- Messages
- 17,334
- Reaction score
- 13,743
- # of dives
- 100 - 199
How do people handle boat entries when they're diving with a camera rig? When I was carrying just a small compact, I clipped the housing to my harness and jumped in, whether it was backroll from a smaller boat, or giant stride from a slightly bigger boat. Easy peasy.
After encumbering myself with a more serious rig, with strobes on long arms, I carry my rig on entry only when I'm shore diving. If I dive from a boat, I always ask the boat tender to hand me the rig after I've jumped in, but sometimes that's just not practical. A typical case is when we're half a dozen divers backrolling off a RIB: The captain calls "go", and we all roll at the same time. After which the captain has to take an extra round, pull close to me and hand me the rig. It's cumbersome. Also, since I'm thinking of mounting a GoPro on top of my housing, it'd be cool to have some footage of the entry, which isn't possible if I'm not carrying the rig while I roll off the boat.
Another thing is the strobe arms: So far, I've packed the arms close to the housing when the rig is on the boat, and then unfolded them as a part of the last check we do at 3-5 meters before we start the dive. On ascent, I use some of the time at the safety stop to pack up the arms again so the rig is easier to hand to the guy(s) in the boat.
I'm just wondering if this is the ideal way to do things. So, you who dive with larger camera rigs: How do you do it? Arms packed up or extended? Rig held close to your chest while jumping in, or handed to you by the boat crew after entry? Do you do it differently when you backroll compared to giant stride entry?
After encumbering myself with a more serious rig, with strobes on long arms, I carry my rig on entry only when I'm shore diving. If I dive from a boat, I always ask the boat tender to hand me the rig after I've jumped in, but sometimes that's just not practical. A typical case is when we're half a dozen divers backrolling off a RIB: The captain calls "go", and we all roll at the same time. After which the captain has to take an extra round, pull close to me and hand me the rig. It's cumbersome. Also, since I'm thinking of mounting a GoPro on top of my housing, it'd be cool to have some footage of the entry, which isn't possible if I'm not carrying the rig while I roll off the boat.
Another thing is the strobe arms: So far, I've packed the arms close to the housing when the rig is on the boat, and then unfolded them as a part of the last check we do at 3-5 meters before we start the dive. On ascent, I use some of the time at the safety stop to pack up the arms again so the rig is easier to hand to the guy(s) in the boat.
I'm just wondering if this is the ideal way to do things. So, you who dive with larger camera rigs: How do you do it? Arms packed up or extended? Rig held close to your chest while jumping in, or handed to you by the boat crew after entry? Do you do it differently when you backroll compared to giant stride entry?