GEAR TESTS: AIRLOCK Vaccum System

ED MEYERS

Cringing at the thought of flooding a housing has me quite interested in vacuum systems. These devices put a negative pressure in the housing, greatly reducing the chances of flooding. Since the 1DC is a pretty expensive camera, the Backscatter AirLock Vacuum System with Manual Valve came in handy. Most days, prepping the camera involved formatting my Delkin 1050 UDMA7 cards, double checking the 1DC battery, and assembling the housing and lights. After assembly, the vacuum system took just a minute to draw down the vacuum to between -5 and -10. After breakfast, the vacuum shows up exactly as I left it. Had the vacuum setting changed, I would have been aware that something was wrong. However, I managed to assemble everything in a leak free manner every day & the vacuum allowed me to concentrate on my work, not worrying about leaks as much. From now on, a negative pressure system like the AirLock will be standard on any dive I make. While no system can guarantee a leak free dive, the reasonable price makes these devices a very inexpensive security blanket!

Just for the record, Ed Meyers is an employee of Canon U.S.A. The opinions are his and not recommendations from Canon Inc. emeyers@cusa.canon.com