Tales From the Camera Housing: a series designed to help you prevent mistakes that may ruin your dive, camera, or footage.
Mistake #1
Charging and loading the camera..2 weeks before actually diving with it.
The Problem
Downtime brings curiosity and time to research interesting ways to improve underwater videography and photography. I had my “next dive” goals set, the camera charged, housing sealed and tested and ready for take off.
While driving out to the dive site, I notice that not one, but all three access points were closed due to the “pandemic”. Mission aborted. At least, until two weeks later, when a storm cleared the public out of the beach areas and left one access point open on a lousy weather day. The camera was already set up – so why not dive, despite the lousy weather? After all, the batteries still “looked” like they were charged…
Further Complications
The weather was not perfect, but conditions were plenty safe and the sun was out. With high turbidity water, the sun is essential to any photography in this particular location. Like brights in a snowstorm, video lights produce mass amounts of backscatter and make photography impossible with limited visibility diving. Available light shooting was the best option, albeit a lsubpar one.
The water temperature fell just below 39 degree Farenheit. Despite diving dry, the cold still caused problems with dexterity after (in this case) 14 minutes. Dexterity issues left the ability to properly turn on (and off) the video recording, or the accidental record button push while letting venting a dry suit on the way up.
Long story short, the poorly charged batteries died while filming many minutes of absolutely nothing useful nor interesting.
Prevention
Charge and load your camera before the dive. Right before the dive. Check the seals again.
Resolution
A little better planning could have saved both footage and frustration.
