Gandalf-the-Diver
Contributor
As a beginner you don’t want anything which is not essential. A pony is quite an awkward thing that messes with balance and adds extra ways to get things wrong. For your first dives you want everything to be as simple and easy as possible. As your experience increases you will get past the point where 110% of your brain is used up just being there and begin to have spare for extras. For a while that extra will be what you have available for when things don’t go perfectly. Eventually you will get to a place where you can manage all the stupid little things that bother beginners as second nature, all your dives will be uneventful and just be about whatever you are there to see. At this point adding a camera or other extra complication is fine. Maybe consider a pony then.
Having said all that, a pony is not actually a perfect solution to any problem. It is useful in a narrow set of circumstances mostly involving not having a decent buddy. It introduces extra and perhaps surprising ways to screw up, now and again people start on the wrong reg, some of those fail to figure out what is happening when they run out of gas a few minutes into the dive and switch to the full cylinder.
@KenGordon I am going to have to disagree with you on this. A person's mindset plays a big part in this, especially as a new diver. For example, last September I got my OW. My 1st dive as a certified diver, I slung a 13cu pony on my left side. My buddy for that dive, a DM in training, watched me as I flooded, then cleared my mask while switching to my pony for my ascent from 50'.
Packing a pony as a new diver is not hard if you are prepared to use it. I prefer to sling my pony, as opposed to mount to my main, as all control of the bottle is right in front of me and if something happens, I move my hand to the pony and the stage 2 is the first thing that my hand grabs.. Originally, I slung the pony on my left, but now sling diagonally across my chest. This keeps weighting equal between both sides and if I ever had to hand off my pony to a diver in need, my balance would not be out. I lovingly carried that 13cu for my 1st 70ish dives, after which, I purchased a 30cu tank, which I also carry, diagonally across my chest.
I have been diving for less than a year. I did not do my AOW until I had 40 logged dives. AS of this morning, I am now at 142 dives, all but 6 of those have been carrying a pony. I also did my OW in a drysuit, just to add more complexity, but it is needed in the waters I dive.
A beginner can do it, but you have to have the mindset. When I purchased all the gear I needed to scuba dive, I used the gear list from a Solo course to help me decide what to buy. I still practice switch over drills, and my pony has a LP whip for launching my DSMB, and as a spare source for my drysuit.
(I have still not brought out my camera, as I feel it is more important to nail buoyancy and finning techniques 1st, a camera however, is not lifesaving gear)