Housing maintenence

[olddog]

http://opticalocean.blogspot.com/2007/12/underwater-camera-floods-avoiding-high.html


Nice link on housing maintenance

A few of my personal tips for a healthy housing, some go against general thinking:

Avoid rinse tanks like the plague. They generally have more salt in them than sea water any way. Plus heavy housings make good weapons and excellent substitutes for rocks when rich numpties rinse their gear on top of yours. Wrap rig in damp towel keep it protected.

Prep the housing the day before. Buy decent batteries and big cards. Never ever open the housing on site or boat.

Always use a desiccant sachet. A few drips can wreck a camera, so every little helps.

Buy big tubes of the correct grease from the likes of Cameras Underwater. I clean and re grease every time I open the housing. That's why a have good high capacity bats and cards. Farting about with small tubes of grease makes you inclined to skip this procedure.

I grease on a cleaned work bench in GOOD light. I clean with plenty of plain kitchen roll. Bar the wife, cat, or dog from the work station while cleaning. Hair or sand equals death to housing seals.

Occasionally work or press buttons that you hardly ever use on the housing. Do it top side. Corrosion often sets in on these. Grease and undo sync cord plugs even if they are not used for the same reason.

Hope the tips help if Santa brings you new photog gear.

Regards Olddog.

P.S.
Get your housing and camera on separate invoices. Normal contents insurance policies hate divers like life insurers hate skydivers. You never know you might have left the camera oot in the rain on the patio when the camera suddenly got wet!

[regthing]

P.S.
Get your housing and camera on separate invoices. Normal contents insurance policies hate divers like life insurers hate skydivers. You never know you might have left the camera oot in the rain on the patio when the camera suddenly got wet!

Good advice.

And I like your thinking :D

[triplefin]

I'd agree with all of the above. With reference to the rinse tanks/buckets you can always ask for the water to be changed daily or do it yourself depending where/what boat you are on. The big red sea liveaboards have plenty of crew and as long as you keep remindng them they will do it. UK liveaboards ie the scapa boats just get on and do it yourself. They'll usually find you somesort of bucket/tank to use and often you will be the only one with a camera rig.

The big o ring in the housing doors/back should be taken out if the the rig is not being used for any length of time and not left shut up and compressed for example if you are not diving over the winter.

[olddog]

The big o ring in the housing doors/back should be taken out if the the rig is not being used for any length of time and not left shut up and compressed for example if you are not diving over the winter.


Good point Triplefin,

I have never had a problem leaving seals in the housing full time. Mind you I dive most months of the year. But, I def see a point with black natural rubber ones. The Synthetic ones like on my Oly have never suffered. I recon the most important thing is to store them greased up so they don’t dry out.

One thing to remember is that Natural rubber seals use totally different grease to synthetic ones. Use the right grease or the seals may rot. Its a pain as the synthetic grease is expensive even in them pi##y little tubes.:mad:

[tomy2tums]

All good advise.

For grease, I use Dow Corning 07 (DC07), only because I get it from work. I have had the same tube for ages now.

Another point I would add is wash your hands thourghly after housing maintenance, grease dont taste nice and you down want it on your breathing dive gear. Nor on a leather or swede couch, or clothes, or on brand new pair of West boardies (:o) either.....

And dont let the kids play with the dissicant, or you have to get the Dyson out.