Always assemble your rig in advance

I took my Nikon 70-300mm lens underwater today. By an accident. I am not sure if anyone ever tried that!

I was in a such hurry this afternoon to make it to the boat dive in time, I took 70-300mm out of my Pelican case instead of 105mm macro. Funny! Of course I did not have time even for a test shot. I made it to the boat in time but got busy again on the boat and never looked at my rig.

Underwater nothing worked. I thought I was having a macro lens of course. I've changed numerous settings underwater and wasted 15 minutes of the dive until I gave up.

And the DA-90 Nauticam housing stopped responding as well. The lens was slightly pushing the macro dome port and finally the camera got misaligned inside the housing. Nothing happened. I even managed to get one picture out of this setup. I am going to keep that picture just as a reminder.

I think I have about 80 dives with D90 and never before failed to assemble it properly. I always assemble my rig the night before the dive. Always worked as a charm. Never ever a I am going to assemble my rig in a hurry again!

Haha, good one, I've assembled my stuff in a hurry before, and sometimes forget to switch the macro lens to "full" (or other silly things), but I never accidentally dove with the wrong lens! I'm glad the lens pushing against the port didn't cause your system to flood.

I took my Canon 70-300 DO for a dive at Manta Point Komodo once. I realised after about 5 seconds when there were mantas in my face and I couldnt focus on anything. I swiftly made it back to the RIB, dumped my camera off and then went back down and stole my wifes video camera from her. I dont hink she was to impressed but I got some amazing footage.

Stew

I once went in with a camera in a housing with no film in it. I'd rewound the previous cassette but not replaced it. It was a dive where the boat's dive guide was devoting a dive to modelling for my camera. I hadn't got the heart to tell her so just got on with shooting nothing instead!

I've even gone in with the sodding lens cap still on!....not once but twice! All down to rushing; did I feel stupid

My problems -

Strobes running out of battery (right when I see a beautiful Ornate Ghost Pipe Fish!)

Macro Lens not set to "full"

No card in the camera...

I think that's it... but man all of those things were super frustrating...

Service the system the night before and

take one test shot.

Rushing the set up will eventully produce a flood!

I've done the lens cap thing, and the hot shoe not inserted into the camera properly (interesting electrical errors on the camera, and no strobe firing). I've also screwed the dome port on at a 90 degree angle, putting nice black shutters on the sides of every shot.

The most distressing was leaving the lens in manual focus and getting all these shots I thought were brilliant, only to find out when I downloaded them that it was no good. I agree with okuma - lots of time for setting up, and always take a test shot.

My 'stupid underwater photographer' trick was when I had one strobe that wouldn't fire on a dive. I disconnected/reconnected the optical sync cord, turned the strobe off/on, tried different modes on the strobe and it wouldn't fire. It wasn't until I got back on land that it was noticed that the strobe was not in 'slave' mode. !#%#!!#@!

Yeah, jumped in with the lens cap on. Quick hand back to the Nautilus crew, dry off, twist off the port and snap off the cap and reassemble - had me shooting the mantas again in no time.

Jack

I've even gone in with the sodding lens cap still on!....not once but twice! All down to rushing; did I feel stupid

Oh no!

+1 on the lens cap. Drift diving and my wife was giving me crazy looks since I wasn't shooting anything. Always take that test shot....