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The underwater photographer

por Ksso el 22 de marzo de 2011

I love to take underwater pictures, but let's face it, although technology got more affordable, it's awfully complicated to take decent underwater pictures. I recently got my hands on that book by Martin Edge, the Underwater Photographer, which really did help me understand better the whereabouts of underwater photography, including why it's so hard. Here are a few quotes that I'll try to keep in mind from now on :(...) the density of water is 800 times that of air. Such is the density of water, in fact, that people compare a picture taken in 0.5 m of water with a picture on land taken at 800 m away.Getting as close as possible, physically, is often all it needs to produce a marked...

Hot or not ? the Thermocline

por Ksso el 01 de marzo de 2011

The thermocline is something you get to know soon enough when you're a scuba diver - the effects on the environments are extremely easy to spot : water below you becomes blurry and suddenly temperature drops by a couple degrees, enough to get you a chill. Move up a few centimeters above the blur, the water is hot again. The blur is actually caused by the altered refractive index of the cold or warm water column. This heat barreer is called the thermocline.A definition (by Weatherfacts) would be : The thermocline (gr: thermo = hot and clino = slope) is generally a steep gradient of rapid temperature change, but applied more particularly to a layer, in a body of water, in which the...

Know your gear : the regulator

por Ksso el 12 de febrero de 2011

The regulator is a key piece of the diver's gear. Like my instructors used to repeat relentlessly "Air is life", and the regulator bring breathable air to your mouth. The main function of a regulator is fairly simple:

Adjust the air pressure (from the tank pressure to the environment pressure)

Enable inhale and exhale of the air

The classic regulator is composed of 2 stages. The first stage mounts right on the tank and will adapt the tank's air pressure to the environment. Standard 1st stage regulators also include a high-pressure plug to connect to the manometer and get a direct reading to the tank's pressure (and letting you know hom much air you've got left).A 1st stage regulator...

Common hand signals

por Ksso el 05 de febrero de 2011

If you haven't been diving for a while, before getting back in a suit it's always a good idea to review the basic hand signals used for communicating underwater.... you know, just in case you need them ( and to make sure you don't thumb-up your dive buddy ... (thumb-up means we're going up now)).There are more gestures than that and you should think while on the boat to reassess those that may be used during the dive to point on the rare fish you may run into.Common Hand Signals for Scuba Diving