Clarke Image Products

Dale Kobitech and the Zen of making underwater housings

Dale Kobitech’s craft is making camera housings...and he is a master craftsman. He has made thousands of housings for every conceivable kind of image capturing device. An avid surfer, Dale has been able to share his experiences through photography. His work has appeared in the major surfing publications, books and even National Geographic. The German Geo magazine will soon be featuring some of Dale’s work in an upcomming issue. Proexchange interviewed Dale in April and found him open and generous with an encyclopedic knowledge of cameras, housings and waves.

BC: Hi Dale, did you get a chance to check out the proexchange sight?
DK: Yeah, the Alan Love/Aqualenz Interview. Alan’s a friend of mine. I used to make his housings.
BC.What kind of new projects you’re working on now?
DK: Well, video housings and movie camera housings....16mm and 35mm. Done alot of stuff for video. That’s a constantly changing market......There’s a few of the 35mm movie cameras, like the Arriflex B or 3C. Surfing and action sports photography. They’re just not filming surfing you know anything pertaining to the water.
BC: I think Dan Merkle uses a 35mm. I think he used a 35 in “Free Ride”.
DK: “Free Ride” was shot in 16 by Bill Delaney. Dan was the water guy.
BC: At the time it came out it was such a mind blowing movie.... “in the tube” shots with all the detail.
DK: Oh yeah..that’s what a high speed movie camera does. It shows the detail. You can’t beat film. Video might be able to reduce editing time. But when you get up to 240 frames a second, which is ten times the rate that movie film is normally shot at, the detail is just awesome. Couple that with a wide angle lens...its like art every time you turn the camera on.
BC: Who are the “all time” masters that influenced you?
DK: In filmmaking? George Greenough.....and that was about it.
BC: Greenough’s techniques really captured those water textures you were just talking about....
DK: Filming inside the barrel looking out. Epic, Epic... Even right now, it’s epic to watch. I haven’t been shooting in the water for the last couple of years because I’ve been working alot, building new gear. Once I get it done, I’m going to be back in the water where I should be.
BC: Do you have a video out of your work?
DK: No I don’t. It’s still the original film.
BC: You ought to think about putting one out...
DK: Yeah, I should. Because I’ve got some really neat stuff. And I’ve got alot of stock footage, stock film of waves and that’s where I’ve done alot of filming. And then some in Mexico and some up north. I’d love to be in the water filming. That’s how I started making housings.... I was tired of telling stories of...”Oh the waves are this good.” and started to make housings and the first one was in 1969. I’ve been making them since then and so its going on thirty one years.
BC: That’s amazing....You’ve been making them all the time...all along?
DK: Yep, got D’s and F’s in high school. Didn’t go to college. Made them all through high school instead of doing my work. I made em for myself anyway before I started making them for other people. It was probably about 1975 when I started making them for other people and then into the eighties and stuff but like in the seventies and eighties I still making them for myself. But I’d make em for myself anyway. Even if there wasn’t a demand for em.
BC : Your housing designs are known for being small and compact.
DK: It depends on how much work you want to put into em. What I’ve actually done with one of my projects for myself is; I took the Canon F1N and ripped the shell off of it, just took the guts out and built the guts inside of an epoxy glass shell. I have a waterproof 35mm camera with a speed finder on it. It’s no camera “in a housing”, it’s just a waterproof camera.

