Todays Lesson: Always Check Your Housing Leash

I haven’t done a post like this in a while, where I explain a mistake or issue I had on a recent shoot that you can learn from, I have definitely still been making mistakes though so I’ll try and dig up the painful memories and do a few more of these soon.

A couple of evenings ago I went for a paddle after work with a few colleagues and naturally I took my camera with me in my housing. It was a leisurely flat water SUP so I just balanced my camera on the deck of my board with the leash attached to the carry handle in the centre, my housing floats so it’s not a problem if it drops in the water anyway.

As I took this sequence the leash was slipping off the grip into the water, ISO 250, 10mm, f4, 1/1000
As I took this sequence of Michael Buxton my housing leash was slipping off the grip into the water, ISO 250, 10mm, f4, 1/1000

During the paddle we stopped off a few times to explore the cliffs and caves and jump off some rocks, naturally I took some photo’s.

Unfortunately I hadn’t checked the leash string that attaches my nice, well designed Aquatech housing leash to my pistol grip, it had become untied at some point during the paddle and I hadn’t noticed, in my rush to get a different angle of a rock jump I neglected to attach it to my wrist and swam into position, it wasn’t until after I got back to my bard that I realised my leash had slipped off the housing and sunk to the bottom.

It wasn’t that deep but I didn’t have a mask with me so despite diving down for a look I couldn’t find the leash on the seabed.

A fisheye lens (in this case my Tokina 10-17mm) can really exaggerate things like caves, it helps when you start with a behemoth of a cave though, I could have lengthened  the shutter speed easily here, basic error after taking action shots earlier, luckily the 70D copes OK with high ISO. ISO 12800, 10mm, f3.5, 1/1000
A fisheye lens (in this case my Tokina 10-17mm) can really exaggerate things like caves, it helps when you start with a behemoth of a cave though, I could have lengthened the shutter speed easily here, basic error after taking action shots earlier, luckily the 70D copes OK with high ISO. ISO 12800, 10mm, f3.5, 1/1000

It’s not the end of the world in this case as I was never going to lose my housing in those conditions, but it serves as a reminder to double check everything before taking the housing out, there’s not been any surf for weeks now in the UK (maybe some tomorrow though) so the housing’s not been looked at for a while, I’ve got a couple of spare leashes that I can use when there’s surf and you can be sure I’ll be double checking everything next time I get the housing ready.


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2 responses to “Todays Lesson: Always Check Your Housing Leash”

  1. Dyfrig Williams Avatar

    Shot down mate! Love that shot with the fish eye though – hell of an effort!

  2. […] Todays Lesson: Always Check Your Housing Leash […]

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