Tips to improve buoyancy.

[Mark Michaud SELAUSAR]

OK the OP has less than 25 dives and is Not ready for a cave class. He sounds like he is doing just fine without advice from the SB 'Experts'. I understand how new he is, but don't tear him down or make foolish suggestions like Cave classes with less than 25 dives.....

Tear him down? What the heck? You can take a cavern class with 25 dives. How is this a foolish suggestion? Cavern class and then add intro, later, anyones diving will be much better than learning on our own. Your response was completely out of line sir. The OP asked what he could do. I provided a bit of advice that will work. Have you taken a cavern or intro course? If you have you know what I say is on the money. If you haven't you have made yourself "a scuba board expert" I am not sure what your issue is, with me, I don;t even know you and I have not posted anything to make the OP feel like he is less that a decent diver. Good skills are best learned early, before bad habits set in. Being where he is, it may be hard to find that training there, but it is still a good bit of solid advice that I stand by.

 

[vladimir]

He sounds like he is doing just fine without advice from the SB 'Experts'. I understand how new he is, but don't tear him down

The OP may in fact be doing fine, but if he has gone from stirring "up a lot of silt" to "doing fine" in the handful of dives he's done, then he's the exception.

As far as I can tell though, the OP is not soliciting advice, but rather, dispensing it. So he has actually become one of the "SB experts" in his <25 dives, and, true to form, is dispensing bad advice. In my amateur opinion--and contrary to the OP's advice--bringing a camera is not an effective strategy for improving buoyancy control.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

If I were you I'd suggest working on perfecting your buoyancy before using a camera. The reason I can suggest this is I learned the hard way. I'm a relatively new diver myself and buoyance was a huge issue. I lost my brand new, fresh out of the box, $300 camera on my first OW saltwater dive. I took a picture, lost my buoyancy and in the process of trying to regain my buoyancy I didn't realize that my camera had floated off my wrist. That was a very expensive lesson that day. I still have yet to buy another camera.

That's from not securing your equipment properly. It could happen with flashlight, cameras, scooters, etc.

On a side note, when I dived with my camera, I always put on the strap and tighten it. I let it go frequently knowing it is on my wrist. But recently, I got an external strobe with the handle on the opposite side of the strap, so sometimes I grab it by the handle side...Once I was on the surface and went to adjust my BC and let go my camera, but I was holding it by the handle having it been just given to me by the captain on the boat. Next think I realized, where is my camera, I looked all over and down and couldn't see it, we drifted a little bit so I was not exactly below where I was. Good thing somebody went down already and thought they found a camera lost from prior dives, lucky for me and too bad for them. Lesson learned was always wear lanyard or clip on camera as soon as I have posession of it. Oddly, on that or another dive, I was fiddling with my dive light and camera and released my light to get things sorted out, a few second later, after straightened out my camera, I went to see where the torch was, I see it floating upward around 30ft above me (must have came off those cheap plastic clip). Had to an ascent to pick up the light and come right back down to 60ft.

Lesson is, too much new gear brings confusion, thus for vacation divers like OP, take it one step at a time, learn buoyancy first.

 

[RonFrank]

I remember when I had twenty dives, the best thing I had going for me was confidence. That and I had a lot of help from SB.

They did not tell me I needed more training. They did not explain that a camera was a bad idea. What they did was dive with me a bunch, watch my back, and provide a great example with some gentle guidance. I became a responsible diver. I dive wet and dry, in current, in extreme cold, in low vis, in the tropics, etc. I love S. CA diving. In any event it takes time, and what this newbie needs is to dive.

He will take classes if/when he chooses. Do you honestly think he will listen to advice like 'you are to new to use a camera?'. He already is regardless. I may agree, but I've dove with more than a few newbies.

 

[melanie.]

I can see exactly where the OP is coming from.

Bringing a camera gives him an objective way of seeing how his diving is doing. Bad blurry pics - he needs to improve. Some clear - doing better. And so on

Sometimes it is hard to tell how we are really doing in the water, and he found a way that makes him work harder to improve. At the very least bringing a camera gives the added push to improve his skills. Not a bad thing

 

[RTee]

Melanie...that is great for him. However based on my experience, if he focuses more on the lense than what is surrounding him he may end up with very clear pictures and a lot of hash and trash around him as he's got two fins about five feet behind him that he keeps to think about. I have not seen too many folks with that amount of dives under their belt including, yours truely, who were that good at multitasking. It he does, it is fabulous but like so many folks have mentionned, you ain't losing your time just going somewhere in the shallow without the camera and just focus on practicing your buoyancy and perhaps the last advise you want to give if for folks to proceed to quickly to the next step when they are still struggling to be OK with the basic ones..

 

[gcarter]

I would suggest that as a relative newbie, the best way to take pictures is how I am doing it - a GoPro strapped to my head. It sees what I see, and the task loading is zero. I turn it on before I descend, and forget it until I am on the surface again.

With 20 dives logged, I am not comfortable that I could take good pictures without adversely affecting task loading and situational awareness. This solution works for me, but if I did not have the GoPro I would simply forget bringing any images back with me until I have a broader, deeper skill base.

 

[Dhboner]

Every dive should be a "practice dive" to some degree especially if you have 20 something dives. Concentrating on perfecting your buoyancy and reinforcing OW skills like mask clearing and air sharing should be a regular part of any dive...well maybe you can skip the air share drills on vacation dives.

Safe and competent diving like any skillset is based on building blocks of knowledge and experience. If you can't take a photo without maintaining decent trim and buoyancy then you are task loaded beyond your current ability level. Put the camera away and work on being a better diver. Practice maintaining a hover while you clear your mask or close your eyes count to five then check your computer to see if your depth changed. Practice is fun.

Sounds like you are off to a good start but worrying about blurry photos should be low on your priority list at this point in your diving career.

Bob

 

[Bob DBF]

As was said before, practice is the key.

My solution would be to switch the photography to snap shots rather than a longer set up. It will give you more time to focus on buoyancy and still produce pictures. By changing the mindset of the shoot you will probably get better pictures, if not what you want now. As your diving skills improve, so will the photography untill you are taking the set shots you want.

The good news is digital, I don't want to think of the rolls of blurry film in years gone by.



Bob
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I may be old, but I&#8217;m not dead yet.

 

[TSandM]

I went to a talk on underwater photography yesterday. The presenter offered five tips that would be useful for all divers. One of them was that the diving itself should be transparent -- in other words, buoyancy control, positioning, awareness of the environment and one's buddy, and gas management should be so familiar as to require little or no conscious thought.

I think the OP has discovered this. Using the camera as a metric for one's success, however, is fraught with hazard, I think. It is quite possible to get very good photographs while lying or standing on the bottom, or wedged into position by coral heads or other fragile structures. But if the OP is making a serious effort to avoid any of those behaviors, and is looking at the success of his photos to measure whether he is nicely neutral and stable, it might be a useful way to do that. It does make becoming stable and aware more difficult, because the camera, no matter who you are or how much experience you have with diving or photography, requires a fair amount of bandwidth.