

Get a hoodman, use your laptop outside: http://www.hoodmanusa.com/

Eric, the metal plate on the bottom of the PT-015 is very soft brass, nickel plated. It's very easy to drill a hole for a second pin to keep it from rotating. The ULCS arms have a pretty wide web, you may have to drill & tap a second 1/4-20 hole for this to work out. I did somethin similar, and have a 1/4-20 holding the camera on, and a #10 in an untapped hole keeping it from spinning.

Harlequin bass?

I don't really know what I was thinking when I asked that question last night. If your drysuit floods, you've lost all the air that was inside it, in your insulation, so yeah, that's heavier. With a neoprene suit, you've got less dry insulation inside (it's built into the suit) so in a flood, you've lost less air. D'oh. By the way, though, one more reason I didn't like the neoprene suit and want the trilam: In the neoprene suit, if you don't have insulation in there with you, you get pretty damp and clammy from perspiration. In the summertime, I tried to wear tshirt & shorts under mine, and it got pretty swampy and smelly inside. If you do get one, IMHO you'll be more comfortable if you always wear long pants & longsleeve shirt, at least something light, and socks. It's good if the insulation is stretchy and comfortable, and if the suit is baggy enough to have room for it... and I've just described good polartec underwear and a baggy trilam suit, since neoprene suits aren't that baggy, usually, and perhaps too warm for polartec underneath. Anyway, another reason I want the trilam is the full insulation, and so that I can turn it inside out and completely wash the jammies.

I never dive near wrecks, but I am around rocks a lot, lobster diving, diving out of small inflatables, beach diving, just generally using my gear hard. A normal wetsuit lasts me around 3 years. I had a drysuit made out of normal neoprene, and it didn't last much longer, even though I was careful with it. It developed a lot of leaks, started having seam trouble, and generally got stiff and uncomfortable. Guess I'm hard on gear. I'm getting very serious about another drysuit, gonna get one soon, i hope. I'm set on getting one from DUI, mostly because I am close to them and factory service will be easy, so I guess my first advice would be to get one from a local maker, or at least find out how easily it can be serviced. Friends of mine bought DUI suits. DUI pretty commonly shows up at scuba shows and events. My friends went to their booth set on getting the crushed neoprene, since it's so bulletproof and they wanted a suit that lasts forever. The DUI folks talked them out of crushed neoprene and convinced them that for their kind of diving -non wreck - the trilam was plenty tough, very light for travel, and dried quickly. It can also be turned inside out for airing. My old neoprene suit really smelled. I built a rack for it out of PVC that would hold it upside down, with pipe run into the legs, with air forced into the feet, to try to dry it. Anyway, I'm pretty set on a tri-lam dui, but that mostly confirms what other people have said - you buy what people around you have bought. I am curious about one thing, though. I don't understand how a flooded tri-lam suit (or any suit, really) is heavier. Water is neutrally buoyant. A bucket of water underwater might be massive, might have inertia, might have drag, but heavy I don't get. It seems like you'd have trouble swimming, but that your BC would lift you (perhaps very slowly at first). Not trying to start an argument, just looking for clarification.

regarding the oly titan housing, I once asked an L&M rep about removing o-rings, and he said it wasn't as necessary with L&M housings as with others. I can imagine how that could be, you could use an o-ring material that doesn't take a set, and you can machine the metal so that the parts fit together well enough to never put too much pressure on an o-ring. But just the same, take them out. You need to take them out and clean/inspect them every once in a while. If you're too lazy to do that once in a while, this really isn't the hobby for you, unless you have *lot* of disposable money. I know people that take their o-rings out for a full cleaning and inspection with every roll of film. It really isn't too much to ask that you do it every dive trip.

Why wouldn't Todd's strobes fire? Sounds like the kind of data James is looking for.

Barry Lipman has sample pix of all this (and more) here: http://www.barrylipman.com/Photogs/BS/BS.htm

you are likely to find that the lens doesn't magnify as much in water as it does on land, and I think you are also likely to find that the edges are soft, because it's at the wrong distance from the camera's lens. In other words, it might act the way a cheap magnifying glass does on land, but what the heck, try it, as long as it's expendable (the metal ring will probably get too rusty to screw onto a land lens ever again).

Original achromatic wide angle lens for light & motion tetra (NOT wetmate!), for 2040, 3040 or 4040 oly. $150 obo. Thanks, Roger

when I have to jump in, I try to hold the camera low, and lift it as I go in, so that it goes in slowly, if at all. One thing you have to be careful of is that you are risking a blast of water before your o-rings have properly seated under pressure. This is worse with some cameras than others. I think most digital housings are pretty good, the o-rings are already pretty well compressed, but it's a concern to think about.

the e-20 is very different from the coolpix 5000. My advice would be to do some careful reading of a site like www.dpreview.com, and make sure you know the strengths of each camera, perhaps including the oly 4040 or 3040. And you might call L&M and talk it over with them, too. Some would say that the coolpix 5000 is the weakest camera of the 3 in terms of lens speed, lens quality, and ultimately picture quality. I have heard some people say that if it wasn't a nikon, it wouldn't be selling. I haven't done enough research on it yet to know how true that is, don't flame me or blame me. Right now, without having done much research, I want to change to it from my 3040, and you may ultimately come to the same decision, but there is more to the cost of the titan than the roc. It looks like a much more complex housing. I am looking forward to handling all of these housings, hope they have them at the Los Angeles/Long Beach scuba show in late June (seems unlikely for the tetra 5000, but I can hope). There are shops out there that will let you rent these things and put the money toward purchase. Not a bad move.