Looking for ideas. Portable, inflatable camera float

I'm looking to do 'over/unders', where you have half the shot under water, and the other half out of the water.   I want to do this while scuba diving, so I have no support underneath me.  I've tried this a number of times.

The problem I have is supporting the weight of the camera.   I need it to float at just the right height for the shot I intend.

The weight of the camera out of the water is approximately 30 pounds,  Here is a picture of part of the rig, a Nauticam housing holding a Nikon D810:

In addition to the above are two jointed arms that connect to the balls sticking up and hold two underwater strobes.  (Part of the 30 pounds).   Those strobes will need to stick down and light the foreground underwater.

I'm thinking some sort of inflatable bag, possibly pared with some styrofoam wrapped around the barrel.   The bag would desirably have a long easy-to-blow-into nipple for inflating/deflating as needed.

If this becomes a fully-inflatable system, it is desirable simply from the fact that if deflated, it would not affect the buoyancy of the camera during the rest of the dive.

Here's a picture of me holding this thing underwater with the strobes.

I'm not a do-it-yourselfer, nor particularly handy with tools, so anything I'd have to build needs to be simple.   Looking for ideas.  Maybe not even a float?  Maybe a long stick between camera and my belt, to shift the weight?  (Inflate BCD as needed...)

A freind with a similar set up used expanded polystyrene for a float for his over/under shots. IIRC he said it was easier to get the camera balanced with this, but he was taking his from a small boat - so the rest of the dive wasn't an issue.

You may find some inflatable childrens toys / floation aids can be employed. When my kids were tiny we had a babys ring (with a fabric seat) that might work.

Another option would be to use things like cola bottles for buoyancy, and simply fill them with water & strap them to your belt for the rest of the dive. Once flooded they should be pretty close to neutral buoyancy. Multiple bottles would give you the ability to adjust the systems natural trim, whilst keeping float out of the way.

I like all the ideas, but the polystyrene the best, simply because I could probably build something with excellent floating characteristics that also stayed out of the way.

Managing it on dives is the issue, but if I limited myself to over-unders at the beginning of a dive, I could simply toss the float back on the boat before resuming the dive.

One of the issues I see with floats is that most would be unstable, though the enterprise tends to be unstable.

This was the first over-under I ever tried with this rig, in 2016.   I was at the end of my last dive of the trip, and when I came up, I saw a waterspout.   Finning furiously, I managed to heave the camera up out of the water in the right direction, pressing the AF-ON button and hoping for the best.   Didn't get much 'under', but I was actually trying to get the 'over' here.   The effort showed me how hard this would be.

I've been diving in the same place each September for the past 5 years (Reef House Resort in Roatan), and this year I decided to try something new.   For my check-out dive, where I do a shore dive the afternoon I arrive, I thought I would simply stand in a shallow area, and get a shot of the Reef House over, and their 'pool' area under.  I would dangle both strobes downward and light the under area.

On a calm day, this would have worked OK, but there was so much wind and swells nobody could go in off the end of the pier as usual (and then come back in to the shallower area).   I went in the shallow area, and could not get out to the end of the pier due to the waves, so I tried the over/under.   Too much wave action to get the shot as I was barely able to stand more than a second.    Here is all I got:

Just viewing the LCD can be a problem when half of it is underwater, and bright sun is out.   The camera really needs to be in a neutral weight configuration for this.

Hmm.  Maybe a bag of styrofoam beads...

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

On a calm day, this would have worked OK, but there was so much wind and swells nobody could go in off the end of the pier as usual (and then come back in to the shallower area). I went in the shallow area, and could not get out to the end of the pier due to the waves, so I tried the over/under. Too much wave action to get the shot as I was barely able to stand more than a second. Here is all I got:

Just viewing the LCD can be a problem when half of it is underwater, and bright sun is out. The camera really needs to be in a neutral weight configuration for this.

I'm not a diver, but many times I've tried to get half-in/half-out photos like you're talking about... mostly with waterproof compacts, but also with film cameras years ago. It almost never works because the lens is tiny relative to the wave action....

So, my thinking is that it's more about providing a larger air/water interface area than it is about buoyancy. Thus, I'd be thinking in terms of having a large clear plastic plate some short distance in front of the camera. The camera flotation I have in mind would be shaped like a high-displacement boat hull, probably with a flat or cylindrically-curved plexiglass sheet as the transom. I'd probably make this boat be the waterproof housing, rather than a support for a housing -- in that way, it could be more compact and easier to access by wired/wireless tethered control.

As for making it portable, most of the structure could literally be inflatable. I wouldn't try building a first one that way, however. Many years ago, my Dad's company built a powerboat handling trainer (described this 2007 article in Power & Motor Yacht ), and I'd start with a similar construction.... Heck, I still have a stack of hulls and other parts for those in my garage!  Here's a photo from that article:

However, now that I think about it, it wouldn't be too hard to build a fairly small fully self-contained unit to do it that would be more like a camera array in a buoy. For that matter, are any of the 360-degree cameras viable as weighted floating balls?  The results from a floating ball would be quite different, but maybe nice?

Is there much demand for autonomous/remote-control surface camera systems? This wouldn't be too hard for me to do, but it falls in that awkward region of not being a very quick project and also not being something I'd be able to support as a research effort in my lab at the University of Kentucky.  Maybe as a senior project?

timbazi wrote:

Did you find a solution yet? I was thinking something like ice packs, could then fill them with a bit of water/sand if needed

Since I don't have any dive trips scheduled and it's too cold in the lakes here now to want to go there, I've not made progress.

However, I really like the idea of making a stiff floating tray that I can plop the camera on at the beginning of a dive and can then toss back in the boat.   I could glue some polystyrene bits and get it shaped to hold the rig ahead of time.  I'd have to have a way of making it small enough to pack in a suitcase too.   Perhaps something that has a 'fitted tray' to hold the camera coupled with some simple inflatable parts to provide adjustable buoyancy and easy packing.