Steve_S
Contributor
<blush> 
Thanks for the warm greetings. Some things never change. Divers are still a "cut above" the rest and great folks.
Story 1 : Carefully examine my profile pic My right hand is on "the bottle". You filled the bottle from your tank. In those days we had no way to hook a BC to the tank. All we had were those cheezy vests which were inflated manually and a puky orange color. WW 2 things.
Then came the French with the "Fenzy" which was very exspensive for it's time. Around $150.00 at the same time that the cheezy vest was $15.00. Why pay this much money for a vest?
At the time, I was involved in underwater photography on a semi-professional basis. This activity requires absolutely perfect "neutral" boincy at any depth while at the same time lugging around heavy photo gear like a "Roli" with 2 Nikonos cameras attached to same and 2 strobes. Heavy gear to lug around and the need to immediately become neutral, slip breath, and take pictures. Perfect boinancy also prolongs the dive as you don't spend valuable energy trying to get neutral and thus consume more air.
I also was always "weighted" very negative. About 10 extra pounds so at any depth in almost any situation I could deflate the vest and just sit where I was. This means if the vest was not inflated and I entered the water I would sink directly to the bottom in the vertical position. Please don't do this. It's really very dangerous as you should float on the surface or slightly negative and have to kick to desend. However, when someone is paying you to take pictures and you do this stuff almost every day and have a buddy for years then other methods might be employed at your own risk.
Questions?
Thanks for the warm greetings. Some things never change. Divers are still a "cut above" the rest and great folks.
Story 1 : Carefully examine my profile pic My right hand is on "the bottle". You filled the bottle from your tank. In those days
we had no way to hook a BC to the tank. All we had were those cheezy vests which were inflated manually and a puky orange color. WW 2 things.Then came the French with the "Fenzy" which was very exspensive for it's time. Around $150.00 at the same time that the cheezy vest was $15.00. Why pay this much money for a vest?
At the time, I was involved in underwater photography on a semi-professional basis. This activity requires absolutely perfect "neutral" boincy at any depth while at the same time lugging around heavy photo gear like a "Roli" with 2 Nikonos cameras attached to same and 2 strobes. Heavy gear to lug around and the need to immediately become neutral, slip breath, and take pictures. Perfect boinancy also prolongs the dive as you don't spend valuable energy trying to get neutral and thus consume more air.
I also was always "weighted" very negative. About 10 extra pounds so at any depth in almost any situation I could deflate the vest and just sit where I was. This means if the vest was not inflated and I entered the water I would sink directly to the bottom in the vertical position. Please don't do this. It's really very dangerous as you should float on the surface or slightly negative and have to kick to desend. However, when someone is paying you to take pictures and you do this stuff almost every day and have a buddy for years then other methods might be employed at your own risk.
Questions?
