New Vintage Scuba YouTube Channel

[Akimbo]

Were there any pouches on the Fenzy Vest?

No, just a fabric loop on the backside to hold the HP bottle.

I’m a huge fan of black and white, I still shoot and develop and make enlargements from 35mm B/W film.

I have two friends that are too but shoot large format Hasselblad and Contax. Chuck Davis went to Brooks Institute and was trained by Ernie Brooks. They both have some amazing underwater B&W work. Chuck makes his living doing underwater cine and videography but freedives with his big custom Contax housing all the time. You should visit Backscatter in Monterey if you ever get a chance. They have a great collection of film camera housings.

I acquired an Ikelite MD housing as well as two canon F1 cameras from a local diver.

I still have my F1 and Oceanic Hydro-35 housing. I can't bring myself to part with it. It just sits in my office now. I loved their 17mm lens.

Now that’s a sweet regulator. Do you still have it?

No, it was stolen from the dive shop that was trying to sell it for me. They gave me a ScubaPro single hose for it. I didn't dive a double hose again until joining the Navy.

 

[Erich S]

Me wearing my new BC in 1976.

 

[AhoyFed]

No, just a fabric loop on the backside to hold the HP bottle.



I have two friends that are too but shoot large format Hasselblad and Contax. Chuck Davis went to Brooks Institute and was trained by Ernie Brooks. They both have some amazing underwater B&W work. Chuck makes his living doing underwater cine and videography but freedives with his big custom Contax housing all the time. You should visit Backscatter in Monterey if you ever get a chance. They have a great collection of film camera housings.



I still have my F1 and Oceanic Hydro-35 housing. I can't bring myself to part with it. It just sits in my office now. I loved their 17mm lens.



No, it was stolen from the dive shop that was trying to sell it for me. They gave me a ScubaPro single hose for it. I didn't dive a double hose again until joining the Navy.

I’ve heard a bit about Ernie Brooks’ work. I should definitely look into that. Perhaps a subject for a future video. I can’t imagine the wonders the Backscatter collection contains. I know another company, Hydro-Flex, has a decent sized museum too including the camera housing that were used to film Sea Hunt and Thunderball (same housing). My friend works there and we routinely chat about housings and cameras.

I’ve heard the Oceanic Hydro 35 was the king of the underwater housings, that was a design from Bob Hollis right?

That’s too bad that the double hose was stolen. Although obviously the thief had good taste in scuba regulators

I wonder if it’s in somebodies collection now after being passed around and switching owners...

Do you have any photos from your time in the navy Akimbo?

AhoyFed

 

[AhoyFed]

Me wearing my new BC in 1976.

That’s amazing Erich! The BCD looks just as yellow today as it did in that photo.

It must have been such an incredible time to be scuba diving during the “Golden Years” of diving, when entering the aquatic world was out of the desire to explore!

AhoyFed

 

[happy-diver]

Here is my later model

bladder fittings crumbled so it's been completely remanufactured

The front pocket is where I hide my Perdix, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!



Cough cough cough cough cough cough!!!!

First appearance 1980 Scubapro catalogue

You may choose to take pause and get in touch with your research department


I love what you're doing, future Christopher Walken dude, man ha ha ha ha ha!

 

[jadairiii]

I went from that Fenzy to a wing purchased as spare parts for a Watergill Ad-Pac.

When I traveled that was my rig, I would take my at-pac wing and mount it on my SP backpack. That was sweet!

I do laugh at the Seapro brass airway, those things were "dangerously" heavy!

 

[Akimbo]

I’ve heard a bit about Ernie Brooks’ work. I should definitely look into that. Perhaps a subject for a future video.

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

I’ve heard the Oceanic Hydro 35 was the king of the underwater housings, that was a design from Bob Hollis right?

Yes. Bob designed it around the Nikon F when he still had the Anchor Shack dive shop in Hayward, California. The Canon 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 its large 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 Canon because the F-stop control machined away some of the cast letters of the name.

Do you have any photos from your time in the navy Akimbo?

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.

 

[AhoyFed]

Tried to post a photo, looks like it double posted. Let me try again

 

[AhoyFed]

Here is my later model

View attachment 651508

bladder fittings crumbled so it's been completely remanufactured

View attachment 651509

The front pocket is where I hide my Perdix, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!



Cough cough cough cough cough cough!!!!

First appearance 1980 Scubapro catalogue

View attachment 651510

You may choose to take pause and get in touch with your research department


I love what you're doing, future Christopher Walken dude, man ha ha ha ha ha!

That Fenzy looks awesome. Did you repair the bladder yourself?

I think the truth for the Stab vest is in between 1971 and 1980. Here’s a screenshot of the 2021 ScubaPro catalog, where I got my information from. Check the year 1971!

I like the comparison to Christopher Walken hahaha!

AhoyFed

 

[p_kos]

Hey guys,

In between selling off some of my collection (laid off from work) and with a lot of spare time on my hands, I decided to create a YouTube channel devoted to Vintage Scuba Diving.

I have always found that videos are helpful when learning about something new and I wanted to showcase some skills and some parts of my collection before they are sold. Some things I will never sell like my La Spirotechnique Mistral (it’s going to the grave with me)

Anways, here’s the link. Leave a comment on the video or down below if you can guess which movie inspired my outfit. Hint: it stars Bill Murray.


Also, if you are tech-savvy and have Instagram, consider following me at Vintage.Scuba.Hamilton

I will likely be listing some more items on Scubaboard in a few weeks, but I’ll be uploading videos to YouTube each week (Mondays and Thursdays)

AhoyFed

Nice! And you live in the Hammer to boot.