Scuba Obsessed

Ok Tara, Andy and other divers (you know who you are),  here is the promised post on my dive gear.

This is my dive gear all placed out. I don't typically set it out like this, but I thought it was the best way to show in photos.

So let's break this pile of gear down and you can see how I currently dive. Please note that not everything I dive with is my preferred dive gear, but this is what I currently have that works for my budget and the type of diving I currently do. Most of this dive gear I use all year round, from 70 degree F (21 degrees C) warm water dives in the summer to 32 degree F (0 degrees C) ice dives in the winter. I would say my current kit is about as flexible as you can get. There are many upgrades I am looking to make as funds allow.

Darrin's 7mm Wetsuit

• I dive a 7mm wetsuit with back zipper. Like I said above I dive this all year round. At the warmest time of the year it can be a little toasty, but not too warm that drawing a little water into the suit won't cool off. I also have performed ice dives in this 7mm. I can get between 20 minutes to 40 minutes in ice diving tempurtures if I have prepped properly.  You may be able to see the glue spots where I have performed a few repairs. I have over 150 dives on this wetsuit and it is still warm.
• I have some stuff fins that I use with a quick release on the back. I like stiff fins for my diving style. The quick release clip on the heal can be handy at times, but it is nothing I would consider a must have on fins.  I have yet to accidentally trip them, but I expect that is a possibility. I might add a spring strap to them, but will probably get a whole new set of fins before then. I will need to upgrade the fins when I finally make the transition to a dry suit diving.  A good dry suit is on the top of my list for gear purchases.
• Under the fins is a mesh gear bag. I like the mesh bag keeps on of the loose pieces of my gear together. I can see though the mesh to double check what is in there and the mesh lets water drip right through. When I am doing boat dives you will frequently find my fins, goggles (in case), gloves, hood and light in this mesh bag.  Few things a dive boat captain hates more than loose dive gear rolling around.

Darrin's Dive Gloves and Boots

• I dive most of the year around with my 5/7mm three finger gloves.  By my third dive with them they were well broken in.
•  Only during the warmest dive conditions do I move into my five finger gloves. The zebra and quaga mussles have torn up the five finger gloves and they are due to be replaced. I am not a fan of the straps on the gloves. They seem to be in the way for me way to much. I have separated the neoprene on the inside wrist from wrestling them on when in the water.
• The dive boots are size 11 1/2 and I normally where a size 12. I got them smalls to cut down on the water movement, but if I were to do it again I would get the correct size. They hurt my feet when hauling gear a long way in them. These are the boots I wear most of the year and they are 5/7mm boots.
• I have some 3mm summer boots (shown later in wet tub) that I do like. Both pairs have neoprene that I have pulled way too hard on and will cause their early demise. The right size, taking my time and "completely" unzipping the sides would have fixed that.

• Here are my two hoods. In the warmer times of the year I dive with the 3mm summer hood. It is the most comfortable and has a vent on the top to evacuate the air. When conditions are a little more chilly, I go withe the 5mm hood. For ice dives I will wear the 3mm hood over the 5mm hoods. Not my favorite setup as it is a little uncomfortable and it also makes it tough to hear.
• I have my weight belt with a stainless steal clip. Unfortunately it could be a couple of inches longer. My weighting is perfect for what I need with my kit. I am a touch light for a river dive, but clipping on 2 - 4 lbs (1-2 Kg) more takes care of that. I use standard lead weights. I like to have a variety of sizes and I also have a spare weight belt (not shown) with the same weighting.
• I have a clear dive mask that works OK for me. I keep them in the dive case for travel and normally have a bottle of defog with them.  I would like to get a black mask next time, but it is now high on the purchase list.
• I have a pretty basic snorkel. It works OK, but I find it gets in the way with the type of diving I do. I would like to replace it would a fold-up snorkel that I could keep in a pocket until I need it.
• The slate I have is a basic slate and I rarely dive with it. If I do I will clip it in the pocket of my BC.
• I also have a safety sausage that clips in my BC. I strongly recommend anyone that dives to have one of these.  In the waves on a boat dive it can help you get spotted.  I would like to get a larger (longer) safety sausage as budget allows (OK, you can stopped giggling now... geesh!)
• The blue gym bag is what I used to carry around my dry cloths and to keep the clothes I change out of in. I also tend to keep a couple of water bottles and some spare batteries in here. There are also a couple of dry towels in there when I don't forget them.

Dive Light

• I bought these basic lights for my advanced open water class. There are nothing fancy, but work well. The main light is an 8C battery light with two bulbs that can be selected by the switch.
• The backup like is a simple (non-LED) light that uses 4 AA's. I plan to upgrade both of these to some serious dive lights at some point.

