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.

Antonio Cressi is an extremely modest man and if you met him you would hardly guess that, as the owner of what is still a family business rather than a publicly owned company, he is probably one of the most powerful men in the diving industry.
    His father set up in Genoa to manufacture diving products just after WWII and all the other companies clustered around that part of Italy can trace their ancestry to the original Cressi business.
     There is little that Cressi doesn't know about injection-moulding and the company has prospered by quietly getting on with business year in, year out. Antonio Cressi says he intends to be in the business for the duration.
     When I wrote something impolite once about a Cressi product, he invited me to spend some time with him so that he could fully understand my point of view.
     Which is why Cressi constantly moves forwards - he doesn't think people should buy his products because they are there, but because they are good.
     Purchasers of Cressi Frog, Master Frog and Space Frog fins have not been disappointed. Now the latest Cressi footwear, the Pro Light fin, promises to combine everything the manufacturer has learnt from these successful designs.
     Weighing in at less than a kilo each in the largest size, the Pro Light fins are lighter than the original Frog design.
     They have a less lengthy blade than the Master Frog, and are more flexible than the Space Frog.
     They still adhere to the flicking rather than scooping principle of imparting the diver's energy to the water. This is achieved by combining two different thermoplastics, one hard, one soft, as only the Italians can do. The softer of the two materials is extended to form a foot-pocket that embraces the wearer's foot right up to the heel, so that the fins really become part of you.
     Conventional quick-release buckles retain the heel strap. In the way first seen years ago with the Frog fin, the blade is angled to follow the line of the top of the foot so that the most is made of the kick, a la David Beckham. The curves of the blade are as subtle as those of Mr Beckham's missus.
     Cressi Pro Light fins might not have "geophysical extradynamic" added-value "channel-thrust" or any of the other ad-speak guaranteed to confuse your selection process, but all you need do is fit a pair on your feet and go and give the water a good kicking. You'll find that they work excellently.
     When finning really hard, you can almost feel them click as they flick the water and you accelerate away. That's something that doesn't seem to happen with many of the fashionable split-fin designs that every other manufacturer seems to be trying to sell us.
     Cressi Pro Light fins come in five sizes and a range of three colours. They cost £56.

Squeeze in easy
Back in the mid-'60s, I asked my mother what I should buy my first girlfriend for her birthday. She told me to get her a sweater. If it was too big she'd be flattered, and if it was too small she'd wear it!
     From a choice of two different-sized Oceanic Ascend wetsuits sent to me to try, I chose the smaller, presumably using the same sort of reasoning.
     Most wetsuits sold in the UK are now made under contract in the Far East, which is why so many of them are similar. I often find myself reluctant to write about wetsuits in these pages for that reason. However, some of the major manufacturers get unique designs exclusively made for them and the Oceanic Ascend is one of these.
     It's a lightweight 3mm one-piece design in the steamer tradition. It is zipped at the back (YKK) and has a panel of attractive smooth-skin neoprene at the chest on the outer side. There are flexible rubber-style kneepads, too.
     I noted that the suit seemed to be beautifully stitched at each seam although, in common with many other wetsuits available, the cuffs still looked as if they might unravel given time.
     There are no seals as such, but because the suit material is so flexible, you really can slip on a size that fits like a second skin. In fact you have to consider what you wear underneath, because any bumps in your swimwear such as those caused by a knotted drawstring can look rather unsightly.
     It was easy to get off for the same reason that it was easy to don, and made an ideal suit for snorkelling in the hot sun. It also proved ideal when it came to protecting me from the onslaught of sea-wasps and other assorted jellyfish.
     Call me a wimp, however, but even with no chance of any water flushing through this close-fitting wetsuit, I still found it a little chilly when undertaking long dives in water at 24°C.
     I would reserve a suit like this for use in the warmest waters. Those of you with more body fat would probably disagree.
     The Oceanic Ascend 3mm wetsuit comes in a range of off-the-peg sizes and costs £85.

Italians raid the torch market
Not so long ago I owned some fabulous Swiss-made lights. They had about 50 minutes of burntime and there was nothing brighter, but they weighed a ton because they had massive 12V battery packs. They were like something out of Das Boot.
     Battery technology has moved forward amazingly in a short time. The German diving industry might have derived some fabulous PR from movies such as Das Boot, but we should not forget that it was six Italian frogmen who put the British Mediterranean Fleet out of action in Alexandria harbour.
     The new Italian-made range of lights available under the strange brand name of Fa & Mi is beautifully engineered and there is something to suit everyone.
     I chose the Fa & Mi 2001 to take with me on a trip, on the basis that I could put it in my hand luggage without having to undergo any confrontations with an aircraft dispatcher at the gate. The lamp weighs a mere 1.2kg.
     Only 24cm long by 8.5cm in diameter, the torch's small size belies the fact that it has a 50W xenon bulb driven by a modern 12V ni-mh battery that can be re-charged at any state of discharge. You get around 45 minutes' burntime, but if you fit a 35W or 20W bulb you get up to two hours.
     It comes with a hi-tech automatic charger and a choice of parabolic reflectors. The lamp itself is built inside a heavily milled aluminium tube that has a simple handle integrated with its end-cap. This has holes at two points for fitting a lanyard but I found it very safe and convenient to tuck the handle down through the cummerbund and waist strap of my BC when I was not using the torch.
     It is operated by a plastic collar that encircles the tube and this activates a magnetic switch so that there is no additional possible point-of-entry for water save the end-cap, which is unscrewed to reveal the charging jack. It was certainly bright enough to be effective, even in the shallows with Bahamas sunshine above.
     The Fa & Mi 2001 costs £275.

Stripped-down and foldable
Words can be misleading. Cressi-Sub might be pleased with itself that it uses the English spelling of the word "Light" in the name of this product, but its Aqualight is not the diving torch you might suppose, but a lightweight BC.
     It was something of a relief to find that the Aqualight weighed in at only 2.3kg. That is half as much as some BCs I could mention. Cressi has achieved this simply by getting rid of all the heavy bits.
     There is no hard backpack, just a soft cushion with two tank cambands. This means that you can roll the BC up top-to-bottom if you like.
     When worn, it looks much like a conventional BC. It has a wide cummerbund with a 5cm strap and pinch-clip over it, and a 2.5cm sternum strap. The large side pockets are held closed by velcro and their panels are made entirely from a wide-weave, self-draining material. Cressi has allowed the luxury of a single 5cm stainless steel D-ring.
     As usual with Cressi BCs, you have a choice of ways to dump air. You can pull down on the corrugated hose, use the pull-cord threaded neatly through the right side shoulder facing, or use the dump valve at the lower back should you become inverted.
     I found that, in use, it worked just like any good conventional BC. The pockets were secure enough to stow a couple of extra weights in without risk of them tumbling out at any time.
     The air always dumped without any forethought on my part, and there seemed to be plenty of surface buoyancy for a properly weighted diver.
     If I have any criticism, it is that the elbow on the corrugated hose, a good idea in principle, always seemed to be part-hanging off when I came to put the Aqualight on for the next dive.
     When I queried this with Cressi-sub, I was told that this "elbow" was only packing for use in transit. Of course it was!
     The comes in sizes XS, S, M, L and XL and costs £198.

Another reg that won't break the bank
Back in the days when I was a dive guide in some pretty remote places, I used to think of regulators as forming two distinct groups. There were those that you could do something about if they went out of tune, and those you didn't dare take apart.
     As a rule at that time, the first group had simple piston-design first stages and the second balanced-diaphragm designs. Time has gone by, and some piston designs have evolved to become as complex and difficult to reassemble as any in the "don't-dare-to-touch" category, but entry-level regulators remain pretty straightforward.
     Manufacturers and distributors rarely send their cheapest regulators for exposure in Diver Tests, usually preferring to send top-of-the-line products. However, we recently compared 12 regulators costing less than £150 and found that some of those with the simplest unbalanced-piston first stages gave excellent results. We felt confident of being able to undertake most dives with most of these regulators.
     Scubapro sent us its trusty MK2/R190, a diving school favourite. However, that company also supplies another regulator that comes within the £150 price range. It has the same MK2 first stage but with the more recently designed and consequently smaller R380 second stage.
     When I asked the same group of testers to try this regulator, they inevitably compared it with the R190. They liked the hose protectors with locking nuts and the cage that protected the first stage. The compact second stage could be removed easily from its hose but they felt that the over-complicated way in which the diaphragm was retained made it almost impossible to reassemble in the field. It had a very accessible venturi ± control.
     Under water, George Buxton thought it "not the easiest, but you get the air." He was not convinced it was much different to the R190 but thought that, if there was a difference, the R190 was marginally better. "I didn't like the fact that it was so complicated to get at the silicone diaphragm of the R380 second stage, should you need to get sand out of it as we did. Otherwise, a good regulator."
     Les Holliday reported that it provided "an easy breathe, if with a little resistance. The very soft mouthpiece tended to collapse, increasing the effort. The purge was a little hard to operate."
     Leen Charles thought it needed "less cracking pressure than the R190, and it is small and light in the mouth". Breathing comfort was OK but she didn't feel comfortable about it. She also thought it was "hard to purge and head-down it felt slightly wet". Steve Weinman found it "not so resistant as the R190 and, in fact, quite pleasant." He found it tended to be "a bit noisy", and "fluttered with two divers breathing from it, with an octopus-rig, at 40m."
     Fully inverted, the group found the regulator to be fairly dry.
     The report from ANSTI test systems, the people with the breathing-machine, revealed the MK2/R380 to provide a very good performance at 51m with a "work of breathing" of only 1.58J/litre, even if there was a very slight flutter in the air flow at this depth.
     So the Scubapro MK2/R380 is another good bet to sit alongside those other top performers revealed in our comparison test of regulators costing less than £150. It costs £139.