Do I need to buy the optional weight kit along with the housing to take my digital...

[Brandon S]

...camera scuba diving? Will I have bouyancy issues with my camera if I just skip the weights and get an underwater casing alone? I have a Canon PowerShot A630 camera I'd like to take diving.

[bcozofu]

i would advise you to keep the weights... better safe than cure!

[buff5200]

Originally Posted by Brandon S

...camera scuba diving? Will I have bouyancy issues with my camera if I just skip the weights and get an underwater casing alone? I have a Canon PowerShot A630 camera I'd like to take diving.

Without knowing what brand housing you bought...

As a rule of thumb, all housings tend to be postive buoyant without extra weight.

You may want to play with the housing in a pool first, and possibly trim the weight to achieve as close as possible to neutral buoyancy.

NOTE: Your housing will have an extra 3% buoyancy in sea water as opposed to fresh water.

i.e.- you have a camera/housing assembly that weighs about 30lb above water. You trim the weight for exact neutral buoyancy in fresh water. When
the housing is in salt water, it will have about 1lb positive buoyancy.

For my camera housings, I trim the housings built in weights to fresh water neutral, then keep a small extra piece of lead that gives me neutral buoyancy in salt water.