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.

Why do we buy things we don't need? We have washing machines full of electronics when all we need is hot water and an electrically-driven drum. We have cars with tremendous off-road or high-speed performance capabilities when all we do is commute on gridlocked motorways. We have televisions which give us an infinite number of channels when all we would want to do is watch the news.
     When it comes to our hobbies we are even worse, and when it comes to diving I believe that many of us get more pleasure from visiting the dive-shop than the seaside.
     Regulators are a case in point. We all want to own and use a regulator that will go as deep as John Bennett would wish to go, and at the same time perform faultlessly in Arctic conditions and be the first choice of US Navy Seals. So we tend to buy the most expensive we can afford.
     Apeks makes some of the best-performing regulators you can get, and every so often the company improves its top-of-the-line model. We have seen the TX40 and the TX50 with an extra knob. We have seen the improved TX100 and now the Advanced TX (ATX) range, which have improved second stages.
     The best and most expensive of all is the ATX200, with its all-new first stage. All these regs have a dry-sealed diaphragm first stage which has proved ideal for diving in polluted and cold fresh water.
     Now, whether you hardy every-weekend-of-the-year divers like it or not, the majority of divers out there have no intention of throwing themselves into water that is anything less than blue, warm and inviting.
     Many of them read this magazine, and it does not besmirch their characters if I reveal that the British oggin is not for them.
     But they still go out and buy regulators that have performance capabilities more in line with what they need in a flooded slate quarry in winter than the Maldives. The hardier among you should be grateful for this, because it keeps the price down.
     Warmwater divers do need performance in terms of air-flow - the popular Maldives, for example, have plenty of exceptionally strong currents that can cause a diver to puff and blow. But do they need the coldwater characteristics of top regulators? I decided to take an Apeks AT20 on a trip to the Indian Ocean to find out.
     The AT20 is the Cinderella of the Apeks line-up. The company describes it as its "warmwater" regulator, but don't be ashamed to ask in the dive shop for one, if that's all you need. Warm water means anything over 10¡C!
     The second stage looks very much like that of the ATX40, but without the heat-exchanger on the hose connection. It comes with a choice of Comfobite or standard mouthpiece. Like the ATX40 it has only the venturi ± switch, which operates easily even with a gloved hand. This is used in pre-dive or dive mode.
     There is no breathing-resistance adjustment knob to turn up the cracking pressure of the valve and make breathing less easy, should you prefer it that way.
     The balanced-diaphragm first stage is a squat turret design just like that of the ATX40 and ATX50, but without the main chamber dry-sealed, so it is that much more compact. Like its more expensive brothers, it has two high-pressure and four medium-pressure ports, arranged around the rotating turret.
     "You cannot tell how good a regulator is, just by looking at it." So reads the Apeks brochure, and I agree with this sentiment. I worked the AT20 hard for a week. As I get older, my air consumption goes up. This became very evident when I needed to get across a Maldivian thila in the face of an ocean flow. I never felt I wanted to make the breathing less easy. In fact I am starting to think that one day I might find a regulator that can't keep up with me.
     The Apeks AT20 was never wanting in this department. I would guess that, with its simplified air routeing, it is in fact one of the company's best performers! Swimming into currents that were too strong, it let me breathe as naturally as I would have done running up Scafell Pike. It gave no indication of any tendency to free-flow, as can happen with some other regs.
     It proved dry and comfortable even after an hour at a time on dives like this. I cannot give it higher praise.
The Apeks AT20 costs £191.

POLISHED IN SPAIN
I confess to being prejudiced. I had received, unsolicited, a couple of torches made in southern Europe that were so poorly made (one caught fire while being charged) that they never even made it to the starting blocks for Diver Tests.
     Then another unasked-for parcel arrived which seemed to contain the same sort of thing, from another southern European manufacturer of which I had not heard. So I admit that I initially regarded it with a degree of disdain.
     It didn't help that the aluminium Sea*Pro 3113 lamp was finished with a high polish. It twinkled at me from its wrappings with meretricious promise.
     I had been unfair. While most airlines choose to paint their planes, American Airlines polishes the fuselage. Likewise, while most torches come with an anodised or milled finish, Sea*Pro prefers to polish its aluminium. It's not cheap, just different.
     The Sea*Pro torch is made in Barcelona and is little known in the UK, but I took it apart to find it was made from exceptionally well-machined metal with a high-quality interior finish. A 12V, 4Ah nickel-metal hydride battery powers a 50W xenon bulb and the multi-faceted reflector gives a very even beam with a wide peripheral halo. It's bright.
     Although it has a 12V power source, in keeping with a number of new lamps it is not so enormous as to become an imposition on a dive. The main body measures only 19 by 8cm in diameter. In air the lamp weighs 1.3kg, under water it weighs a quarter of that.
     You need to unscrew the main cylinder to get to the charging socket near where the bulb is inserted. The works are contained within a second inner sleeve, and made water-tight by a single O-ring and a long screw thread.
     The advantage of the ni-mh battery is that it can be topped up without damage by means of a sophisticated charger, so I was able use the unit without having to worry about whether it would be fully charged in time for the next dive. You can just keep it on charge between outings.
     Burntime is claimed to be 50 minutes, long enough for most dives. Because the battery can be topped up, I found that I never needed to give it the full charge-time of five to six hours.
     The on/off switch is unusual in being positioned at the end of the handle. This would seem to be something of an extravagance in terms of manufacturing costs, but does allow the diver to operate it with only one hand. Unfortunately, there seems to be no detent to prevent it being switched on accidentally. Nor was there any apparent way of disconnecting the battery to prevent this happening in transit. I was reduced to removing the bulb, which is vulnerable to damage.
     The Sea*Pro 3113 is rated to go to 200m, quite enough for me! I took it on a series of dives past 50m and it worked admirably up to the point on the fourth dive when it switched itself off after only about five seconds and I was forced to resort to my back-up light.
     I thought I could not have charged it properly but sadly this proved to be a permanent fault which rendered the unit more or less useless.
     The price does include a two-year guarantee, but I was 23 flying hours from Europe, so that was of no immediate help. A great pity for such a promising product.
     We have come a long since the Spanish had little to offer except tomatoes and little pots offered from the backs of tired donkeys. Spain is now as thrusting an industrialised nation as any in Europe. Sea*Pro will supply British customers with the 3113 direct from its factory in Barcelona, and far from cheap and nasty it is well-made and, if anything, a touch expensive.
     The price in Euros equates to around £277, including charger.

Have fin-makers got things front to back?
The Bahamas Atlantic, with Hurricane Michelle approaching: we dive on a falling spring tide to the upturned wreck of the freighter Anne, and conditions are even worse under water than on the surface. The tide is roaring, and I find my buddy Stuart hanging onto the keel at 40m, exhaled bubbles spiralling downwards in great globs.
     This is no place to hang around. Even with our BCs fully inflated to get through the downcurrent, it's a long haul back to the shallows.
     Stuart's legs are a blur. He is one of the most experienced divers around, but by the end of the dive his shin muscles are screaming from the frantic finning needed to make the climb.
     He had been using his new "propeller" fins (what I call split-fins), of a type I have reviewed in these pages. He had professed love for them, but that love affair was over. I had had almost as tough a dive as Stuart's with my TUSA X-Pert SF-8s, but then my expectations of split-fins were almost certainly lower than his.
     Every manufacturer tries to make its fins unique. The X-Pert SF-8s have heavy side-rails but look lightweight. At only 65cm from heel to tip (size L) they are less bulky than many designs. But what makes them unique is the way the blade dips away from the line of the foot-pocket by 27°!
     They look a little ungainly on the boat, but because they take up less room, it's easier to climb back up the ladder.
     The poor fin manufacturers are all under pressure to buy into the Nature's Wing split-fin idea. The enthusiasm of certain diving magazine publishers in the USA is unswerving. If the relentless publicity generated is to be believed, divers using any other type of fin are left tumbling in the wake-turbulence of split-fin users as they jet effortlessly past.
     I might get swept away by currents, but not by hype. So far I have seen little evidence to prove any of these claims. In fact, at almost every diving destination I get to, dive-guides ask my opinion of split-fins, and so far we are all agreed.
     I recently visited the R&D lab of a fin manufacturer, to be proudly shown a mechanical test leg in its enclosed and narrow tank, driven by a 2hp electric motor. But I dive in the open ocean, and the ripples from my fins are not bounced back onto the blade by the walls of a tank. As for finning at a steady 2hpÉ
     With split-fins, thrust comes from the speed of your kick, calling for a fast flutter-kick that remains within a small arc of movement. I can do this for a short time, for example at the surface, but I want my finning to be more like a loping 1500m run than a 10 second sprint.
     I have started to wonder whether more propulsion in fact comes from the backward kick than from the Beckham-style forward action.
     Is this why my practical experiences never measure up to the manufacturer's tests? Have the makers been looking at the wrong half of the fin-stroke, or is it my finning that's wrong?
     The SF-8s worked slightly better for me than some of their contemporaries, but that's all. The dipped blade angle helps the back-kick because the curve in the side rails gives the fins more strength when the load is applied in that direction - it makes them far less floppy.
     However, I still had to fin fast and furiously, and suspect that the split does little more than let some of the water slip by to make the action feel easier.
     The SF-8s were comfortable when swimming along a wall with no opposing current, and fine at the surface or for a quick snorkel-dive, but I wouldn't use them when it comes to the serious stuff!
     TUSA X-pert SF-8 fins come in S, M and L and five colours, including silver and the stiffer black.
TUSA X-pert SF-8 fins cost £119 for a pair.

Snug as a demanding bug
Caroline of C-Bear has been making undersuits for use with drysuits for long enough that we can assume she knows exactly what she's doing. But an undersuit is hardly the ultimate fashion statement. I have yet to see Kate Moss or Liz Hurley wearing one.
     Undersuits are as functional as a pair of Y-fronts or a plastic mac. You wear one because you have to. So what can I tell you about this one?
     The C-Bear AP4 is made from Tactel with a micro-fibre outer shell. It has 250gm Thinsulate inter-layer insulation for body and legs and a thinner 100gm Thinsulate interlayer for the sleeves to help you avoid the institutional-offender effect.
     It is claimed to be both wind- and shower-proof and its fleece lining gives you that snuggle-down feeling and wicks away any sweat that might form in such a warm environment.
     An elasticated waist gives a slightly fitted appearance, and a high collar stops the thin latex neck seal of your suit getting an icy grip on your throat.
     The AP4 has two hip pockets and a zipped breast pocket, a two-way zipper essential for gentlemen who might be caught short, and a wind-flap (nothing to do with getting caught short) over the zip, secured by press studs. Like the early products of Henry Ford, it comes only in black, so should any sea water leak into your suit the salty stains will show up nicely.
     As tested the AP4 costs £180 but it is also available with optional attached socks, an additional lumbar pad and a leg reinforcement for a catheter-bag, should you use one. Catheters, incidentally, come in three sizes - small, medium and liar!
     I tried the AP4 one day in January and nearly fainted from heat exhaustion just pulling my drysuit on. It is said to have a tog rating of 6.0, which I assume is a high value. I felt as if I was wrapped in 10 duvets with a couple of blankets for good measure.
     It seems ideal for those early Sunday mornings when you have to sleep in your car to be sure of a good parking space at your favourite dive site.
     Best of all, when you get up to dive before the first sparrow's fart, the AP4 doesn't rustle when you walk!
The AP4 costs from £180.

Carry-on smiling
Times have changed. No longer can we divers cheat restrictive airline baggage allowances by putting all our heavy gear in our carry-on luggage, and queuing at the check-in with ever-lengthening arms to try to disguise that fact.
     The game is up. We are often allowed as little as 6kg carry-on weight, and aircraft despatchers are becoming persistent about enforcing that rule at the gate, especially on charter flights.
     I used to check in all my diving gear and carry my camera housings and flashguns, but I have had to rethink. Everything is now packed in substantial boxes and checked in, and if I have to pay an excess baggage charge, I do as my old dad advised: "Don't argue about it. Pay up and be smart."
     That leaves my precious cameras and lenses, and the few essential items that cannot be supplied by either airport facilities or cabin crew. So what do I carry them in, if only one piece of cabin baggage is allowed?
     My very nice camera hold-all was ripped open at Miami last year by American Airlines security staff who had not been trained in how to open a zipped bag. Their manager later told me I should not have let them touch my luggage. I argued that to have tried to stop them would have brought Broward and Dade Counties to a halt, such has been the level of paranoia since the Americans learned that they have a terrorist problem. But the incident gave me the chance to get something better.
     I needed a padded camera bag big enough to take two Nikons, an SB27 flash and three lenses, with a second section for film, a couple of dive computers, change of underwear, toiletries and a paperback. So for Christmas my beloved went to Camden Cameras to see what it had to offer.
     Camera Care Systems is a British company with an enviable reputation among photographers worldwide, and its CCS Freestyle Double-Take bag has proved eminently suitable. A tough, shaped rucksack with a rigid and padded camera-bag base, it is just big enough (31 x 17 x 14.5cm) and its movable sections allow customisation.
     It is closed by a zip which is covered by an all-round flap that forms part of the top section, and held tight by a pinch-clip and buckle. This is CCS's Dri-Flex system, which keeps the elements away from the zips and the photographic kit, though it is not waterproof in a diving sense.
     The upper section is a soft bag that takes all I want and more. This too is closed by a zip and fastened by a soft elasticated lid using a second pinch-clip. A bonus is a third little zipped pocket in the lid in which I can carry tickets and travel documents. CCS docking loops on the lower part allow further pouches to be added to expand the bag's capacity.
     The whole thing has a semi-rigid padded backpack with padded rucksack-style straps plus a belt and sternum strap. There is a grab handle at the top, too.
     I can sling the whole thing on one shoulder but should I ever need to do some serious yomping all these straps are multi-adjustable for a perfect fit. Fully loaded the bag weighs less than 6kg, is unobtrusive and stows easily in an overhead bin on the aircraft. The CCS Freestyle Double-Take is part of a large product range with varying specifications.
It costs £50 from good camera shops.