Carrying handle
Everyone knows that! The crew takes on the equipment, not always with the care that you want. Carried at one of the two handles, the camera will probably be put down in the oblique hanging position.
Since I don’t like to know the maximum load of the hanging down handle, I have built a very simple and practical carrying handle. A 6mm nylon rope is laid to an endless loop as in the picture and sutured and wrapped hard at least on 4-6 points by kite string (red marks). Then drawn with a thinner cable in the braided hose and at the end of the hose fixed with a cable tie, to prevent an expansion of the hose. Who knows the strength of braided nylon ropes, will confirm determined the load capacity of 6kg. In that way the equipment can be taken safely.
Self made adapter plate for the camera tray (battery change)
Because I don’t like to remove the camera to change the battery, I thought about a new self made adapter plate. After purchasing a 4 € carbon plate, the realization was very easy and fast. The camera position is exactly the same as using the original adapter plate made of plastic.
The advantage here is that the carbon plate is extremely rigid and I mounted three spacer and a glued-on hard rubber pillar. The camera fixing is very strong because of the glued foam rubber.
Cost of materials:
Carbon plate 2mm, 2mm foam rubber, 3 plastic spacers (tube), somewhat adhesive UHU Plus
Now, a battery change with mounted camera is very fast and easy!
Safety cable:
Of course, it’s self-evident to use a safety rope for the expensive system. This can be attached to the lower end of the metal core of a menu-handle. The advantage is that the heavy snap hook hangs down and cannot hit the housing, when the crew takes the equipment. As a precaution, I still coated the hook with silicone tube ;-))
Removal of the O-rings:
Since the double O-rings are narrow and deep in their groove, their removal is not easy by using the obligatory plastic tool, a damage of the o-ring can easily happen. It’s my experience that the rings can be removed very easily with the rounded end of a small cable tie. In that way the O-rings will not be excessively strained. Try it by yourself!
Tangle of cables:
In order to minimize all the equipment and its weight, I have cut the mostly 1.5 meter long power cable to 25 cm and a power plug with screw or solder termination installed. Because of the variety of necessary chargers and power supplies, you can achieve a reduction of luggage, in addition to avoided tangle of cables. Why should not the power supplies be located directly next to the connector strip, since the power cord to the device is still long enough. O.k., I shortened these cables also ;-))
Data storage on long dive journeys:
To check and sort the recorded videos on my journeys, I already tried some data storages and bought finally the small mini-notebook Acer 1810T.
The notebook in size of sub-notebooks features a powerful Core2Solo processor with 4 GB RAM, a hard disk of 250 GB and a well-resolution monitor. Not comparable with the usual sub-notebooks that are equipped with an Atom processor and limited RAM. With installed Windows 7, as 32-bit version, it plays the original files in the *.mts format as all other formats in Full HD 1920x1080px smoothly and without disruption. Video checks and archiving of the data is therefore possible without problems. It should also be mentioned that the battery power is enough for 4-6 hours depending on use! I think, that’s an excellent runtime.
Plus: (the most important)
Minus: (is also)
Closing words:
Well, that’s it. There was more to say than I thought. Maybe some divers were pleased to find this review and I could help to decide on the purchase of your personal equipment.
Ciao
Petra & Jürgen Lieser
As described in my review, I was very impressed on the performance and size of the Light & Motion Sunray 600 LED. Although a diver never get enough light for video or photo, I have ogled with the Sunray 1200 LED.
Since this lighting system is no longer manufactured and was replaced by the small Sola 1200, I decided to upgrade to two Light & Motion Sola 1200 Video lights.
Read my comprehensive review of the Light & Motion SOLA and you will understand why I’m more than happy with this upgrade.
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