mid range ($) apsc camera and housing

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

I'd say though that as soon as you add handles to the side of the camera, it changes how you dive. With a wrist strap camera, you can let it go and ignore it. Not so much with a handled camera, which is usually going to have at least one strobe hanging off as well.

i've hung the rig with a coiled lanyard, though i discovered during a safety stop at Truk that these will break with age.   Now I use a braided rope (the nauticam one) with metal clips as my primary.    It's a lot of money dangling there.   The pressure of constantly holding with one bent arm can lead to joint aches and muscles - the fake bends.

The complexity isn't to be ignored by new divers. I constantly have my regulator hose getting caught up in my strobe clamps, pulling my mouthpiece out when I turn my head, and always in a spot you cannot see because of the mask. That sort of thing can be quite distracting.

20 years ago, before I started using cameras, I adopted most of the DIR/GUE practices that came into vogue from the cavediver world.   They repopularized backplates, but it was their KISS principles around hose management I found very attractive for diving in the kelp, as I was doing a lot of solo diving at that time.

You start with a presumption that in an out of air emergency, it's faster to donate your primary, and the victim may not ask anyway.   So the octo gets put on a short hose attached to a bungle necklace.   It's always sitting just at your neck, no risk of it dragging behind you out of reach, or across the reef.    The primary hose goes on a very long hose (5', to as long as 6 for a big guy in a thick suit) which you wrap around your torso once.  (cave divers go even longer to 7 feet).   This is long enough so that if you donate, you can both swim side by side rather than be forced into a dosey do embrace.     If you're nearly always solo, very unlikely to donate, then you can use a second short hose.  The octo is there in case of mechanical failure or somehow knocked away.     The HP SPG hose (with or without a computer) is clicked to your left hip d-ring.   (My wife's variation to replace the SS dogclick with a bungee clip so she can pull the SPG to visual range without having to unclip.    I use wrist computers and when called for, a wrist compass.

Coupled with a backplate and wing and no need for a chest strap, you have nothing to snag between your neck and your waist.   Much lower drag too.    I cringe whenever I see the classic kitchen sink diver who dangles a multiple of objects from every hang point.   I was that diver 5 years earlier.   It's very inefficient, distracting, and increases ways for things to go wrong.   You want all of that settled, so all you need to think about is the camera and the target.

Attached is 19 year old pic.   This is still my cold water gear, though the wetsuit is on last legs.  Changed the octo faceplate to black - don't want people thinking it is meant for them.   Hidden are the classic jetfins with the modern spring straps.   Any photog in rougher waters wants fins that go on/off in a flash.

Catalina's Casino Point.