• I dive with matched environmentally sealed regulators. These are rated for cold water.
• I have a dive computer,
• compass and
•  pressure gauge on the console. I plan to replace the compass to something better on a retractor.
• I keep a dive knife on my inflator hose. I know some people think that is dangerous, but for me it has been my favorite place for a dive knife.

Buoyancy Compensator Vest

•  Here is my trusty BC. I bought it used and have 200+ dives on it. It just keep working. The velcro is starting to get old and I don't put anything in the pockets I can't clip in as they won't stay shut.  This is on the list to be replaced with a back plate and a wing (after I buy that dry suit). 

•  This is my wet tub. I use it to haul around anything that isn't stored in my full gear bag before a dive. After the dive anything wet goes in here. It keeps all the lake juices from dripping in the Scuba Vehicle.  It has a lid which allows it to be stacked with other gear. My backup set of 3mm wet boots are in the tub in this picture.

Gear Bag and Parts Bag

•  The small clear PADI bag I use to keep spare parts and some basic tools. I have a variety of 'O' rings in here. I also have some spare change in here and couple of pens.
• The large red bag is my dive gear bag. It is large enough to hold just about all the dive gear I have minus my tanks.

Priming Water Jugs

• Now hear are my two water priming jugs. The red jug has hot water and the orange jug contains warm water. I use the warm water to prime my wetsuit before the dive. If you don't fill you wetsuit up with warm water than COLD water will find a way in. I was very surprised how well this works the first time I tried it.  

• Here is a bailout I borrowed from Kirk for this Lake 16 dive. When doing some of the deeper dives it is nice to have the redunancy.
• I also dive with my dive flag which didn't make it in these photos. It was already bobbing in the water waiting for me to get done taking the photos and to start the dive. Here is an old post showing the dive flag's creation. http://darrinjillson.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/diy-dive-flag-and-float/

Dive Buddy - Jim

•  And while he was too big to fit into the gear bag I did bring my dive buddy Jim! You will notice him here pimping his hat. I am sure he would be happy to sell you one. 😉

Overall I consider my gear a work in progress. It will be interesting to see what I will be diving with next year at this time. Hopefully much of it has been upgraded.

-Darrin

I have been playing around with this scuba toy for the last month, the Intova SS-1000 Waterproof camera. This is a simple point and shoot camera that is waterproof down to 50 feet.  Its native resolution is 1.3 MP (1280x960) and goes up to 5MP (2560x1920) interpolated. Like most digital cameras today it has a video mode, but to date I have been unimpressed with any still camera’s video. The focal range is .5m to infinity. There is enough built in memory with 16MB to get you started on a few pictures before you will naturally want to upgrade by adding an external SD member card up to 2GBs in size. The package comes with a short PC interface cable to download the photos and  two AAA batteries so you can get right to using your impulse buy.

The SS-1000 Freed from its Packaging

I had been looking for one of these cameras for quite a while. I am surprised that big box retailers aren’t stocking these. I had to find mine at a scuba trade show at a dive shop’s booth. They had 5 of them on display and I snapped mine up for $50 with sales tax included.  I want to say my expectations were reasonable considering the price. After blasting my way into the sealed packaging it was pretty straight forward to setup. Everything was ready to go for the most part. It does take a little time to go through the menus but if you are going to just shoot some quick pictures your first go of it can be within a couple of minutes. I am not a big fan of the navigation menus.

In My Hands

There are four buttons on the back of the camera that does all of the menu functions including powering on. These buttons can be accessed both with the back open and with the camera seal to underwater use with a D pad through the case. On the top of the camera where you would expect it is the shutter button.

The size of the camera is convenient and is around the size of a deck of playing cards. It can easily fit into a shirt or pants pocket. There is a simple lanyard attached which I used to clip off to my BC. So far this camera has joined me on three dives with the deepest being 1 foot beyond its 50’ waterproof rating.

Showing off with USB Cable Attached

The clear case provides you good visibility to see if you have sprung a leak and flooded the camera. So far it has been water tight.

Now on to the important part, the pictures. That is why you buy a camera right? How I wanted to use this camera is to take quick snap shots underwater to share with the non-diver surface dwellers who frequently ask “What do you see down there?” I figured the semi-disposable camera would foot the bill. My first photos where on the surface.

Above the Surface Sample - SS-1000 (I had a hard time holding it still while pushing down the button)

All photos are taken through the underwater camera housing even above water. I took several pictures and I could not manage to get a sharp picture. My reference camera is a simple iPhone 3G camera which is similar resolution and the camera I use for 90% of my impromptu pictures. The shutter button on the SS-100 is very stiff and the effort required to take the photo seemed to cause the camera to move as the picture is being digitally capture. I wondered if the camera worked better in its underwater element. So next was onto the sink test.

Too Close to Coins in My Sink - SS-1000 (I was too close based on focal length)

I filled my kitchen sink with water and placed a few underwater artifacts in it.  The photos were not any better, but I had violated the minimum focal length so then onto the hot tub (No not those type of photos silly people).  In the hot tub with my repositioned artifacts the photos turned out better. They were enough better to prompt a hunt by another MUD Club diver to add this camera to his shopping list.

My first official dive with the camera was a river dive with a disappointing 6” of visibility.

Action Shot in the Hot Tub - SS-1000

Six inches was effectively dirty pea soup and even the best camera was not going to shine.

Jim in Water with 6" of vis.... I think it's Jim? - SS-1000

The next dive, which was to 51 feet, was on a wreck in Lake Michigan and I honestly didn’t want to mess with anything other than enjoying the view so the camera stayed in my BC pocked the whole time. The following week I let my kids walk around with the camera at an indoor water park and perform adolescent gadget abuse on it. Oddly enough they never actually snapped a picture with it. The only shots were me making sure the batteries were in it and working. The last test dive was another wreck dive. This time I was determined to actually try out the camera. I took a couple of surface shots.

Jim on Surface - SS-1000

One turned out nice enough to become Jim’s newest FaceBook profile pictures. I forgot about the camera until I got to the bottom at 39 feet. No problem I thought, except no matter how hard I pressed the power button I couldn’t get the camera to power on.

Jim's Handywork with the SS-1000

I was tempted to take off my gloves, but in 41 degree F water that was not an attractive idea. On my safety stop I decided to give it another try and to my relief I was able to get it to power up. I took several pictures of Jim and passed the camera to him. This was a good move since on that day he turned out to be the better photographer.

Darrin Surfacing - SS-1000

Positives on the camera is the price, the size and I like the transparent case. On the negative is that it eats batteries. In fact I have had to replace batteries between each use. Also the buttons were too hard to push at depth and this leads to some blurry pictures when you can depress the shutter button. I would like to see a 2 second self timer so I could press the button and then steady the camera for the shot. There is a 10 second self time but that is too long for another other than trying to take your own picture.

Overall I think the camera is worth the $50 I paid for it. Considering how hard it was to use as the depth increased I wouldn’t call it a scuba diver’s camera, but for near surface shots it works well. I also see it as a good camera that can handle water splashes on the boat ride and with it being positively buoyant if you drop it in the water you can just pick it up. I would easily recommend it over any disposable underwater film camera you could buy at a resort for $20.

I am now looking for a $100 underwater camera that would work at deeper depths.

This gallery has photos of the camera taken with an Apple iPhone 3G and all other photos are taken with the Intova Model SS-1000 underwater digital camera. Most of the photos taken by Darrin and the good ones are taken by Jim. 🙂

Here is how they make a scuba dive computer. They squeeze everything into that little case.

There seems to be quite a bit of work to make a set of scuba fins. I thought they would just pour a little liquid into a mold. There is a little to this.

It would be hard to see underwater without one of these. The other option is to make a scuba dive mask like Mac did out of a pail.

Shearwater Predator

The Scuba Obsessed Team heading into Chicago to the Our World Underwater dive show. While we were there we got to see some great seminars and get our hands on with some great gear. We have to blog about some of the cool stuff we saw.

In no particular order here we go with our first post from the show.

After a nice dry suit (a post also coming soon) the item I would most love to pickup is a nice technical diving computer. Not that I am diving all that deep yet, but I like to be prepared. As the ultimate geek I was drawn to the Shearwater Predator Computer. Not sure what it was that first caught my eye, but it easily could have been the bright OLED display.

I won’t give you all the details on this computer. You can just as easily get it from their website here http://www.shearwaterresearch.com/pages/dive-computers , but these are some of the features I liked:

• The bright OLED display
• The screen using color to clearly convey meaning. Green is no warnings while yellow or red communicates warning or unusual value.
• Includes dive log software
• Blue Tooth to download your dive log without plugging in a cable
• Easy to change battery
• Large buttons
• Easy to change settings during the dive, such as going from closed circuit to open circuit or changing gas mixes
• Each unit wet pot tested to 11 ATA
• Software is upgradable and sometimes you can upgrade your hardware too (from pursuit to predator for example)

After seeing this computer I asked by tech dive buddy Bob if he had seen one of these yet. His response was that he owned two of them. He had the LCD models and said he was planning on sending one of them in to be upgraded to the OLED version soon. Very cool! Now I just need to save up for one of these bad boys. I don’t really need one yet, but as I work towards the world of tech diving a computer like this would do me well.

** disclaimer – This is not a review. I have never used the computer on a dive (not that I wouldn't love to). Shearwater didn't pay us for this posting. They just thought I was your everyday dive show visitor. **

Here is a video of a steel scuba tank being created. It is interested to see that they completely seal it before heat treatment

Here is a video of an aluminum tank being created. They make it look so easy. Probably not a good idea to try and make one out of clay.