Hi all,
I thought I’d share an experience from last week in the hope that someone else can avoid my mistakes. In the run up and getting ready for the Digital Shootout in Bonaire I convinced myself I needed a new mask. After reading all the threads and recommendations here I purchased a new Atomic. It fits great, which is hard to find for my big head. I knew that people have had trouble cleaning it so it wouldn’t fog up. To solve that problem I purchased some stuff made by a company named JAWS; mask cleaner and a mask defogger called “Spitâ€. Sounded good to me, plain old spit had worked for the first 30 years of my diving. I worked on the mask pretty hard and cleaned it four times before heading for Bonaire. The checkout in the pool led me to believe I had finally been successful. Once in Bonaire I started having fogging problems about thirty minutes into the first dive. I’ve been diving for awhile so I wasn’t too concerned. I just had to do a little dip and clear every time I wanted to take a picture. Every night back in the room, I tried cleaning it again, my son Jeff tried cleaning it again, the toothpaste came out, and in short we tried everything we could think of. Still no good, fog city.
By Wed. tired of looking through the glass darkly, I gave the mask defog (soap) on the Divi Flamingo dock a try. Wonder of wonders it worked for the afternoon shore dive. The next morning, the last day of shooting for the competition, I loaded up the mask with the thoughtfully provided soap and we headed off to do the Salt Pier site. Now, to back up I had been trying to learn to shoot my new DSLR rig all week and thought it would be great to learn to shoot the wide angle stuff I’ve always admired but had never been able to attempt. I was making progress with the Tokina 10-17mm but it was slow. I was learning how hard it is to get great images; With Berkley’s help I had progressed from awful, through “hey that’s a diver†to actually getting blue water.
On the ride out to the dive site my son and I discussed the shots we wanted to get with the pier, and I was feeling very good about our chances. I was sure I had the Shootout winning image in my head and was finally getting comfortable with the rig. I was actually feeling like I was ahead of the camera instead of being behind the curve. Once on the site, we found out we didn’t actually have permission to dive the pier but if we swam 500 yards south from the mooring and sort of found the pier by accident no one would have a problem. No sweat, off we go after carefully and thoroughly rinsing the soap/defogger that had been cooking away in my mask. As soon as we hit the water I knew something wasn’t right. My eyes started to tear up and itch almost immediately. Very quickly, I realized that by combining toothpaste, Spit, real spit, soap and whatever vile substance gets left on the mask from the production process, I had managed to conjure up a compound with the attributes of a weird combination of mustard gas, pepper spray and mace.
Within three minutes my eyes had swollen completely shut and the tears were running constantly. I couldn’t see a thing. Halfway to the pier, after a few attempts at rinsing and clearing I finally took it off completely and tried to wash out my eyes and clean the unholy vapor emanating from mask. Thinking this had to clear up, right? We kept going toward the pier and the great images I knew were there. Luckily the sun was still low to the horizon so I could make progress toward the pier by keeping the glimmer on my left shoulder. Jeff was right there keeping me headed in the right direction and probably thinking his old man had finally lost it. “Why is he diving without his mask?†Another ten minutes and 1000 psi later I sensed the darker area under the pier. With my mask back on we setup for the shots we had discussed. It was completely fogged by the way. Through the barely open eye slits I could just make out areas of light and dark, no hope of focusing or even making out sponges on the large pilings. I just shot by instinct, knowing Jeff was circling into the frame as we had talked about. I only got off three frames when we found ourselves surrounded by divers and inundated with bubbles. It seems that two other boats had dropped their divers right at the pier rather than make them swim from a mooring. Our tidy little group had gone from 6 to 50. This wasn’t turning out quite as I had imagined.
On the long swim back to the boat I went through the five stages of grief. Seriously pissed at myself lasted the longest. I knew in my heart I had crap on the card.
Later at the awards party for the Shootout I realized I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself. The winning images were so far above what I had been focused on achieving I needn’t have worried. There were some truly impressive images that won and placed in the wide angle category. I’m not in that league yet. Outstandingly, Jeff won a third place in the macro category with a beautiful urchin image. A win for him in his first photo competition took most of the sting out of my screw-up, I’m very proud of him. But hey, if anybody knows of a blindfolded photo competition let me know. I think I have a chance. 
Finally for the real question I need answered. Anybody know how to truly clean an Atomic mask?
Steve
Have tried quite a few of the methods mentioned on this thread but to no avail. 
