Raw Transcript
pistol grips as I’ve explained are one of the essential parts of a surf water housing so there’s lots of different types here’s is an old Aquatech one for instance shutter button goes in there this is the see frogs see frog salted line pistol grip and this is the liquid I see 6000 pistol grip different ways of achieving the same thing they have various different mechanisms for getting the fact that you pulled that trigger into your camera to let it know to take a photo it’s an electrical connection at some point along the way liquid I use is a cool like magnetic things there’s no actual hole in the in the housing which is cool most of them just use a simple electronic switch usually it’ll be to stage a bit there are such there are such things a one-stage trigger so two-stage means the same as the shutter button on your actual camera so in the same way that on your camera you can half press to focus full press to take the shot unless you change the setting but that’s the default action of that button pistol grips on on camera housings often have exactly the same setup so it’s familiar to you I think if you’ve got a camera you’ll know about that system half press to focus pull it all the way back and it shoots the shot I think the benefits of a pistol grip are fairly obvious you can paddle you can swim rather with one hand that’s the main thing so you swim swim with one hand while you’re shooting you can shoot photos you can hold the camera like that get it really steady especially if it’s up against your your eye you’ve got three points of contact with the camera to keep it steady if you’re shooting usually you’d be shooting with a telephoto lens or and at least like a not fisheye basically the benefits of shooting with a fisheye with one handed are huge you wouldn’t want to shoot a fisheye without it you can it’s possible totally but once you’ve shot with a pistol grip you won’t go back to shoot without one that’s as simple as that I had a few housings before I had my my first DSLR housing with a pistol grip once I had that one I haven’t seen it’s gone used a housing which doesn’t have a pistol grip I might take it off occasionally if I’m shooting video for instance two two side handles are really good for video or even just no pistol grip and holding it like you would your camera I find that helps keep it stable but other than that which is rare for me I shoot with the pistol grip all the time wouldn’t consider buying a water housing which didn’t have one for surf photography so fairly essential each different brand will have a different setup so you’re just gonna have to grab one that you like nine times out of ten it will be one trigger on there there are some Aquatech do one which has two buttons one for focus one for shutter which is quite cool essex water housings did a similar one which had a thumb thumb trigger for the focus and a finger trigger for the shutter which is unusual haven’t seen another one like it but i can’t I think it’d be pretty cool to use there’s other options out there there’s there’s a few designed by Dale Koba touch I think that’s how you say his name I had one of his housings which had a regular pistol grip but it was fantastic housing but he has designed some different styles of housing a pistol clip rather so get a pistol grip if you want to shoot especially wide-angle still photos no-brainer the other thing I want to talk about is leashes and they kind of go hand in hand obviously you can use a leash without a pistol grip but you’re going to want a leash on your housing at some point you touchwood I’ve been pretty lucky and I haven’t had to chuck my housing on purpose ever I have lost grip with it maybe once or twice but generally I’ve generally got a pretty good kung fu grip on my housing whenever I go over the falls or anything like that so what this will do what a leash will do is keep your housing attached to you if you let go of it you definitely want to rely on it but it’s there for emergencies just in case so this is the liquid I won this came with this housing it’s got a little kind of cinch cord there and a nice thick rubber cuff and simple as that as long as it you can reach the buttons on the back with it you don’t want any longer this is the perfect length for a leash for a water housing in my opinion you can certainly get longer ones and there might be a reason perhaps if you’re ambidextrous and you want to shoot left-handed and right-handed in the same session you’re shooting an a-frame or you’re shooting a PT beach break and you want to yeah maybe I remember reading a a really good article about lazy wolf surf photographer on North Shore of Hawaii whoo-hoo bust his hand before winter season in Hawaii which is obviously one of the big times of year that he’s working so he couldn’t use his right hand he learned how to shoot with his left hand and he said he actually made it a lot easier to shoot fish I left hand waves that pipe because he could the further basically when you’re shooting official hollow wave you tend to push the housing out away from you out of the face of the wave you’ll often see this with with photos of surf photographers that on the North Shore for instance you see just the housing poking out and trying to get that that perfect angle while the photographer’s swimming through with one hand pulling out the back of the wave ideally without going over the falls so he found that that was a big advantage so perhaps if you if you wanted to do that and switch up really quick you might need a longer leash but I’d avoid it if you possibly can because the last thing you want is one of these things swinging around on a six-foot long stretchy piece of of leash so if you’ve got a standard bodyboard leash probably not a good idea you’ll see one morning on your bicep I don’t think is that’s the perfect distance for their thing to swing around and bash you in the face so I’d go for a nice sturdy short leash the good news is most surf water housing manufacturers if they don’t provide it with the housing they provide one alongside it you can buy one at the same time so I would go for that option I’ve had an aqua tech one in the past which was really good connect actually make a really good one which for their GoPro accessories which it’s nice and short it’s got a nice cuff but I think there’s I’ve personally picked up a couple of cheap ones a lot like this since getting this housing I’ve realized this is my ideal type of leash so I’ve picked up a couple you can buy them if you do a search for dive torch wrist lanyard something like that you can find these they’re relatively inexpensive you can make your own to be honest they’re rubber tubing some decent nylon string and a little plastic dude ow but buy them for a few few dollars off of Amazon that’s what I do so I’ve got three or four of them as a backup just in case so leash wise that’s what I’d go for keep it simple – it’s short unless you’ve got this particular situation that you need to use a slightly longer one with and that’s that’s pistol grips and leash it