Carrying your rig?

[ftnpenlvr]

Hi All

As I build out my rig, I am getting curious as to whether people simply carry their rig underwater when going from one spot to another, or tether between shooting locations, and deploy as needed?

I don't want to have more "Christmas Tree Lights" than necessary, and my own rig is quite simple - a couple of action cameras mounted on a DiveVolk housing for my iPhone, plus an old Olympus TG5 point n shoot. My notion is to have them pointing in multiple directions, and I dive in many conditions - silty/sandy, fast current, cluttered bottom, wall, open floor, with and without sharks, etc. "Dangly Things" are generally a bad idea around sharks, but, everybody I know diving with them, and photographing them, is carrying their rig the short distance from boat to site.

I'm good with that, but, am also thinking of "I might be at this site now, drifting to another, then swimming to a third, and hey, that's a gorgeous lobster there! along the way." Better to tether, or just accept that carry is going to happen and be ready to shoot when there is something worth capturing?

Thanks all! Looking forward to the info and feedback!

 

[Barmaglot]

I'm a bit confused by the question - are you carrying four different cameras simultaneously? Why? Do you have eight arms and four heads to operate them all? Are you trying to do some kind of 360-degree capture? Dashcam-type video capture running throughout the dive? Something else? All of the above?

I use a Sony a6700 with Retra Pro strobes. It has shackles with bolt snaps attached to top arm joints, and a coiled wire lanyard attached to the tray. The lanyard is always attached to a waist D-ring; the top bolt snaps are attached to chest D-rings during water entry, released on descent, and re-attached at the end of the dive so that I can have my hands free for DSMB deployment and water exit. This is, however, a rather large and heavy (~10kg in air) rig - an action camera, a phone housing, or a P&S without strobes can easily be clipped off to a single D-ring or even pocketed.

 

[ftnpenlvr]

Thank you for the reply. Yes, I carry 4 cameras simultaneously, pointed in different directions. Partially this is for redundancy, but primarily, it is for the varied angles. If a tiger swims past in front of me, I capture it. If she swims past behind me, I capture it and hope my buddy lets me know she’s there. If not, it’s forensic evidence so the coroner knows what happened.

Mostly, yes it is a poor man’s 360, but I also enjoy seeing what the different cameras do while I figure out what’s best for me. Even with just my iPhone in a tray with a couple lights, the rig gets bulky, which is where my question comes from - adjust for buoyancy and carry it, or strap it on in transit?