BC: I would think that Canon would be real interested in that design....
DK: I called up Canon when I started out on the project and I talked to somebody there and they pooh-poohed me....and they go, “surfers can’t do that. Who are you?” You know, “What’s your training?....You’re just blowin smoke”. Screw em, I went ahead and did it anyway...and it’s just an epic piece of equipment. With the speedfinder on there......there’s not too many water proof cameras with an action finder which is a real big view finder. And all you have to do is pop the film in a little cartridge-a little access port on one side of the camera.
BC: It sounds to me like you’ve built the proverbial “Better Mousetrap”....
DK: Well, I don’t know if it’s a better mousetrap but it’s pretty neat. There’s always a give and take you know when you build things. It might not be best in some terms but you look at it in a different way it’s better. It’s as small as you can get...
BC: Why don’t you take a picture of it and we’ll put it on the proexchange site and try to sell some...
DK: Those things are so hard to make... I made that for myself and I would have to charge like a ton of money, if I was ever going to do something like that again.
BC: How much?
DK: Oh I mean it would be multiple thousands of dollars.
BC: You never know, maybe some people would be willing to pay it.
DK: I may do that with the EOS 3.
BC: Because bulk IS a big factor in camera housings...the smaller you can get it, the better shots you’re going to get and the less likely you’re going to be to get hurt.
DK: Just a standard good housing a good motor drive housing for the EOS 3 with a 550 EX flash a good solid housing would be better for the “normal” photographer than getting involved with something that’s very small waterproof camera thing.
BC: That’s a good idea though. It must be a work of art.
DK: It IS a work of art, I machined all the controls and I had like 2 or 3 0-rings per control and you could take the thing as deep as you want to go. You could probably go a thousand feet if you want because it’s a convoluted shape. There’s alot of curves to it..and the thing could withstand a ton of pressure. It’s pretty darn neat and nobody’s ever shot a picture of it, or had it publicized or anything like that. It’s just another oddity.... I already have pictures shot of it and I have a slide, I can shoot you up one.
BC: That would be great because I’ve never heard of anything like that. I think it’s a first..
DK: Nikon came out with their EOS something or other, I don’t know what it was called. It was their waterproof camera thing, but the thing was big and bulky. But mine, you hold the thing like you normally would a camera. This thing is 5 frames a second with a big viewfinder. It’s pretty darn neat and it took a long time to build. Almost six months to build it because it was a “shot in the dark” type of thing. Each step had to be thought out before you’d do it, so you don’t waste 2 grand worth of equipment. I bought a brand new F1 and I put it in a vise and I was cutting bolts off and cutting stuff off of it with a hacksaw. And I got down to what I wanted to get down to then I cleaned everything out. It was fun..I should have documented it. But the thing came out pretty good and I’ll send you up a slide of it.
BC: What sets Kobitech housings apart?
DK: There’s many routes to go when you’re building housings...it depends on what your game plan is.. There’s ways to make very strong and lightweight housings. It depends also what you are going to do with them. It may be a diving housing or a surfing housing. Those are two different things. For surfing you’ve got to get the mass down or it’s just harder to get it through a wave. There’s so many different ways of making housings....its up to the designer and builder.
BC: There are differences from designer to designer; Bob Barbour makes his own housings. They looked like little boxes. Real small and compact...
DK: That’s the way I built my housings, to get em as small as possible. And there are certain techniques that you can use to get em that small. I shared that with Alan Love of Aqualenz when he’d come up here from Australia. I showed him how to make em...how I made them. I’ve basically put my whole life into this. It’s pretty neat, I enjoy it.

