AC wrote this about his camera and making the film in his book, “Picturing Miracles of Plant and Animal Life.”
“The equipment necessary for undersea photography is water-tight metal boxes for each camera with optical glass windows and outside controls to focus and operate the cameras. If machine-shop made to you own plans, they will cost from $125 to $300 each, depending on the size and design, or they may be made in your own shop, at less outlay, but with more work. For yourself you will require a helmet costing from $40 to $100. I have seen a school boy (this was my Dad!) make one out of a water boiler that worked well, although not advisable. Then an air pump that costs, with 100' of hose, about $100. This may also be made in a high school machine shop. With an outfit like this and plenty of confidence, you can do down as far as 30 feet in safety.”
He goes on to describe in detail the step by step process of making your own gear. The narrative continues until, there you are, confronting the fish in Pago-Pago!
“Fish were everywhere, swimming all around me, peeking into the window of my helmet, wondering perhaps what sort of new kind of fish I was. They were very tame, I could almost touch them, all colors – blue, yellow, black, red, even the delicate orchid and darker shades and so many combinations it was impossible to describe them. The larger fish were timid and I seldom saw them closer than twenty feet. There were many blue star fish, great colonies of anemones fastened to the coral and rocks. They were wonderfully beautiful, many of them red, pink, rose and yellow, some pure white in fact: the colors under sea were beyond the power of brush, camera or eye to describe. The coral was a combination of colors – the growing tips of each branch of the living, growing stone-forest was like a closely knit land-tree or shrub with pink, blue and red blossoms and buds almost covering it.”
Back in San Francisco he began to write the lecture he would then give across the country titled, “Life in and Under the South Seas.”
While there he also took a series of photos of the people he came to know and the world as it was for them.
Article in Popular Science - 1930
