The lost smells of underwater photography

i miss teaching people how to develop E6 slides and getting them to smell the chemicals to know how to differentiate them...

IE: a ploy to watch the tears roll down their eyes after sniffing Colour B..

Well, a smell which I DO NOT miss is the smell of E6 chemicals! On the other hand I do miss the smell of black and white paper chemicals (and the magical moment of watching an image form on the sheet of paper in the orange glow of a safelight).

I don't miss the smell of two-stroke outboards!

For me, someone who dives mostly in temperate waters, a really evocative smell really is the one of warm (drying/dried) neoprene (in the morning) - it always reminds me of warm waters, bright sun and a relaxed atmosphere and is, for me, a very 'cheerful' smell.

One thing i dont miss is the smell of cleaning cabin 9 on the Tahiti Aggressor after a rough crossing... Especially if 2 guys were in there! Stinky.

A few of you are on here!

There is certainly a very distinct smell released from the inside of a Nikonos that hits your nose just after cracking it open post-exposure. It's the smell of film mentioned by Alex in the first post. I suspect the act of unrolling a rerolling the film inside a air-tight container boosts the aroma.

I miss that smell a little bit. Perhaps I could distill and sell that "new-film" smell as a spritz for use inside digital housings. It could be marketed as a port cleaner + air freshener.

-Brad