Leaving the camera in the hosuing

If I had a high capacity battery and a 2 gig card and averaged 60-70 shots a day, could I leave the camera in the UW housing until I needed to change the battery?. I would also soak the case in fresh water overnight. Are there any foreseeable problems doing this? The less I limit the open/closing of the UW case the less chance of issues. Only a theory

i leave my camera in housing for days at a time...

However, i would recommend against leaving it soaking overnight. Just soak it after the dive, work the buttons a bit, then take it out and store in secure location.

M

I'm with Mike on this. I give the system a good dunk in fresh water after the dive, and work the controls a bit. If I don't need to change lens, battery or anything else, the whole thing stays assembled as is until the next dive, even if it's only the next day.

Also, don't leave your housing soaking overnight. I've seen too many floods happen in rinse tanks while the owner of the system is not paying attention.

Ditto the above. Rinse tanks are perhaps the number one source of floods. When cameras are left in them. Especially on a moving boat. A second question would be is it your own private rinse tank? If not, other UW photographers will quickly get pissed at you.

I personally still open the housing and download my card each day. Gives you backup and more card capacity just in case you really need to take a lot of shots. Also I have two batteries and alternate them each day even if I don't feel the need to recharge them.

I find taking your camera out and recharging your battery and/or putting a fresh one in is more important. Several times I forgot to change my battery before going out the next day and caught with a dead battery as a beautiful turtle swam right next to me. Even though I keep 3 batteries on hand, it sucks being in the water with a dead camera.

I agree with Dave on this. Rinse tanks can flood cameras and they destroy lenses, especially dome ports, if left in a tank with other cameras even for a few minutes. If you don't want/need to download your images daily, a quick dunk working the buttons will probably be just fine, especially on a liveaboard where you are constantly diving, just soak it good at the end of the week. That being said, I as well prefer to download at least once a day, if for no other reason then to have more card space and have a quick look at what I'm shooting. The display on some cameras just doesn't provide enough to look at sometimes to see how you are shooting.