Personal Rinse Bucket

Personal Rinse Bucket

Sep 17

How many times have you come up from a dive and gone over to rinse your camera in the rinse bucket, only to find it full of other cameras?  Probably more than a few, I would imagine.  Somewhere along the way, the “rinse” bucket became the “soak” bucket.  And that totally “soaks,” if you ask me.

Rinsing your camera housing after a dive is an important step in housing maintenance, with the key being not to let any salt water dry on the housing.  But letting the housing soak for the entire surface interval is a bit much.  With so many cameras, and such little access to a rinse bucket, I decided to purchase a durable, soft-sided cooler bag from Bluewater Photo.  Not only does this cooler bag keep my dSLR housing and strobes protected on the boat (and while traveling), I can add some fresh water to it and have my own personal rinse bucket.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve been on a boat when someone pulled their rig out a rinse bucket after a “soak” and saw that it was flooded and/or damaged (usually the damage is a dome port scratch).  Having more than one rig (small or large) in a rinse bucket at a time is an invitation for trouble.  Obviously no one is out to cause damage on purpose, but more than two in a bucket is definitely a crowd.

Personally, I never leave my dome port uncovered, never leave my rig unattended in a “community” rinse bucket, and never hop on a boat without my Bluewater Photo cooler bag.  Besides, when you’re not diving, it is, in fact, a fantastic cooler!