The sea life of Cornwall under a magnifying glass
Jeff Goodman introduces a short film by Bill Bowen
I met Bill only a month or so ago. At 77 years old he still dives, and I look forward to seeing some Cornish reef life with him this coming summer. Bill has been diving since his early teenage years, so that must be around 63 years, and in that time he has seen the fantastic advancement in diving equipment and technology. We sat in my kitchen at home with a cup of coffee and talked about the early days of our diving experiences, sharing stories of home made camera housings and lights. Sections of plastic drain pipes always made perfect camera housings and car headlights, although big, were great for underwater lighting. We laughed at the constant repairs we had to make to our homemade wetsuits and then the pure joy when dry suits became available.
Bill still uses his Sony VX700 camera in an Amphibico Buddy housing and although they are now quite dated they still produce good quality images. For a while in the late nineties, I was using the Sony VX1000 and 2000 in a similar Amphibico housing, for BBC TV productions, and the quality was exceptional for the time.
I have always said that you really don’t need expensive, top of the range equipment to make good underwater films. I occasionally find budding underwater camera enthusiasts are far too wound up in the mechanics and technology of the latest equipment on the market and are often in danger of missing out on the simple joy of watching and recording marine wildlife, which is very achievable with even the most basic of cameras.
Of course, top of the range video equipment can and should give superb results, but that’s not the half of it. Good diving skills are essential. Buoyancy control and easy regular breathing will take you close to animals in a relaxed and controlled way. Patience and planning will give you wildlife behavioural sequences that may otherwise elude divers who hurry across reefs in search of something dynamic to film. I watch divers who miss so much wildlife in their hurry to see what’s around the next corner.
With a second coffee in hand, Bill showed me a few short videos he had shot on the local reefs here near Penzance and I had to smile when he told me that for the close ups he simply taped a common old magnifying glass to the front of his housing. I assumed the magnifying glass had quite good optical quality because his video images of the smaller creatures were very good indeed. Really it was no different from more modern cameras and housings utilising dioptres, but this was so simple and effective as well as being removable while underwater.
The moral of all this is, don’t be held back by technology or the lack of it. Invent and adapt. Pursue your limits with what you have available and most important of all, enjoy.
Here’s one of those videos where Bill made use of that magnifying glass:
