Clare Gledhill (Online)

As it says on the tin - but 60 metre rated please - I've jammed the buttons on mine a few too many times.

Any for sale - or any suggestions for a good set up?

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limeyx(Offline)

I have a "non-suggestion" don't get a mechanical housing.
I made the mistake of buying an Ikelite for my Nikon coolpix and what a pain in the arse.

I should have sprung for the Light & Motion or other electronic controlled one instead.

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A-M (Online)

Hi Claire,

I use a Nikon D70 with Ikelite housing (rated till 60m but proven till 80 :-))
In cave-environment I have 2 strobes mounted on the housing (DS125 and Inon D2000) and one on the doubles of my buddy (ikelite 200-400) for backlight. For wrecks and/or fish I use the DS only.
If you want the housing to go deeper there are numbers of other brands available. The most important is you pick a camera you like and then look if there is a housing available.
For wide-angle I normaly use a 12-24 or 10-20 lense.
If you want any more info or pics, mail me.

A-M

true(Offline)

I'm very pleased with my L&M housing for the Nikon D100.

-anthony

Phil O(Offline)

Excuse my ignorance - could you explain the difference between a mechanical housing and an electronic controlled one.

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Phil

GLOC (Online)

I had this with my OLy5050 while I was in Scapa and was a bit p*ssed off with myself because most of the problems were because I did not soak the housing in warm water after each dive but let the salt water dry out. This causes problems with the buttons not running freely and sticking in the 'in' position.

Prices wise you are talking about some serious money. In January when I was looking at putting my S2 into a housing, the housing was going to be around £1500, the ports are £200-400 each, lights are approx £250-500 each, arms another £100-200 each and the body will be somewhere around £600-1000, plus lenses...I ended buying the Oly5050 for £450 inc Wide Angle Adaptor!!

The other thing I realised that even though I was competent with a camera on dry land, the ports and lens make things somewhat more difficult underwater and it is nowhere near as simple as on dry land.

If you are going to 60m then having 2 stages, and a big SLR rig is going to be a right laugh, especially with strobes! If you want atmospheric shots you obviously won't need the strobes.

Personally I would recommend getting something like an Oly5050/8080 (or something with an f1.8 lens) and a wide angle adaptor and get sorted with that doing stills rather than jumping in (no pun intended) with an SLR.

Just my $0.02

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Gareth

Images of Life Photography
DIR
Team Foxturd
Travels Underwater and Further Afar

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EBT(Offline)

Mechanicals basically have push rods etc that directly twiddle (techy term, comes in "camera 3") the controls. Electronic ones use LANC (typically) to transmit the signal from housing mounting switches (usually piezo).

/Z

limeyx(Offline)

Right. for mechanical, imagine a level/dial/rod for *every* button on the camera poking through the housing, each with its own set of O-rings. Some turn/twist, some pull/push, some seem to do nothing at all (when they don't quite reach the camera body in my case).

Bit of a pain in the rear end if you ask me.

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MarkT(Offline)

A lot of the cheaper mechanicals are limited to 40m and although the o-ring seals will often work quite happily a lot deeper, the buttons tend to get compressed by the excess pressure and can get jammed hence I presume Clare's request for a 60m rating.

David Martin(Offline)

Clare,

Having gone down a similar thought process last year I decided that an Ikelite set-up was the only 60m housing in my price bracket. I've got the Olympus 7070 + Ikelite housing & wide-angle port. I figured that I might as well spend more on a reasonable camera/housing and get the strobes later, rather than spread the budget to more items at the beginning.

I haven't done that many deep dives with it, since I don't yet have strobes for it - which does kind of limit its use at 60m in the UK, even for "atmospheric shots". If you had access to video lights it might be a workable solution.

I haven't noticed any issue with the buttons sticking, and whilst having controls for some of the items is a little unneccessary.

David