New Vintage Scuba YouTube Channel

[AhoyFed]

Contact Chuck Davis. They were friends and dove together up to about his last year.



Yes. Bob designed it around the Nikon F when he still had the Anchor Shack dive shop in Hayward, California. The Cannon F1 also fit with a few modifications. The reason these two cameras were chosen is they both had large viewfinder optics available as an option.

Rambling stuff that may be of interest:
The best viewfinders were on the Rolliemarin with large a prism angled up at about 45°. That prism was used or copied on several Hasselblad and Bronica large format housings that followed. Even though the Rolleimarin was the first commercial camera housing produced, it still has the best ergonomics and most elegant design of any housing I have seen. Too bad the twin-reflex Rollei was soon eclipsed by the single reflex cameras. Still, you have to marvel at the design quality for a brainchild that began in the late 1930s and was finalized in the early 1950s.

Bob Hollis did quite a few Rolleimarin housing updates by replacing shaft seals with modern O-ring glands, adding EO connectors to sync strobes, and replacing some of the gum-rubber gaskets with O-ring seals. You might be interested in the history of O-rings in O-rings for Divers. There's a photo of my Hydro-35 in there. You can see that the original housing wasn't designed for the Cannon because the F-stop control machined away some of the cast letters of the name.



A few hundred but mostly technical stuff of the Bathyscaph Trieste II and Mark II Deep dive system. I have posted a few on ScubaBoard when it was relevant. I posted yesterday: What’s the best photograph you've taken whilst scuba diving?, Post #18. I have a few from school but not as many as I should have taken.

Nice housing! It looks like it’s held up quite well after all these years!

The Rolleimarin is one of those sought after items in both the photography and vintage scuba collector groups. I believe the housing is actually worth more than most Rolleiflex and Rolleicord cameras.

The photo you posted is very eerie. How did your Nikonos camera hold up at the depth?! 950 feet certainly is deep, much deeper than the 200 feet the Nikonos was rated to! Did you use the Nikonos in another housing? If you have anymore neat photos from your time in the navy, feel free to post them here

AhoyFed

 

[AhoyFed]

Nice! And you live in the Hammer to boot.

The “big hammer” haha! It’s fairly central, although good diving is about 4 hours north to either the west for Tobermory or east for Brockville.

AhoyFed

 

[p_kos]

The “big hammer” haha! It’s fairly central, although good diving is about 4 hours north to either the west for Tobermory or east for Brockville.

AhoyFed

So Humber Bay isn’t good enough for you?!
I’m in Courtice by Oshawa so I’m used to driving a bit to get to the good stuff. The Hammer has some sweet waterfalls though.

 

[Akimbo]

How did your Nikonos camera hold up at the depth?! 950 feet certainly is deep, much deeper than the 200 feet the Nikonos was rated to!

Easy. You take the lens out in the chamber before you press down. Somebody at NEDU figured out that Helium leaked into the lens assembly fast enough so it didn't implode. Load the film when you reach the sat holding depth and seal it up. Our descent rate is typically only about 1'/minute. The excursion from our holding depth of 850' was less that 100'.

They had a special strobe made that was rated to 1,000' and hung it on the outside of the bell. I hooked it to the camera with an EO connector right after dropping through the hatch. The strobe couldn't go in the chamber because Helium would infiltrate the housing and the Xenon flash tube, which would destroy it.

We just pulled the lens off the Nikonos when we got back in the deck chamber and decompressed it with us. Locking the lens out in the utility lock after several days that deep would blow the front lens out because it is more or less sealed. Helium will leak through all known transparent materials, which is why some watches have helium relief valves. We decided not to lock the exposed film out in the utility lock because the atmosphere develops a thick fog when depressurized that fast, which would soak the emulsion. We decompressed it with us and it developed without any problems.

The Photographer's Mate on our team wasn't a sat diver and made all the arrangements when he found out I had won some silver and bronze awards in underwater photo competitions before joining the Navy. I was never a great art photographer but was competent technically. What can I say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

 

[AhoyFed]

So Humber Bay isn’t good enough for you?!
I’m in Courtice by Oshawa so I’m used to driving a bit to get to the good stuff. The Hammer has some sweet waterfalls though.

Humber Bay has been very hit-and-miss for me. Sometimes it’s decent vis, other times it feels like you’re in Hamilton harbour

There are a lot of waterfalls in this area. I think I’ve seen the majority, but people always mention new trails with more falls.

AhoyFed

 

[AhoyFed]

Easy. You take the lens out in the chamber before you press down. Somebody at NEDU figured out that Helium leaked into the lens assembly fast enough so it didn't implode. Load the film when you reach the sat holding depth and seal it up. Our descent rate is typically only about 1'/minute. The excursion from our holding depth of 850' was less that 100'.

