Good underwater camera skills begin with good diving skills. At Ocean Optics, our underwater camera shop in London, we've always been forthright about the hazards of trainee divers and beginners using cameras underwater. Ocean Optics owner, Steve Warren, has had many dive safety articles published in Dive International, Scuba World, Dive and Diver Magazine and is a BSAC, PADI and NAUI Worldwide instructor. Many of these feature articles are posted on this website (many of which in the education section.

Using cameras underwater well to get good images requires that you can concentrate more on your camera and your subject and less upon your actual diving. Doing so safely requires that you can maintain near perfect buoyancy skills, spatial awareness, be conscious of gas and time limits and, if buddy diving, observant of them too, while diving virtually on auto pilot. Getting to that stage where you can dive almost subliminally and really concentrate upon your underwater camera techniques takes time.

Being honest, many new (and not so new) divers do have problems juggling all these competing factors. Another problem, backed up by our own observations and from talking to some very experienced dive guides, is that many qualified divers aren't aware that their personal diving skills are weak. It's very easy to get a scuba diving certification card and there's little policing of instructors. Shortcomings in diver training are often missed by the diver themselves---after all, surely they couldn't have passed the tests without having aced the course? Only with experience and by spending time watching other better trained divers do they see the problems they are having for what they really are. The reality is many divers don't feel comfortable in the water, or if they do, it's a false sense of security. Taking up an underwater camera only makes things worse. Our tailored Mavericks Diving scuba refreshers can help raise your personal diving standards and increase your ability and comfort in the water.

A key skill that needs to be mastered by any scuba diver, let alone one using underwater cameras, is precision buoyancy control. This is for the diver's personal safety, protection of the environment and to help with getting better underwater still images or video footage. Safety first: time and again investigations into diving accidents that have killed qualified recreational divers cite poor personal buoyancy skills as either wholly to blame or a significant contributing cause. Uncontrolled ascents and descents are a common factor. Poorly skilled divers also kick coral and cause other environmental damage. Clumsy divers frighten off subjects. When using underwater cameras, where composition is all, being able to maintain your position accurately in the water is an essential skill. Mavericks Diving provides advanced buoyancy control clinics through its Diamond Reef precision buoyancy control workshop. These are held over one day in the 6 m (20 ft) deep filming tank at Action Underwater Studios. We think these skills so important that even our entry level students learn them---we don't sell them as an add on buoyancy course, other than to those who trained elsewhere initially!

Some divers put owning underwater cameras ahead of owning personal diving equipment. Diving equipment is life support equipment. You won't see too many dive professionals using the kind of equipment often tossed out to their own customers as rentals. Take a moment and ask yourself, "why is that?" If you dive, you are almost wholly dependent upon your scuba equipment for your life and entirely dependent upon it for your next breath. It is much more important to understand why CE certification on a regulator means next to zilch and why a DIN connector is safer than an A-clamp than to know what JPEG and TIFF stand for. Scarily, it's very much easier to get information about underwater cameras than the low down on the regulator you breathe through while framing the shot. Sadly, even your dive centre might not have know the answers to these questions (although they are on our website, along with some useful links---see Equipment Buying Guidelines).

The crew at Ocean Optics and our dive training and retail arm, Mavericks Diving London, are experienced divers and instructors. And although we make our living from our London underwater camera sales, we have always tried to be open about the importance of dive safety. If you have questions or concerns, then please raise them with us.

Steve Warren owns Mavericks Diving and underwater photography equipment specialists Ocean Optics. He is a published underwater photographer and writer.

Learning more..... We're at the hub of underwater photography events. We organise the annual Visions in the Sea underwater photography festival and host regular presentations on how to take better photographs by top specialists including Mark Webster and Ocean Visions. If you'd like details of these and other exciting Mavericks Diving and Ocean Optics talks, workshops and dive travel opportunities, ask to receive our email news bulletins.