John Bantin has been a full-time professional diving writer and underwater photographer since 1990. He makes around 300 dives each year testing diving equipment.

In a world run by accountants, where every product must be made cheaper, not better, the US company Atomic came up with the concept of creating the best regulator ever, regardless of cost.
     The Atomic M1 looks very ordinary - until you get close. It has a conventional piston-type first stage in a tall turret design. It looks superficially "old" Scubapro. However, its metal does seem to shine more deeply than that of some other regulators.
     There is a neat rubber cap at the blank end and a rubber band round the holes where the water usually flows in, but otherwise you'll just have to trust that the works inside are equally beautifully finished, because there is no way you can see them.
     The second stage is a different matter. You can see that it has been made with no expense spared. From the ribbed mouthpiece, the heat-exchanger integrated with the hose-protector and the wide exhaust-T, to the meaty breathing-resistance adjustment knob on the side, it exudes high quality.
     Unscrew the soft front cover to remove the inner soft diaphragm, as you might to remove grit after a careless shore dive, and you will note how nicely the five pieces that you need to remove come apart.
     Inside, you will see a beautifully machined second-stage valve mechanism and the automatically positioned flow vane. This stops the exponential free-flows normally dealt with on other regulators by a venturi ± switch. It automatically adjusts as you go deeper and isn't fully active until you get past 20m.
     It's child's play to put it back together, too. Everything fits and screws together perfectly.
     Am I sounding rather over-positive about this regulator? Well, to be honest, I had seen pictures of it, and nothing caught my imagination. It was only after I got to use an M1 during last month's comparison test of expensive regulators that I saw its advantages first-hand.
     In fact we all did, and during the last couple of days, when I and our test team had some time off to go leisure-diving, squabbles developed among us as to who was going to get to use the Atomic M1 regulator, rather than any of the other high-quality offerings available.
     The philosophy behind the manufacture of this product seems to be something along the lines of "never mind avant-garde designs, let's take a good, already-proven design but make it from the best materials and improve details where we can". The effect is astonishing.
     The M1 is a direct descendant of the T1, which was the first all-titanium regulator on the market. It was very expensive indeed but suffered from a rather negative test in this magazine because, unbeknown to me, the example I had been sent had not come direct from the manufacturer but had taken a wobbly route through Europe.
     It had also been in the hands of another diving journalist, who had taken it apart, marvelled at its construction and then reassembled it with the pieces in the wrong order. It should have been rechecked before I received it and, suffice it to say, I didn't get the most comfortable dive with it.
     This time Atomic Aquatics sent me the new M1 direct. It's called the M1 because it is made from a variety of metals, all advanced alloys, instead of being all-titanium.
     Atomic rightly calculated that the people who could afford the best would probably insist on using nitrox for those dives for which it was suitable - and titanium is not the all-round best metal for this.
     There are still some parts that are titanium, such as the second-stage valve lever and valve orifices. Where stainless steel is used, 316 grade is the order of the day, but because even stainless steel can combust, the M1 substitutes a nickel/copper alloy for the high-pressure components in the first stage.
     The M1 is good for use with mixes as high as nitrox 80. As for that deep shine, it's a type of zirconium plating which is claimed to outlast chrome by a factor of 10.
     Use of the best materials is not the whole story. Valve seats wear, whether they are in the first or second stages. The design of the M1 means that the second-stage valve orifice touches the seat only when the regulator is pressurised, thereby avoiding premature engraving.
     The first-stage design involves an unusual piston geometry and a technopolymer that is the most combustion-resistant around, and that can be shaped only by machining. In this way, owners should never experience intermediate pressure problems, even at high tank pressures.
     Atomic feels confident enough to offer original owners a life-time warranty, and merely recommends a two-year servicing interval rather than insisting on it to maintain that warranty.
     What about cold-water diving?
     Let's be brutally honest for a moment. The reason we dive in cold, fresh water is because we cannot go to places where the water is clear, calm and warm on a week-by-week basis. We dive in inland lakes because we have to.
     Now don't start telling me about the camaraderie enjoyed when everyone is suffering. I know that rich people enjoy camaraderie just as much - but with other rich people!