They had a special strobe made that was rated to 1,000' and hung it on the outside of the bell. I hooked it to the camera with an EO connector right after dropping through the hatch. The strobe couldn't go in the chamber because Helium would infiltrate the housing and the Xenon flash tube, which would destroy it.

We just pulled the lens off the Nikonos when we got back in the deck chamber and decompressed it with us. Locking the lens out in the utility lock after several days that deep would blow the front lens out because it is more or less sealed. Helium will leak through all known transparent materials, which is why some watches have helium relief valves. We decided not to lock the exposed film out in the utility lock because the atmosphere develops a thick fog when depressurized that fast, which would soak the emulsion. We decompressed it with us and it developed without any problems.

The Photographer's Mate on our team wasn't a sat diver and made all the arrangements when he found out I had won some silver and bronze awards in underwater photo competitions before joining the Navy. I was never a great art photographer but was competent technically. What can I say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and then.

That makes a lot more sense! So the camera was “pressurized” (assembled) after you made the decent, meaning that it was at an equal pressure as the water around it?

I knew helium is notorious for being able to exploit even the smallest leaks, but I had no idea that it can diffuse across transparent materials. Good to know!

It must have been pretty cool to hold the record for the deepest photo taken underwater by a diver, at least for a while. I’m not sure who holds the record currently.

I’m still amazed that it was that simple to take the photo with the Nikonos at 950 feet. I thought there would be some trickery involved like a double housing or use of some super o ring!

AhoyFed

 

[AhoyFed]

New Video is up! Some of the information regarding the introductory year of the manifold may be slightly off, but considering I only have limited access to US Divers catalogs it’s fairly accurate. I don’t have a copy of the 1976-1979 catalogs, nor are there any available online.


AhoyFed

 

[Akimbo]

That makes a lot more sense! So the camera was “pressurized” (assembled) after you made the decent, meaning that it was at an equal pressure as the water around it?

Not pressurized, but equal to the sat holding depth. The camera was sealed in the sat chamber at 850', the max rated depth of the chambers. The atmosphere was 1% HeO2 or a 0.3 PPO2.

We entered the bell, closed hatches in the chamber and bell, the trunk in between was vented to equalize with surface pressure, the bell was un-mated (unclamped) from the deck chamber and lowered through the moonpool. The bell was pressurized to about 900' on the way down so the camera was still dry but had a 50' differential pressure on the body.

The seal broke on pressure-seating bottom hatch when the inside and outside pressure equalized and the lowering of the bell stopped. We geared-up, entered the water, connected the strobe, and descended to our max depth. That meant the differential pressure on the camera body was less than 100' or 44.5 PSI. Bells don't have humidity control, in fact they are dripping wet inside, so you want the camera sealed before putting it in the bell.

 

[Akimbo]

New Video is up! Some of the information regarding the introductory year of the manifold may be slightly off, but considering I only have limited access to US Divers catalogs it’s fairly accurate. I don’t have a copy of the 1976-1979 catalogs, nor are there any available online.

That manifold and the non-reserve model is made by XS-Scuba under contract for Aqua Lung. SEALs do very little open-circuit Scuba but Scuba-rated military divers do.

I can't say what it is like now or in all branches but we had to get special permission to use single tanks and single hose regulators on the Bathyscaph Trieste when I was a support diver. The av-gas used for buoyancy would leak and destroy the corrugated rubber hoses on the Royal Aqua Masters. It didn't do my brand-new custom wetsuit that Dick Long just made any good either. They let us use single tanks because getting her ready to dive required a few days of frequent climbing aboard the ladder-less hull, which would be dangerous with doubles. Her draft was less than 30'.

The older 3-piece manifolds were a PITA. They used metal-to-metal seats, identical to commercial Oxygen cylinders if I remember correctly. You had to spend hours twisting them back and forth with abrasive seating compounds to repair tiny flaws that develop over time.

Quite a few details on US valves and regulators were adopted from the commercial gas industry because they designed and manufactured a lot of it in the 1950s and early 60s. It reduced tooling costs and the designs were proven.

 

[happy-diver]

This is where one must be careful Chris as I showed you
the “Stab vest” first appeared in the 1980 Scubapro catalogue
and their offerings from 1971 compared to 80 were rather austere

I think what we have here is scubapors failure to communicate truthfully
or perhaps their researcher did not do as much researching as was required


1971 Scubapro

I used to drink at a flash pub with a guy, Chris the plumber, that looked like De Niro
and Mel Gibson turns up and tells us if Chris flys over to LA he'll organise a meeting

You should do the same


A new urethane bladder