Guideline for your first DSLR underwater housing.

[etoy56]

This guideline will give you some thought and will help you to make the choice of the accessories for your DSLR underwater housing.

Before you start with underwater photography (UWP), you should first focus on diving and learn buoyancy, because good buoyancy is "a must" for an underwater photographer.
UWP is very different as compared to on land photography. Every breathe affects your photo, you should have at least a dive experience with a minimum of 60 dives.

After you get the experience to control your buoyancy, think about your budget for this new hobby. UWP gear especially the DSLR underwater housing and the accessories are not cheap!

For my DSLR cameras I used a Seacam Housing and Seacam accessories, all Seacam Housings are chiselled out from a block of aluminium and therefor they are very expensive but extremely stable..
The housing is a standard used by many of the pros because of it's reliability and superior ergonomics, most Seacam equipment is ordered specifically and a Seacam Housing allows you to use only the one camera model for which the housing is made.

Since I own 3 Seacam Housings, the basic explanation is only on this product, but you can use it for similar products like from Subal, Nexus etc.

Image 1

From the left : Seacam housing for Fuji FinePix S2 Pro & Nikon D200

Image 2

The Underwater housing consists of 2 parts, the rear part (for view finder etc) and the front part (Lens port)
You see here the front panel from inside, in the middle of the front part, you can fix the lens port.

Image 3

The rear panel from inside, in the bottom of the rear panel, you see the flood detector, in case of flooding, the flood alarm will automatically sound very loud and a red LED on top of the rear panel will start blinking.

Before you buy your underwater housing, ask your dealer about what you get for the standard housing, otherwise you have to send your underwater housing to the manufacturer to add new functions like :
- better protecting of the underwater housing in case of accidentally opening the housing during the dive.
- a second strobe socket and determine the strobe socket you will use, if it is a Nikonos V socket or a S6 socket.
- extra front command dial or rear command dial for your camera
- a non interchangeable standard viewfinder or an interchangeable viewfinder

Image 4
[IMGhttp://www.kotagadang.net/clubsnap/2008/uwp/dslrhousing/IMG_0537.jpg[/IMG]
If your underwater housing is well protected, you need 2 fingers at the same time to open the housing, so it is impossible to open it accidentally underwater.

 

[etoy56]

Strobe Socket

Image 5

Two underwater housings each with a second strobe socket.

Image 6

A lot of strobe manufacturers use this Nikonos V as a standard plug.
Nikonos V cable plug has 5 pins.

Image 7

S6 Plug to Nikonos V Plug converter cable.
Some strobe manufacturers use an advanced function with their product, like the Seacam or Subtronic strobe.
The S6 plug has 3 female pins and 3 male pins.

 

[etoy56]

Viewfinder
Some DSLR housing manufacturers have their own view finder.
- Non interchangeable Viewfinder
- Viewfinder Pro
- Swivelling 45º sports viewfinder or
- Sports viewfinder S180

Image 8

On the left, the underwater housing is equipped with a non interchangeable Viewfinder and on the right is an interchangeable Viewfinder Pro.

The non interchangeable Viewfinder and the interchangeable Viefinder Pro are much less in weight, and with a wide port or a fisheye port, a very streamlined housing package.

The Pro viewfinder still offers a very nice view of the focus screen and viewfinder information, not enlarged like the S180 or S45, but still quite adequate for focus and composition on quickly moving subjects and reading viewfinder LED

Image 9

The S180 Sports viewfinder is heavy because it contains a lot of very high quality glass, prisms, and very little air to contribute to better buoyancy .

Image 10

For a landscape or a portrait the Swivelling 45º sports viewfinder can easily be rotated in the water.

Image 11

With the use of the Swivelling 45º sports viewfinder, it is easy to make a "half half" picture from the water surface.
You see here my daughter Susi in Tanjung Karang (Palu, Sulawesi)

 

[etoy56]

Port

For each lens you are using, you need a lens port/dome port.

Image 11

From the left : port for macro lens Nikon AF-S 105mm, 60mm and AF-S 17-35mm

Image 12

If you use a zoom lens, for example the Nikon AF-S 17-35mm, then you need a zoom gear to zoom your lens or a focus gear, if you plan to focus manually.

 

[etoy56]

Small Accessories
I used a lot of small accessories, I will not count them here, but this is a "must have" for me :
Depending on what lens you are using, your DSLR underwater housing will have a positive or negative buoyancy.

The Floatingsystem and weight belt

Image 13

Make your rig more buoyant!
It is not hard to move around underwater with 1 or 2 big strobes, especially if you put a floating system around the strobe arm to get neutral buoyancy

Image 14

Cut the styro foam in 2 or 3 pieces and just try to get the neutral buoyancy.

Image 15

If your housing has a positive buoyancy (your camera goes up to the water surface), use a small "weight belt" attached on the lens port to give the housing a neutral buoyancy.

Image 16

If your housing has a negative buoyancy (your camera goes down like a stone), use a small styro foam or net fishing foam to give your DSLR housing more positive buoyancy.

