New to rebreathers - what do you recommend based on this?

[silent running]

I needed to switch to rebreather when I decided to go tek, because I am too skinny to carry a set of double. I may reconsider that if I end up readjusting the targets I have set for myself. A rebreather is not needed for most of my diving, but I need to dive it regularly enough to remain proficient. Not everyone is a tech instructor or pro diving on a weekly basis if not more.

I go for months without diving in a good year and I’m sure I’m not the only one. In the beginning it’s important to dive a lot and get your pre dive routine and muscle memory into place. After that, it’s not hard to refresh your skills, your first dive after a period off should be easy and maybe involve a few drills. It’s never taken me more than a dive or two to get back to where I was.

Video lights scare fish small or big. It is a fact that I can testify about in my neck of the woods. Clearly strobes are a different issue, but the OP mentioned video.
And some critters are skittish, not matter how few bubbles you emit. A diver is a big ugly thing to witness in your environment when you are a potential meal for most of the neighbors.

Potential meal for most of the neighbors? I don’t think so. Most dive sites do not involve regular interactions with large apex predators, in fact I have had to go way out of the way and spend lots of money to observe them in their natural habitat.

And if CCR is of only marginal use to photographers, why do so many filmmakers like Walt Stearns and amateur photographers use them? Whatever happens after the lights are turned on, CCR has enabled many divers to more closely observe animals in their natural environment. Myself and another CCR diver once spent an hour plus at a seamount in Komodo sitting inches below a group of reef sharks, while they targeted and struck fish feeding in the current. Whether they were being photographed or not, that would never have happened if we were constantly blowing bubbles underneath them. If you actually knew something about interacting with sharks you would not say we are a “potential meal”. Sharks tend to either perceive CCR divers territorially as competitors for food, or as a curiosity. They are very predictable and dealing with them is not difficult. They are ambush predators and as long as you don’t give them any advantages and don’t behave aggressively towards them, they will eventually ignore you and go back to their patrolling or feeding behaviors and forget you are there.

The point of my posts to putative new rebreather divers is simply this: yes, there is a honey moon phase where everything feels great. But eventually you'll have to get real: cost, complexity, potential risk need to be rationally considered. They don't always make sense for everybody.
As for discipline, I guess all guys who didn't come back from their last dive had none and some people are born with a supernatural ability to never screw up.

The reasons for CCR fatalities often involve many factors like unit design, the level and kind of experience prior to adopting CCR, diver health, conditions and of course training. Reducing fatalities to a simple statement like you made is unhelpful and does nothing to educate a potential new CCR diver, except to scare them. If that’s your objective, keep up the good work.

 

[silent running]

IAnd some critters are skittish, not matter how few bubbles you emit. A diver is a big ugly thing to witness in your environment when you are a potential meal for most of the neighbors.

I misinterpreted your potential meal comment, I apologize. I thought you were referring to a diver as the potential meal.

The rest of my comments still stand, especially about the value of CCR for maximizing the quality of wildlife interaction, which is what photography is all about...

 

[uwxplorer]

Reducing fatalities to a simple statement like you made is unhelpful and does nothing to educate a potential new CCR diver, except to scare them. If that’s your objective, keep up the good work.

It's not just the risk that I think worse reiterating, it's the grind, expense and in general that it is not what the cheerleaders' message would want you to believe.
This being said, now that you're warned, go and try it