BC: You’ve definitely made a name for yourself....that’s synonymous with underwater housings.
DK: I shape and glass my own boards too. I make spoons, I ride glass spoons...you know Greenough influenced me in that area. I used to shape foam kneeboards but they got thinner and thinner until finally I dug out all the foam out of em and they just kept on working better and better. I’ll tell you, I love Santa Barbara and I love my spoon.
BC: I always take trips down to Santa Barbara during the winter. I really love that area. I’d sure like to go into the Ranch again. When I used to go in there it was nothing but dirt. I’ve heard that it’s subdivided now and there’s locales and all that happy horse shit.
DK: Somewhat....Nobody owns the ocean though.
BC: That’s really true, but some people feel like they do.... like Santa Cruz has terrible localism.
DK: You go out in the water and you conduct yourself properly and don’t cut anyone off and don’t make a jerk out of yourself....no one is really going to mind. When I showed up one time at Little Drakes and there were 4 trucks on the beach and 4 guys out in the water. So I walked out around the point and it was just epic day. But I drifted into the lineup, but I pull into a couple of barrels. They gave me the respect (ha ha ha).
BC: Surfing ability always commands respect. It sounds like you have that end of it down too..just like Greenough had that end of it down.
DK: I make my own fins. I have a fin sheet and cut it out and shape it and tune it to the board and fin as a unit.
BC: Describe your dream shooting locale..
DK: Filming “in the tube stuff”...Little Drakes is pretty neat...but that’s such a heavily guarded place. There’s so many different waves and different lighting. There’s just tons of spots at different times of the year in different swells. I’ve seen just a plain old beach break in Laguna get as good as it could ever get. But it just depends on the time of year, conditions and the swell.
BC: We don’t get a whole lot in the summer... usually it’s southern hemi...
DK: Oh yeah, south swell....Wedge is...you could wait a lifetime for Wedge to get good, but when it gets good, it’s the eighth wonder of the world. The thing will be five feet high and throw out fifteen feet. And it’s not a normal wave....it’s a man made thing, so you’ve got to give it a little bit of respect. It’s very dangerous. Even though I’ve grown up there, body surfed and filmed there. I still have a nightmare of the place...a monster coming out of the ocean...You’re trying to crawl up the beach and it’s gonna swat you and pull you back down into the water. It’s just a weird thing. It’s a really neat place, I really, really like it.
BC: Do you do a lot of shooting there?
DK: Yeah, I’ve got the best water footage ever. The one still photo I shot of Wedge in the water while listening to stereo in my headphones...I waterproofed a sony walkman. I was listening to Pink Floyd and I shot a picture in the tube looking out at Wedge. It was in the Wave Book. National Geographic bought the picture.
BC: Describe your shooting nightmare?
DK: Huntington Beach......I used to do the water stuff for the OP Pro every year. And I’d go out and shoot 16 in the water. But it’s so shifty on the south side of the pier. It breaks all over the place. It’s just not a place that’s conducive to shooting in the water. It’s a nightmare when you’re given a job to do and you’re supposed to get good footage and it’s breaking all over the place...and then you can’t get close to the surfer because it’s the finals...and there’s alot at stake. I did that for about three or four years and then I bailed on that. A reef break is the ideal thing.
BC: Do you have any advice to those traveling to reefs at the end of the world?
DK: Number one, you need to be self sufficient to go on a trip like that..with your equipment....Know a little bit about electricity. Know a little bit about your water housings...to do your repairs out in the middle of nowhere. Even the camera...If the camera breaks down or something. You need to be able to work on the camera out in the middle of nowhere. Why go on a trip to be gone for three months and your camera breaks or the water housing gets banged on the bottom....you’ll be out of luck for the rest of the trip unless you have your “emergency kit” with you. You bring all kinds of stuff...You bring wire, tape, epoxy...a little fiberglass kit...and then you can basically make it through any eventuality that might come up. So you need to be prepared for the unexpected you know. Also, go with the least amount of gear possible and have your stuff insured if you can do that.
BC: What do you see as “the next level” in photography?
DK: There’s still things to do in water photography. With the advent of the new telephoto lenses with the image stabilization. You could actually put that in a housing. I’m the right person to make the housing (laughing) I’ve built a housing for a 300mm lens before. It was a big thing. It was for a monopod system so a guy could walk it out on a reef. There’s tons of ways to go, it just depends on what you’re shooting....the type of picture you’re going for. When I think of surf photography: I think of being right in there with the person. Actually, I think of wave photography, cause that means more to me. For instance the photo that I shot in ‘78, there’s no one in the picture...and it’s a timeless photo....twenty years from now, it will still be an awesome picture. It’s not dated by anybody.
BC: It just tells the story of the elements themselves..
DK: That’s surf photography to me. There’s many branches...there’s the business end of it, where you’re shooting people doing maneuvers and photos of their team riders. And then there’s the artistic part of it which I have a tendency to shoot more of.... Now if “somebody” is at a spot at the right time, I’ll go ahead and shoot em. But nine times out of ten, for me something that’s really awesome- is the SURF...the wave itself and the environment.... I prefer to shoot that and document that more so than anybody surfing. But, like I said, if somebody pulls in at the right time when you’re there...fine..It’s nice to get a return on your investment.
BC: The guys I know that are making money off of surf photography are making videos. They’re shooting stills primarily for their video covers or ads or to promote themselves.
DK: Well, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. There’s very, very few guys making a living off of surf photography...You’ve got to branch out. You can’t just shoot surfing alone because your not going to make it.
BC: How are you adapting your products to digital media and the Internet?
DK: Well, you’ve got to stay on it...Every couple of months there’s new digital video cameras and new items coming out. There’s just some really interesting things coming up here that definitely lend itself to the water.
BC: Before long you’ll be able to distribute full screen video from the web... It’s very exciting to think about the kind of collaborations that could go on.
DK: Well there’s just so much. As you know, you can get on your computer and spend the rest of your life investigating stuff. There’s just tons of new equipment coming out. I always like building a new piece of equipment, that’s always a challenge. Like a new video camera or something like that. I’m building a housings right now for the Canon XL 1. That’s a big camera and everything, but it’s an awesome challenge and I think I’m going to have an EPIC, EPIC product....and THAT’S going to be my new ace in the hole here.
BC: When you get a picture of it, I can put it on the website too..
DK: Well, I’m going to get you some information on that to you...and I have some photos that I shot of my VRV 900 housing and I’ll get those up to you too.
BC: Thank you Dale.

-PROEXCHANGE/Bill Clarke