Ikelite Underwater Camera Case

Since moving to Florida I have become an amateur underwater photographer/videographer. I've been using a Canon S1 IS camera with the WP-DC20 underwater case. It has been great, but there have been some issues. First, the Canon S1 has some serious zoom capabilities in it. With the fantastic optical 10x zoom and combined 32x zoom, it's way beyond lots of other cameras in terms of zoom. This also means that the camera isn't pocket-sized. So with its underwater casing, it's quite bulky and...BUOYANT!! So, basically I'm pushing a huge very buoyant bubble down each time I dive. That takes extra effort, which I can not spare. Extra effort = extra breath. And being challenged in that area already, it really handicapped me.

Between my astronaut-like 5mm winter wetsuit and my huge camera-bubble, I was missing spearfishing shots and not able to keep up or even get down as far and fast as I wanted.

All this wasn't even on my mind when we decided to purchse the $700 Ikelite underwater housing for our newer and better S3 IS. The S3 has a larger LCD (can't see a thing on the S1 LCD under water) and better burst. Plus, the old S1s keep getting purple streaks in the images, and I'm on my second one now. We figured the Ikelite would also be great because of the huge handles on each side, easy to maneuver.

Boy were we wrong about everything. The Ikelet turned out to be a huge albatross that didn't even work! Yes, that's right, it didn't even work. The buttons didn't line up with my camera's buttons! and the even if they did line up, the were hard to press and very close together, making underwater operation very clunky because I wear gloves under water, as do many divers. The local dive shop up the Keys from which we ordered the monster gave us such a hard time about returning it, too. They took weeks to even figure out what the procedure was, and only the "owner" could talk to us, and he wasn't always there. The employee was nice enough but never seemed to be able to help at all, even though we talked to her so many times she knew us by name. She was just getting her $8 an hour, or whatever, she didn't care. Turned out she was the owner's wife! Care about your business much?

We had to call Ikelite and report how bad the customer service was at this place, and after so many phone calls trying to get the LDS to communicate with Ikelite and vice versa, we finally got our money back, minus a ciminal $50 "stocking fee".

Ikelite sucks!

Conchs are Cool

Conchs, which is what they call the natives in Key West, can do lots of things that regular folks have never even tried. For example, most of them ride scooters. Also, they perform advanced scooter tricks like balancing packages between their feet while driving. Old scooters loaded down with groceries, purchases from K-Mart, or cases of beer. Even grandmas ride scooters, and ladies with dresses on, ladies dressed up for work, of all ages. Sisters ride together, one driving one holding on. Conchs put their pets on scooters, they ride in flip flops and no helmet.

They can park anywhere, they're cool.

They can zip around stuck traffic, that's cool.

The only other place I've been where I've been impressed by scooter culture was Rome, Italy. Since everyone dresses to the nines there, and since traffic congestion is outrageous in the city, you'll see fabulous people on scooters everywhere. Women wear perfect Italian shoes and their clothes flap in the scooter-made wind. They look like angels, only they're wearing lipstick. Italian scooter riders are cool too, but in a more elegant, unattainable way.

Here are some of the amazing objects I've seen on scooters in Key West:

1. fishing poles
2. buckets of bait
3. big dogs
4. parrot on shoulder of driver
5. bulletin board
6. case of beer plus ice
7. an 8-foot long 2x4 from Home Depot

None of the drivers I've seen with these things had any trouble manning the scooters, except one with full bait bucket. He fell off and spilled the bait but that was because he was drunk. That's not cool, but it's funny.