     Atomic regulators are aimed at those who are prepared to pay for something extra. They pay for seats in business class on aeroplanes, too. Their dive boat picks them up from the beach outside Cobblers Cove in Barbados, or they cruise the South Pacific on a live-in-luxury-aboard.
     They don't care to flog up the motorway at five in the morning on a Saturday to be sure of a parking place outside a flooded slate quarry.
     So forget the lack of coldwater features, even if the manufacturer comes back to me and insists that I've got it all wrong.
     So what is the M1 like in use? Well, it sits in the mouth perfectly and doesn't give you jaw ache. It breathes beautifully, with hardly any effort needed. When you exhale, thanks to a wide exhaust-T, the bubbles come nowhere near your face. There is none of that Jacuzzi effect so common with other small regulator second stages.
     Hoses are easily routed where you want them. There are two high-pressure and four medium-pressure ports arranged around a turret. An additional mp port on top of the turret gives you the possible strategy of mounting the turret sideways on the tank. This would be ideal for H-valve and twin-tank users.
     What are the drawbacks? Yes, I'm afraid there are a couple. The first is that Atomic supplies only dealers who sell over the counter, and not by Internet or direct mail. Atomic insists that its dealers offer a first-rate service and reasons that this can be achieved only face-to-face.
     Atomic does not yet have an official importer for its regulators in this country, so getting your hands on one might be difficult.
     Once you have located a supplier, you'll be unsurprised to find that quality does not come cheap. My best guess is that the Atomic M1 will cost at least £450 in the UK.

Astro not astronomical
Less is more. It's a motto often used, and often used by me. I wanted a lamp to take with me to the Pacific. I wanted a lamp that would fit discreetly into my BC pocket and not cost me £15 per kilo in excess-baggage charges for the journey out.
     I wanted a lamp that I could use without resorting to an instruction manual and I wanted a lamp that would give me adequate illumination in tropical conditions, with a bulb that could be replaced easily if it broke in transit.
     The little Beaver Astro light seemed to fill the bill. Only about 16cm long, it has a 6V "charge or top-up at anytime" ni-mh battery pack and used a domestic low voltage 6V bulb contained in a simple aluminium tube that has a handle and an end that unscrews for charging. It also costs an economic £149, including two spare bulbs of 35W and 50W to augment the standard 20W bulb already fitted.
     Not only that, but it switched on by means of a simple magnetic on/off switch at one end. Even I could understand how to use it! I charged it overnight using the conventional 6V charger supplied.
     Under water, it was not the brightest lamp on the block and was easily outshone by other, more expensive, 12V rivals, but it did well for me and I was able to use it as a focusing light for macro shots during day dives. It lit up everything nicely during simple penetrations into wrecks and on the numerous night dives that I undertook.
     The burntime is said to be one hour, but as I never managed more than that on a single tank, thanks to some of the currents I encountered, I never found out what happened when the battery went flat.
     This light fits well between inexpensive plastic torches that generally sell for less than £100 and the much more expensive devices which I tend to call Super-Teutons, as most come from German-speaking countries.
     You won't find the fishes donning their Raybans, nor will you encounter nudibranchs done to a crisp thanks to the output of one of these.
     Neither is it engineered to the same high standard as lights made in Europe. In fact, it looks a little cheap. However, look after it and it should prove a useful alternative to other possible choices you might find in your local dive shop.
The Beaver Astro costs £149.

A digital camera to fit your pocket
I was off to do the latest Diver regulator comparison, loaded to the gunwales with all the regulators and other kit needed, when I got a call asking me if I wanted to try the latest underwater camera.
     The caller obviously did not hear my sigh as I pointed out that I was already 100kg over my weight allowance and politely tried to delay this test for another time. He sent it to me anyway.
     I need not have worried about the extra weight. I slipped the 2 megapixel Minolta DimageX and its MC-DG100 underwater housing into my top pocket and set off for the airport. Yes, it really is that small.
     The camera is about the size of an old-fashioned flip-top pack of 20 cigarettes. (Does anyone still smoke?) Its brushed aluminium finish goes further, to make it look like a pack of Lambert & Butler. It could hardly be more convenient. The clear plastic case fits it like a glove.
     Of course, with its standard 8 megabyte flashcard it is really good only for JPEG snapshots. I set it for the best quality and got an image on a TIFF file that was good enough for reproduction in this magazine, but one image of this quality was the best it could manage. You can buy a far more capacious flashcard (64 megabyte) for about £80 extra.
     The camera seemed reasonably easy to set up for land shots, although its menu of options required considerable dexterity and moving the cursor both up and down and across and back to obtain the desired options. Those of you who have had the benefit of years of practice with a Nintendo will have no problems.
     It also has an optical zoom lens in addition to the electronic zoom, so I thought I was quite well set up.
     Under water, however, things were different, because in the bright sunlight and clear waters of the Red Sea, the ambient sunlight falling on the LCD viewing screen made it impossible to see anything at all.
     I ended up aiming the camera in the general direction of my subject and firing away in hope. I had to wait until I got back into the shade provided by an indoor setting to see what I had in the way of captured images. Sometimes my aim was less than true.
     I also had trouble knowing what all the buttons did, as their labels are obscured by the housing and those on the housing were fairly illegible.
     To get good colours down deeper, you need an external flashgun. Sea & Sea can provide one such as the YS-25DX to synchronise with a digital camera. It runs on two AA batteries and has a continuous brightness control and three different syncro settings to suit different cameras.
     I found that the DimageX worked effectively with settings 1 and 3. The brightness of the image achieved using the continuous control was hard to judge, even when deep, and what you could see on the LCD screen depended on the angle at which you viewed it.
     In common with many little digital cameras, the housing needs a little fold-away hood to keep out extraneous light and make the screen more usable.
     The YS-25DX bolts to the Minolta housing via a Sea & Sea DX stay and bendy DX arm. Alas, in bright sunlight it failed to see the built-in triggering flash of the camera but it worked well in the shade of reef overhangs.
     The guys at Sea & Sea tell me it will soon be possible to use all the accessory lenses for the yellow Motormarine II, which will extend the usefulness of the DimageX considerably.
     You can download images onto both Macs and PCs, using software downloadable from the Internet.
     The DimageX is one of those consumer goods that you want to possess rather than to use. It is seductive but not a serious tool for an underwater photographer.
     The images obtained are great for e-mailing to friends but nothing more. Still, that is exactly what most people take photographs for. I suppose it is an alternative to the Sea & Sea MX5 and similar small cameras.
     The DimageX and its underwater housing are sold only as a complete package by Sea & Sea and cost £449. This could be a bargain when you consider that there is no additional film to buy. The YS-25DX complete with the DX stay and DX arm costs £309.

Me and my Shadow
I was lucky enough to be invited to Papua New Guinea, a place not known for cold weather but a long, long way from home. Ever mindful of excess baggage charges, I decided to travel as light as I could, which included eschewing my usual comfy 5mm tropical suit and going for something more skimpy.
     The Oceanic Shadow Lite in 3mm form seemed ideal because it would keep my arms and legs safe from man-eating plankton, and if I felt cold I could always add the short-john over the top. I was planning to dive some heavily bombed WW2 wrecks, so the short-john alone was out of the question.
     The Oceanic Shadow Lite is simply a wetsuit. Unlike its 5mm big brother, it has no seals at the wrists or ankles but it does have ankle zips, which helped when it came to squeezing my great plates of meat through.
     The back zip of the full-length suit was separated from my tender sunburnt skin by a wide comfort flap of seal-skin rubber and neatly corresponded to the front zip of the short-john, thus avoiding any direct flushing.
     The suit proved ideal in the warm waters of the Bismarck Sea, although I certainly was not warm enough further south in the Coral Sea (in September) and had to borrow a hood. That was rather stupid of me, because Oceanic does a very nice Shadow hood but I had failed to pack it.
     Heaving myself through some of the holes in gaping rusty metal, I found the attached knee pads very useful, if positioned a little low on the leg. The suit did more than 40 arduous dives, and although you could say that its appearance got wrecked during these activities, not one stitch came undone nor did it become abraded in any way.
     It kept me warm for hour-long dives and I also earned the advantage of needing less weight than I normally do.
     The Oceanic Shadow Lite comes in a range of off-the-peg sizes, including one to fit my lanky frame. It also provides suits cut to suit more shapely feminine figures, too.
The Oceanic Shadow Lite 3mm suit in two parts costs £148.