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.

I have begun to covet other people's cameras. Instead of entering the water with an outfit that is massive in both bulk and cost, I see people jumping in with little digital cameras in plastic submarine housings smaller than my five-year-old's school lunchbox.
     To add insult to injury, some of them even sneer at me for still shooting "old-fashioned" film that needs to be taken home for processing. So I armed myself with a little plastic SeaLife Reefmaster DC200 1.3 mega-pixel digital camera, with external flash, and set off to see what I could achieve.
     I used the external flashgun because light is light, whether recorded digitally or not, and I knew that the little in-built flash of the camera would merely serve to light up unwanted detritus in the water rather nicely.
     It's like using your car headlights on full-beam in fog. Better to use your fog-lights, positioned as they are further from the axis of your line of sight.
     There was no way I could fly by the seat of my pants with this one. I sat down to read the manual and, surprisingly, found it quite straightforward. First, I had to charge the four AA-size ni-mh batteries supplied.
     In keeping with all digital hardware, there are lots of options. This includes control of exposure and colour balance. I opted to keep things simple and went with all defaults set. I pre-set the camera for use under water and with the external flash, and chose to record fewer pictures on the memory of the camera but at the highest quality possible.
     Bigger file sizes means fewer pictures. An additional Compact Flash memory card is available as an optional extra, and this will allow you to record more shots.
     I then dropped the camera into its underwater housing, snug as a bug in a rug, and closed it up, first making sure that the two captive O-rings were free of foreign bodies. I did not say I greased the O-rings, you notice. It's not recommended.
     The external flash runs on four AA batteries. It is fired using a slave cell that responds to the camera's own built-in flash by way of a mirror that fits over and thereby disables it. The external flashgun has its own on/off/test-fire switch.
     From then on I just had to jump into the water and frame things up with the digital LCD monitor screen or, alternatively, look through the rather crude open-frame sports-finder. There is an optical viewfinder too, for use when the camera is out of its housing and safe on dry land.
     One button turns the camera on and a second is used to initiate the picture. I don't say "snap" the picture because it takes a little time to get all the information. This, I found, meant that I needed to hold the camera really steady.
     Moving subjects seemed to blur. At worst, the camera can take up to two seconds to grab the image.
     I took the SeaLife outfit as deep as 35m and it proved watertight every time. It is rated to 60m.
     A useful LCD display tells you how much battery power and unused shots remain, as well as confirming the image quality selected and the resolution. After each dive, I was able to go through and delete those pictures which were "failures", so during a series of dives I was able to build up a collection of 23 "successes".
     You can zoom in 2x and 4x to check details on the LCD monitor when viewing the results. In this way I began to realise that head-and-shoulder shots of my buddy were just about the limit of what this camera was good for. He was very pleased, because I ended up shooting a lot of them.
     When I tried to take pictures of my children in an open-air swimming pool, brightly lit by Mediterranean sunshine, the external flash failed to "see" the camera's own triggering flash, so I re-set the camera for under water (with no external flash) and obtained reasonable results.
     Although its brightness can be adjusted, the monitor was impossible to view under these conditions. There is an option to turn it off to save battery power. Ironically, the best results were of one of my daughters at the poolside, out of the water, but taken by me while swimming in it.
     The next task was to bring the pictures home, download them onto my PC using the MGI PhotoSuite software provided, and e-mail them to my buddy and those family-members and friends who wanted to see my kids on holiday. Despite some conflicting information between the instruction manual and the quick-start guide, it was extremely easy to download the shots and all proved to be lots of fun.
     However, this camera is the modern equivalent of the underwater box-Brownie, no more than that.
The SeaLife Digital Reefmaster DC200 camera costs £500 and the external flash £180.

