Here is a little more trivia. These are all little back of the mag adds from Skin Diver. The Anchor Shack ad from 1968 is for the original Hydro Strobe with the wing nuts. The Aquaflash ad from 1966 is the Calypso/Nikonos bulb flash mentioned above. The Bamboo Reef ad from 1964 for custom Plexiglas housings made by Al Gidding when he and Leroy French were running the dive shops.
Al Giddings was building up a pretty impressive little machine shop in the back of the San Francisco store. He had a nice Bridgeport mill and a small shop lathe plus tools for Plexiglas fabrication. He and Helmut were the only sources for commercially available custom Plexiglas housings in the Bay Area I was aware of in those days. About 1/3 to 1/2 the housings I saw were Plexiglas home-brews.
Moving to cast and fabricated aluminum was a really big leap in the early-1960s. There weren’t many “production” Aluminum housings before then. Offhand I recall Gerry Greenberg’s housing for Leicas, the Sampson housings for the Bell & Howell, the Rolleimarin for the Rolleiflex, a Bolex housing for the H-16, and a few still housings from Mako.
Al Giddings was building up a pretty impressive little machine shop in the back of the San Francisco store. He had a nice Bridgeport mill and a small shop lathe plus tools for Plexiglas fabrication. He and Helmut were the only sources for commercially available custom Plexiglas housings in the Bay Area I was aware of in those days. About 1/3 to 1/2 the housings I saw were Plexiglas home-brews.
Moving to cast and fabricated aluminum was a really big leap in the early-1960s. There weren’t many “production” Aluminum housings before then. Offhand I recall Gerry Greenberg’s housing for Leicas, the Sampson housings for the Bell & Howell, the Rolleimarin for the Rolleiflex, a Bolex housing for the H-16, and a few still housings from Mako.
Attachments
Last edited:
