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.

IS FILM DEAD? Is everyone using digital imaging now? Hardly. Film still rules when it comes to the image resolution demanded by published professionals.
     Unless, that is, you count those who use digital backs that fit on Hasselblad cameras, and have the support staff standing by for the time-consuming task of downloading and storing images. Or newsmen for whom time and the telephone wire are more important than quality.
     It's for the same reason that cinema features are shot on film rather than video - the final image quality. That's not to say that these images are not digitised later.
     When it comes to amateur snaps, however, the digital camera has blown away film just as video blew away 8mm ciné. Digital cameras are becoming as common in the hands of those taking pictures under water as any of the cheaper viewfinder-type amphibious cameras were, but they are still not good enough for serious quality stuff.
     I can already hear some underwater photography buffs spluttering into their tea-cups. What rot, they say.
     Here's my reasoning. First, there's the lack of spontaneity. Viewfinder-type digital cameras are too slow to gather action shots and tend to miss what a single lens reflex camera can grab.
     Second, light is light, whether gathered digitally or chemically. I still believe that you need to take some white light down with you, and that usually comes in the form of a flash. There seem to be all sorts of problems with flash and digital, including effective exposure-control and synchronisation.
     The popular new Nikon D100 is the first serious SLR available at what I would call a "floodable" price. It's the digital equivalent of the Nikon F80, and submarine-housing manufacturers are rushing to produce a housing for it.
     However, the D100 will not give auto TTL exposure control with flash, and it uses an image-gathering area a lot smaller than the full 35mm film frame. This means that your wide-angle lenses will give only around two-thirds of your accustomed camera angle. And wide-angle lenses are essential unless you take only macro shots, when your 60mm lens effectively takes on the angle-of-view of a 90mm.
     There's another thing. At its highest definition setting with a 512Mb memory card, the D100 will gather only 28 high-definition TIFF images before it needs to be downloaded to a PC. With the standard Compact flash card it takes only seven shots.
     How many Kodak-moments will you miss while you go through and delete shots to make space for what you hope will be better ones during a dive?
     The way to go would seem to be to use RAW NEF files and save them onto a 1Gb IBM microdrive. You can save more than 100 shots, but need to read them on your computer using Adobe Photoshop software, with the plug-in provided with the camera.
     And how useful are those images? Not very for the professional, because the file sizes are too small. They are just about good enough to reproduce across a full page of a typical magazine but, at least at 300dpi, they will not stretch to a double-page spread.
     But most of the pictures in Diver take up less than half a page, you say. Sorry, I want to know that if I take a shot that's worthy of a 64-sheet poster (and I've done a few in the past), it will be of good enough quality. I don't want to disqualify myself from that chance before I even drop into the water.
     Also, magazine art editors without exception want the option to use only a small part of the frame. They rarely want to use a picture the way the photographer cropped it. They have their own ideas. So definition is very important.
     If the pictures you take are only for you, for personal print-outs or projection, or your ambitions for the use of your photographs are less, the Nikon D100 could be for you. And you'll get 10 times as many pictures per load in JPEG form.
     Having heard my reservations about the D100's ability as an underwater tool, you may not want to read what I have to say about the Sea & Sea DX D100 housing, but here goes.
     I have used a Sea & Sea housing for the Nikon F(N)90X for some years and been extremely pleased with the results. I especially like the edge-to-edge sharpness afforded by the large-diameter dome port available for use with wide-angle lenses, and I looked forward to trying this DX housing for the D100.
     My first impression was that, instead of producing a fit-like-a-glove cast-aluminium clamshell, Sea & Sea had gone over to a mixture of heavyweight ABS and polycarbonate plastic, in a massive rectangular box.
     It measures around 22 x 21 x 13cm, not including handles, and weighs nearly 9kg out of the water (the spec sheet says 3kg), and that's without camera or any regular Sea & Sea lens port fitted.
     It has a characteristically simple route for its big O-ring, something that can help prevent you flooding it, and it is closed with four cam-catches.
     All the camera controls are accessible and linked mechanically to the camera, which sits precisely by sliding onto a mounting on a special tray, and is locked in place by a cam-lever. There are two flash bulkhead connectors.
     I am used to shooting a 36-exposure roll of slide film, using two flashguns, with everything set to TTL automatic exposure control, bringing the film back and receiving 36 perfectly exposed frames from the lab a couple of hours later. Any successes are down to those marvellous designers and technical wizards at Nikon.
     With the digital D100 camera, I had to do a lot of fiddling about. I had to take a shot, view it, make adjustments to the flashgun settings, and shoot another. The problem arises because there seem to be no underwater flashguns dedicated to the D100 in TTL mode, so I had to resort to manual exposure mode.
     Why is this? When you fire off a photo with a Nikon film SLR, the camera measures the flash and turns it off when it's had enough. With a digital camera, it needs to make several pre-flashes to assess the exposure. If you've seen someone using a digital camera in low light, you'll know that it looks like a regular blitzkrieg. But none of the serious underwater flashguns I possess will do this, and that means taking a picture and assessing the result yourself.
     I'm not used to operating so many controls and having to make so many decisions with a camera while diving. It's OK in the studio with an inanimate subject, but under water the wildlife tends to bugger off in the meantime.
     The LCD monitor sucks up battery power, too, so I was reluctant to use it too much. It takes some two hours to recharge the camera.
     So it's not the housing I dislike, bulky though it is, but the lack of automation in the image-gathering process. The flash problem takes us back to the days of the Nikonos III and manual flashguns.
     This camera can be tweaked to take passable shots without flash, and some say that photographs so obtained are more "realistic". So what? I want my images to be vibrant with colour, not "like what it looks like down there". I need the colour of my own white light shone through as little water as possible.
     Digital fans argue that you can adjust everything later with Photoshop. How labour-intensive! I recently shot 900 pictures on one trip, but this way I would never get them all adjusted before I went off on my next one.
     What's more, the LCD monitor did not give a true rendering of the subjects. By the time I had the images rendered in Photoshop on the big boy's computer at the office, we found that they were all about one and a half stops dark. So much for fiddling about to get it right.
     Film can cost a lot. Once you have bought the camera, and assuming that you have a suitable computer for image storage, digital imagery is seductively economical.
     However, the D100 costs around three times the price of the F80, the equivalent film camera. When you flood it - and everything gets flooded at some time - the price difference will account for quite a few rolls of film.
     Storage and accessibility to the images is another matter. I can pull out a sheet of 36 frames of film from my library of more than half a million filed images, scan it by eye and know what's on it in a moment. No PC is yet that fast.
     So my review of the Sea & Sea DX D100 camera housing has been coloured by my disappointment about what goes in it, and the need for complicated controls to view as you go.
     Digital photography may be the future, but for serious underwater photography that future isn't here yet. When it is, I will be using it.
     If you have yet to buy a digital SLR, I suggest that you stick with film until the problems I mention have been solved, or risk taking a technological step backwards.
     Meanwhile, I'm not unhappy to see so many underwater photographers seduced into using digital cameras. It removes much of the competition for the sale of publishable pictures!
     The Sea & Sea DX D100 submarine housing for the Nikon D100 costs £1250. A lens port costs from £200 extra. The Nikon D100 costs around £1500 plus some £600 for a Nikon lens.

Where have they been hiding this one?
Sometimes I see a bit of kit that I can't wait to get my hands on. The Tigullio Hover BC is one such item. Why?
     I am often sent BCs for testing, and it is often only the fine detail that separates one design from another. When it comes to using and writing about kit, it's very much easier when you can deal in broad brush-strokes, even though the detail is equally important. The Tigullio T52 Hover is designed in Italy and, like many Italian products, it is full of innovative ideas.
     To begin with, it looks unlike any other BC. Is it a wing? Is it a plain BC? No, it's what its manufacturer calls a "Sequential Buoyancy System"!
     It has a double-bag arrangement constrained within abrasion-proof mesh and sturdy elastic bands. This stops it flapping under water and during horizontal swimming. Fill the wing fully and the air overflows into a second compartment, to bring peace of mind to those with misgivings about the buoyancy and attitude provided by a wing at the surface.
     The front is a conventional waistcoat design, so the diver can be supported low around the hips, putting him high and vertical in the water when he needs to be.
     The Tigullio T52 Hover is clearly aimed at single-tank users, because it comes with one camband. Single tanks are often made of aluminium, but that floating feeling towards the end of the dive is mitigated by trim-weight pockets at the back of the conventional part of the jacket.
     Integrated-weight pockets, secured by slabs of Velcro, are an optional extra, on either side at the front. This is where I see improvements being made in the future. Many other BC manufacturers are now adopting ways of making integrated weights more secure, with quick-release buckles and the like.
     Otherwise, the T52 lacks for nothing. It has an industry-standard pull-dump at the left shoulder operated by the corrugated hose, and another at the opposite shoulder, threaded through to a toggle over the right breast. There is a dump valve at the lower part of the wing and yet another, operated by a toggle threaded through to the front of the BC, to the lower part of the waistcoat section.
     There is a cummerbund with 30mm strap and buckle over, and a sternum strap through which I would tuck the corrugated hose. I hate dangly bits and there's no need to do any hose-raising to jettison air with this BC.
     Two big stainless-steel D-rings are provided for those who like the dangles. There are smaller ones, too. The two side pockets are capacious and have opposing zips, and everything is well constructed in a mixture of denier 1000 and 840 cloth.
     With a single tank, this BC delivered everything it promised. I tried it with the co-operation of Emperor Divers in Hurghada. In the salty but coldish northern Red Sea in December, I was using a lot of rubber to keep warm so needed 12kg of lead. With 4kg in the trim-weight pockets and 8kg in the front integrated-weight pockets, I never noticed the load when out of the water and was exceptionally comfortable in it.
     The buoyancy was always where I wanted it. The T52 Hover dumped air without me having to consider my attitude in the water, and gave masses of surface buoyancy to hold me comfortably upright when required. The pockets were easily accessed but the contents stayed secure behind the double zips. And the whole thing looked good.
     When it came to returning the weights to the boat's lead-locker, I was able to drop them from the trim-weight pockets easily, though it was a bit more difficult emptying the integrated-weight system. The only point I would make is that, as the buoyancy chamber is so complex, any water that gets into the BC needs to be drained via the dumps from both the wing and the waistcoat section.
     If this product is so good, why haven't we heard of Tigullio? It's the company's 50th year but I guess it was so occupied with its home market that it didn't realise that divers lived in our northern island nation. Now it has a UK distributor.
     Available in S, M, L and XL, the Tigullio T52 Hover costs £365.

For that super-hero look
I recently wrote that what I wanted in a diving suit was extra padding around the pecs and shoulders, a nipped-in waist and a six-pack effect at the midriff. It had nothing to do with insulation. It was all about looking drop-dead gorgeous. That's something I find hard to do nowadays without some artificial aid, so it's gratifying to know that manufacturers listen to what I have to say.
     I was initially attracted to this Swedish-designed Waterproof Zubzor Pro suit because it had a ridge of stomach muscles embossed just where I wanted it!
     It's mainly made with 3mm neoprene, so it's certainly aimed at the warmwater diver, but then coldwater diving can hardly be called a stylish pursuit, can it? You wouldn't expect a push-up bra effect in a wetsuit for ladies or an anatomically designed crotch area (provide your own sausage) for us lads; certainly not for those used to jumping into icy waters. But you get that with this suit.
     It's a suit loaded with other novel ideas, too. For instance, it has a panel of what they call "harmonica-stretch" 5mm neoprene at the kidneys. This is effectively a thick layer of corrugated neoprene. At the front it has that Judge Dredd look, plus a panel of smooth skin at the chest area, all super-heroic.
     A good idea at the back is the large area coated with non-slip Toughtex. This helps rid you of that insecure feeling while sitting on the side-sponson of a quickly driven RIB.
     Ankles and cuff have seals made from a fine thickness of mesh-skin neoprene and these are protected by the main 3mm neoprene of the suit, which in both cases is closed with a zip. They collude to reduce the amount of water that might otherwise flush through the suit.
     At the back is the vertical-entry zip, of a heavy-duty YKK bronze metal type. This has a long ribbon-tag on it to enable you to close it on your own. I never can. In common with other Waterproof suits, there is a comfort zip at the throat. The neck area is also in-stitched with comfortable Lycra fabric.
     Pre-bent arms and legs, with soft flexible polyurethane elbow and knee patches nicely integrated on the one side, and more panels of harmonica-stretch fabric on the inner edge of the curve, all conspire to beat discomfort. I tried to find a Swedish blonde for the photograph but had to settle for some common-or-garden English roast beef. However, the overall design, using panels of black, silver, grey and blue, enabled him to strike a perfect pose. Ladies' versions are in black, grey and white.
     I can already hear the more jaundiced members of the diving trade muttering that with so many elements, there's an awful lot of stitching to come unravelled. I took a close look because I always understood that if you buy a suit in Saville Row, its master tailors will jump to attention if you question the quality of the stitching.
     In this case, the Zubzor Pro seems to be constructed in the same way as many neoprene drysuits - stitched both inside and out. Waterproof has confidence in the construction because it is all backed by a two-year warranty.
     These suits are available in a range of off-the-peg sizes. The one sent to me was almost a perfect fit, though a little wanting when it came to my 36in inside legs. These suits are clearly not intended for use in the Mediterranean, nor any tropical place that might be swept by an ocean current, but in the Red Sea in midsummer or anywhere of that sort, the Zubzor Pro 3mm suit would seem ideal.
     The Zubzor Pro costs £124 and there is a shortie version for £89.