The camera range proved ideal for taking pictures of John Bantin's buddy

Smaller sizes but at a smaller price
It's been a long time since the popular perception of the Vietnamese was of little men in black pyjamas riding bicycles and packing plenty of firepower. Vietnam has since attempted to join the other tiger economies of the Far East, and because it can offer very competitive labour costs, we are bound to see more and more products which are labour-intensive in manufacture coming from this part of Indo-China.
     Among equipment made for diving, nothing takes more man-hours to make than a BC. At the same time, nothing is really so low-tech. So it's no surprise to hear that many BCs bearing familiar brands actually start life in Vietnam, and it's no surprise to hear that as manufacturers become more confident, they start thinking about getting their products CE-marked and marketing them directly to us.
     The Altair IV Triple is a case in point.
     My first impression was that it looked just like some other BCs I had used recently. The only clue to its direct source was the fact that I asked for one in size Medium and got one to fit a medium-sized Vietnamese! They will have to think about re-sizing if they want to sell to the beefy burgermasters of the USA.
     As I've always said, I can dive with anything. I just have to select the dive to suit the equipment. So I took the BC to the midsummer Mediterranean, with the idea that this was where I used to dive without any BC at all, so whatever small amount of maximum lift it provided would be a bonus over my old approach.
     In fact the Altair IV Triple fitted me like a glove and, although it tended to hug me in a rather over-fond embrace when fully inflated, worked remarkably well. I never felt, even with a 15 litre steel tank, that I was not properly supported at the surface, and under water it dumped air impeccably.
     So what do you get with this rather conventional BC? A hard backpack with a small cushion; two tank cambands for a single tank; two side pockets secured closed by generous helpings of velcro; four stainless-steel D-rings; light-reflective patches on the epaulets; Velcro-covered cummerbund, adjustable for length and secured by a webbing strap and pinch-clip over.
     Sternum strap; corrugated hose with integrated direct-feed hose; shoulder-pull dump on the left and a right-side shoulder dump with nicely integrated toggle; rear bottom dump with toggle fed through to the front of the jacket; fittings and a finish distinctly reminiscent of some products bearing more familiar northern European brand-marks.
     So what makes this BC unique? It's very cheap. I imagine that a lot of dive schools and first-time purchasers of diving equipment will be drawn to it.
     The Altair IV Triple BC comes in sizes S, M, L, XL and XXL and represents exceedingly good value at an expected selling price of around £175.

My latest Mission: to dive a Camaro
It was about a week after I had written that I don't really like to write tests of wetsuits that the floodgates opened and, you guessed it, I was inundated with wetsuits from all over the place.
     This one comes from a manufacturer that is highly rated in Europe but virtually unheard of in the UK - Camaro of Austria.
     Camaro specialises in making neoprene garments for all sorts of watersports, whether it be windsurfing, wakeboarding, kiteboarding, dinghy sailing, surfing, canyoning, kayaking or simply swimming. Of course it would be daft to miss out on scuba-diving and Camaro makes a huge range of suits, both wet and dry, that include those for diving under the ice in the Lac du Tigne and for diving in Lac Assal, said to be the hottest part of Africa.
     I'm told that it can be a nerve-wracking business for any manufacturer that wants to break into the British market with a new brand. They seem to think that we at Diver can make or break a product. I'm sure it's more complicated than that. Anyway, it seems that Camaro has decided to dangle some bait and see if it gets any bites.
     As a first tentative step, it sent me an example of its Deep Mission suit. This is a 5mm semi-dry with an asymmetrical diagonal zip at the front and zips at cuffs and ankles so that it is easy to get in and out of, with no calls for zipping-up needed.
     Getting in and out of a suit easily is important. I am often seen wearing a suit thicker than might be thought necessary in warmwater situations, but at least I don't get cold. It seems to me that the reason people get overheated in suits is because they work up such a sweat struggling to get into them.
     I remember watching Norman Tebbit struggle into his suit in Barbados before that wise old man spotted the difference: "Hey, you've got zips on yours, you bugger!" he observed.
     The Deep Mission is made from Camaro's SCS Metallite Titanium Neoprene, which is claimed to give high insulation in a super-light material which is both water-repellent as well as very robust, extremely flexible and, for any divers who simply can't wait to get out of the water to relieve themselves, it is also said to have bactericidal properties.
     The suit appeared to be strongly constructed, with all seams glued and no protruding stitching to cause discomfort in the plush lining. Each panel joint is reinforced on the inside, too.
     There are pre-shaped knee pads, a sexy wet-look to the upper-torso area, an extra-flexible insert in the small of the back, a smooth-skin collar, and seals at wrist and ankle that extend sufficiently past the zipped-over cuff to integrate nicely with gloves and boots (see pictures).
     There is nothing half-hearted about these seals either. Mine measured 19cm long at the wrist and 21cm long at the ankles.
     What I really appreciated was the body-shape cut. It conspired with the made-to-measure option to provide for a suit that really became a second skin.
     There is a wide range of off-the-peg sizes too. Aimed at the warmwater diver (how did I get that reputation?), there is no attached hood on this particular Camaro suit, but then I counted 23 other types of diving suit in its extensive catalogue so, to borrow a phrase from James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, "Waddya want?"
     There's even one called a Labrador, though nothing to suit a cocker spaniel.
     Camaro supplies a range of gloves and boots, too. The Supreme 6.5mm neoprene boots with vulcanised rubber soles sent to me to use in combination with the suit also had extended ankle seals within the zipped outer layer. Once both seal of suit and boot were overlapped, there was no way water could flush through.
     I can certainly call it a true semi-dry boot and it had reinforced heels and uppers too, using a comfortable rubbery material that reminded me of thick black liquorice.
     The boots and suit integrated very nicely in a way to which I am not accustomed. I felt extremely comfortable and used the combination in a wide range of temperatures, from the Bahamas in summer to deep in the chilling Mediterranean.
The Camaro Deep Mission should sell for around £170 in the UK and the Supreme boots for £28.

