Being Digital
Pictures Under Pressure
BY MICHEL GILBERT & DANIELLE ALARY
The HugyCheck enables photographers to
perform a vacuum test on their housing prior to
the dive. It consists of an electrical vacuum pump, one way valve, LED
pressure indicator and a leakage alarm
housings will protect our precious cameras from harm. And most of the time they do. But it’s also true that a flood is but a hair or speck of sand away - literally.
A 50 An ounce of prevention…
The old maxim that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you might reasonably think, originated in underwater photography. In the old days some manufacturers and DIY afi cionados would install a
tire infl ation valve on their housing and raise internal air pressure using a bicycle pump. Once submerged, if bubbles streamed out of the enclosure, they screamed LEAK and prompted the owner to execute an emergency ascent before water ruined the camera.
For years we prayed Neptune to enlighten housing manufacturers that this simple ‘fi x’ was a fairly inexpensive insurance policy. But our pleas fell on deaf ears.
Magazine
n old idea has re-surfaced in a new high-tech format. Investing hard earned money in a camera system and then immersing it in corrosive salt water might be seen by some as a mental disorder. Who in his or her right mind would do that? Well, thousands of us do every day. We plunge in with our dSLRs and compacts, confident, or at least happily optimistic that our underwater
Low tech meets high tech
Then, in 2007, European fabricator Hugy introduced its HugyCheck and the world was never the same. But the pressure diff erential protection concept operated diff erently.
Modern housings tolerate tremendous external water pressure but cannot withstand internal pressure increases as well. Some components like the multiple Plexiglas ‘windows’ for LCD screens, or the lens dome ports, are either pressure-fi tted or glued in place. They can pop out if pushed from the inside. Hugy’s concept is to install a simple valve system,
often fi tted on an existing sync port opening in the housing. This time though, a small air pump sucks air out of the enclosure, creating a partial vacuum that simulates the eff ect of pressure at depth. This way, any increase in internal pressure verifi es the presence of a leak. Mechanical monitoring measuring the vacuum with a simple gauge is one option. The preferred method employs an electronic sensor system coupled with LEDs that fl ash diff erent colours to signal the status of the vacuum in the housing.
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