Clamps - how tightly before, during, after dive?

[JDelage 0]

All,

 

I have a NA-RX100II housing on a flexitray II + handle and one Inon Z-240 strobe on each handle at the end of (5"+8+) arm assembly. Today I took my rig in the pool to familiarize myself with it. My take away: it's harder than it looks.

 

One thing that got me puzzled was how much I should tighten the clamps. I found that if I tighten the clamps hard enough for the rig to be semi-rigid out of the water, the arms would be obviously impossible to reposition UW without first loosening the clamps. No big deal, except that fine tuning the clamps underwater might not be the righ thing to do.

 

So what do experienced photographers do with their clamps? What's your "clamp workflow" for in-boat->diving->back-in-boat?

 

Thanks,

 

Joss

[Interceptor121 712]

Joss

Personally I keep them tight enough outside water as I don't want them to bang with each other however I have seen a guy last year in Lembeh having absolutely loose clamps on land set effectively for in water use. His arms were quite short though so there was not a lot of relative movement.

The main challenge is when you give back the equipment to come up the boat once you have loosen the clamps and generally understanding how the boat personnel deals with your rig.

On land your rig will be more than 5KG you want to make sure the handlers have an easy job to do

[stewsmith 14]

I have mine locked off tight until in the water then loosen them off just enough so they don't collapse, but loose enough so I can adjust my strobe positions without having to touch the clamps. Then re tighten them on my safety stop ready for the boat boy to handle the rig and be able to put it down and the rig not move around once on the boat deck. I never let the guys on the boats put my rig inside a rinse tank either. Generally boat boys are good at handling rigs, but I always speak to them prior to getting in the water and ask them to pick it up in a certain way and also to put it down in a certain way as well.

[allen 4]

The above post is basically what I do as well. Crank them down tight for top side and loosen them up underwater so the arms move easily. I do find that sometimes the clamps need to be adjusted depending on how I am shooting - vertical vs horizontal.

[JDelage 0]

So I am just back from my trip, and what I ended up doing is to keep the clamps semi-loose. Out of the water I would fold the arms above the housing, which would make the rig more compact in the zodiac.