FaMi, that's bright!
It seems only yesterday that dive shops could offer only a couple of makes of dive light to customers. That was back in the days when most divers met one night each week in the municipal swimming baths and shared the cost of a snorkel.
     The British seem to have grown a lot richer since. Now we are in the 21st century, half-million pound houses seem almost normal, holidays in Bora Bora taken for granted and ubiquitous family saloons cost 20 grand.
     No longer does the average diver bother to make a cheap lamp out of a car headlight and a length of drainpipe. As with everything else he wants, he goes shopping, gold card at the ready. And, as with everything else available in our bright new consumer society, there is plenty of choice.
     The FaMi range of underwater lights comes from Italy. "FaMi?" I hear you say. "That's a funny name!" Putting that aside for the moment, this FaMi is a 12V HID lamp. HID stands for HIDeously expensive, and a major part of the price reflects the cost of the bulb.
     The FaMi Solar 12 HID 2001 might be marketed as a thoroughly modern product but when it was conceived by its maker, the year 2001 no doubt seemed a long way off. "Solar" indicates the intended colour quality of the light.
     High Intensity Discharge lamps need to warm up before they give of their best, so you have to switch it on and leave it on. That's fine by me. You should turn on any diving light just before you go in and leave it on for the duration of the dive, because a bulb always seems to blow during the initial power surge, and turning it on and off, especially during a night dive, can sometimes leave you fumbling in the dark.
     If you want to enjoy a bit of natural darkness at any time, it's best to occlude the lamp by holding it against yourself.
     Once up and running, an HID gives a vastly superior output when compared with a normal tungsten-type bulb. Because it burns at a higher colour temperature (which means that it has a cooler-looking light), it penetrates further through water, which tends to absorb the red end of the spectrum. The other bonus is its four-hour burntime with a battery that takes only four hours to charge.
     Gradually manufacturers are coming round to the idea that an underwater lamp, no matter how expensive, may be one of the least well-looked-after pieces of diving equipment. HIDs may be bright, but many of us are not.
     Expecting a simple-minded diver to disassemble a lamp to charge it, then reassemble it, checking that the all-important O-ring is properly lubricated and free of foreign bodies, is really too much to ask.
     Any object with an air-space is liable to flooding if taken more than a few inches under water and, let's face it, the re-assembly would usually be carried out in low light conditions. Most of us will have experienced diving by that romantic watery glow from a torch shortly before it drowned, leaving us wondering which way was up.
     So, in line with some other far-sighted manufacturers, FaMi enables the diver to recharge this lamp simply by sticking a plug in the back of the unit, instead of taking it apart (see picture above). It should stay as watertight as when you bought it.
     Even the on/off switch is magnetic, so there are no through-body connections to leak later. The switch is operated simply by rotating a collar round the main body of the lamp. It needs to be pulled back a little to disconnect the detent, which should stop it switching on by mistake in your dive bag and burning a hole in your suit.
     There's nothing too clever in the way of sequential switching or different power settings, so even I could work it first time out.
     Under water, even in clear Med water and summer sunlight, it was effective at lighting an otherwise monochrome scene into natural colour. In fact, someone diving with me was heard to say: "FaMi, that's bright!"
     I just had to bear in mind that HID bulbs are not as robust as ordinary ones, so I refrained from using the lamp as a lumphammer under water and slinging it on the deck when I came back on board.
The FaMi Solar 12 HID 2001 with charger costs £441. "FaMi, it's expensive, too!"