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Those
were the days ...
by
Colin Doeg
Reproduced
from in focus 46.
(Dec.
1992)
Colin
continues his reminiscences of the beginnings
of BSoUP, founded twenty-five years ago.
The
early members of BSoUP used to tactfully describe themselves
as mild eccentrics. This was about the only kindly term that
could be found to describe a group of fiercely independently
minded individuals who, among other things, had highly developed
allergies to organised diving and especially to diving with
other than photographic models or other underwater photographers.
The
amazing thing is that they all got on so well together and
that the organisation they created has both survived and thrived.
Between them they represented a unique storehouse of technical
knowledge and expertise. Most prominent among them - in alphabetic
order and in no way suggesting that even one of them could
ever be described as being the slightest bit unusual in any
way whatsoever - were Tim Glover, Geoff Harwood and Peter
Scoones.
They
were as adept at making housings and installing cameras as
they were at taken good pictures. Indeed, the most successful
photographers in those early days were mainly the ones with
the skills to make their own housings, develop special gizmo's
and also produce superb prints from their darkrooms.
Tim
Glover
Tim
Glover distinguished himself, among other things, for having
the first flashgun flood. Now Tim's flashgun was not one of
your everyday, 1992 flashguns. All the necessary gubbins were
housed in a Perspex tube that, from memory, was about 1ft
or 1ft 6in in diameter and about 2ft long. It needed to be
that size to house all the components because no-one had got
round to miniaturising professional flashguns. The ensemble
was fixed to a Rollei Marine outfit and tucked neatly over
one shoulder when you were taking pictures.
Well,
Tim was down at about 80ft in the Mediterranean when it happened.
He glanced in the housing and saw it was flooding. The ocean
was remorselessly approaching the electronics. As there was
clearly insufficient time to surface before the housing flooded
completely, Tim carefully put the outfit down and finned off
to a respectable distance to watch whatever would transpire.
Geoff joined him and the pair gazed in fascination as the
sea crept up towards the vital components.
What
would happen, they wondered. Would everything explode? Would
they experience an electric shock? Would they survive? They
knew not, because it hadn't happened to anyone before. Almost
as an anticlimax, the components drowned with grace and dignity.
There were no blinding flashes of light or streams of sparks.
The water didn't boil. Blue sparks didn't race around the
sea bed. Indeed, the event was an anti-climax but it was a
good tale for months afterwards.
Geoff
Harwood
Geoff
developed System Harwood - a camera housed in one Perspex
box and looking out through a correction lens with another
box containing a flashgun hinged onto it. Geoff put a small
torch- head in the housing alongside the flashgun so its beam
would show the centre of the area which would be illuminated.
He
filed and ground the correction lens out of living perspex
with nothing more than instinct and flair to guide him ...
plus a bit of trial and error. The result was that he was
able to correct the effect of refraction. That's when the
rays of light bend as they go from air (as in a housing) into
water. It meant that a 50mm or 35 mm lense would 'see' the
same underwater as if it was in air rather than about a third
less.
The
torch meant he could focus his SLR camera on the pool of light.
Then, when he bore down on a subject, he knew it would be
pin sharp when the beam of light fell on it. It was a great
system which worked well and helped Geoff, very deservedly,
to win the title of British Underwater Photographer of the
Year at the Brighton Film Festival.
Peter
Scoones
Peter
Scoones, of course, was a law unto himself. When everyone
else was using 'wet' leads for their flashguns - more of that
in another issue - he fired his gun with a 'dry' lead. Peter's
method was simple. He drilled a hole in the camera housing
and another in the flashgun housing. Then he fed an electric
lead from one to the other, sealing it with laboratory bungs.
Yes, laboratory bungs!
It
worked like a charm for Peter ... you just had to remember
to shove the bungs in a little harder as you went deeper.
However, when he lent the outfit to someone else they managed
to 'drown' everything which, from memory, was a Bronica S2a,
50mm lens and a small flashgun.
Peter
was adept at making housings at a time when the only engineering
facilities he had were the kitchen table and a hand- held
Black and Decker drill. Heaven knows what the Health and Safety
Inspectorate would have thought if they had had existed at
that time, but Peter could mill parts to shape and route out
grooves for O-rings with great precision and accuracy. He
must have had strong arm muscles.
Peter's
housings - as ever - were brilliantly simple and original.
During the very earliest years of BSoUP, for instance, he
was experimenting with putting a Metz hammerhead flashgun
and battery pack into a Perspex 'suitcase' which he could
place in position and fire by means of a slave. To me, that
seems to have been the forerunner to the floating housing
he has devised for his underwater video work which gives him
a freedom of operation unmatched by anyone else's ideas.
Tim,
Geoff and Peter were particularly unselfish in helping other
underwater photographers make housings, etc and they were
the driving force behind the production of the Society's Data
Book. But that will have to wait for another issue.
Reproduced
from 'in focus' 46. Dec. 92 with kind permission of Colin
Doeg. |