Image 17

Another possibility to give more buoyancy to your gear is to use a neoprene cover on the strobe (black color)
Seacam housing with a lens port for Nikon wide angle lens AF-S 17-35mm and single strobe (350 Watt) covered with neoprene.

 

[etoy56]

Spiral cable

Image 18

After you jump from the boat, one of the boat crew will hand over your DSLR housing.
Immediately after hand over, attache your spiral cable to the D-Ring of your BCD Jacket, so your DSLR housing is secure now and make a 10 second gear check to make sure that your housing is OK.

After this procedure, you have time to clean your diving mask or just to wait until your buddy gives the OK sign to you!

Image 19

Another possibility to hold the camera on the strobe arm system.

After the dive you will hand over your DSLR housing to the boat crew, normally they will fetch the strobe arm . If the strobe arm is not fixed tightly during the hand over, your strobe arm may become loose and land on your head. This is the reason why I bought the T-Grip.

 

[etoy56]

Emergency rescue system for the underwater housing.

Image 20

Before you lose your expensive equipment in an emergency situation and leave your equipment at the the bottom of the sea, equip your underwater housing with a simple rescue system using a floating system around the strobe arm with a little bit positive buoyancy! Don't add too much of the floating system around the strobe arm otherwise you cannot go down with your camera. In case you are in danger during a
dive, let your camera go and with the positive buoyancy, your camera will go slowly to the surface.

Test the positive buoyancy before the dive, the use of different port and lens will give you a negative or too much positive buoyancy for your camera.

In the future I will try the new Ultralight New Buoyancy arm for my Seacam Strobe.
The new arms are made from 2" diameter tubing in five different lengths allowing you to customize the amount of buoyancy you need for your particular housing and strobes.

To catch the attention of any boat crew, you can attach a dive strobe, switch it on, the blinking strobe in the surface will attract the boat crew in the surrounding.

Image 20b

Or to ensure that your underwater gear can be found, attach a RescueStreamer, it is one of the simplest, yet most effective devices you can use.

Rescue Streamer is a bright orange streamer (6" in. X 25' ft.) it can be seen over a mile away and provides a continuous high visibility signal on land or in water. The way this works is by unfurling the streamer to give you a larger "foot print" from the air. Attach the Rescue Streamer to your underwater housing with built in clip and let it float with your gear. Of course with the Rescue Streamer you can rescue your life too.

 

[etoy56]

T-Grip

Image 21

This is a T-Grip and can be mounted at the top of the housing.

Safety lock

Image 22

On the right picture, safety lock to secure the flash button during the transport/flight.

Point & Shoot arm system
Image 23
For freehanded flashing , it is an easy-to-operate point shooting grip.

Image 24

Every morning "cleaning and checking ceremony" before the dive, Notebook is a Sony VAIO T1 serie, in the middle (in red color) is an Olympus P&S housing for the children.

 

[etoy56]

Image 25

In strong current dive locations I use extra long fins (apnoe fins).
Don't use apnoe fins if you cannot dive very well , otherwise you will damage the corals.

Image 26

I'm with my 2 children and my wife in Tanjung Karang, Palu, Central Sulawesi

If you think this thread is usefull for the underwater photography community, just ask the moderator to sticky this thread, thanks!!

 

[etoy56]

The next part is out of topic!
I dived since 11 years and since 7 years I dived with my wife as an underwater photographer.
The first 3 years experience as an UW photographer it was very frustrating, my pictures were far from OK, it was very disappointing, at that time I never showed my underwater pictures. Now I show my underwater pictures in the office.

I started my UWP with Minolta Dynax 9Xi, Fuji FinePix S2 Pro and the last camera is a Nikon D200, all with Seacam housing and Seacam accessories.
Compared to the analog camera in the past, life time of a DSLR is very short, what happens with your underwater housing if you accidentally flood your digital SLR after 2 or 3 years of diving with it ?
My solution was to buy a second Dynax 9xi or FinePix S2 and D200 one year after I bought the underwater housing, so right now I have always 2 cameras for each underwater housing.

Overseas flight
My wife and our 2 children (17 & 14 year old) dive with me. With Qatar airline from Vienna we can take only 80 Kg luggage for 4 people + 7Kg (and not more) handbag for each of us.
Our 2 Seacam Housings + 3 Seacam Strobes and a lot of accessories (4 Dome ports, 3 pairs of strobe arms, 3 different cable systems with Nikonos-Nikonos TTL Sync Cord, S6-Nikonos TTL Sync Cord and S6-S6 TTL Sync Cord), 2 Hartenberger Flashlight for night dives (very heavy), 4 different LED Flashlight and with 2 Ikelite Housings for the Canon POwershot G7 was packed in 2 Pelican bags and the weight was 35 Kg and they were not handluggage.

The weight of my underwater gear without diving equipment is around 35-37 Kg + 40 Kg of diving equipment (for 4 people), 6-8 KG rescue system, so at least we carry around 120-130 Kg of luggage. After 9/11 it is difficult to carry the underwater photo gear as a handbag, last year we had to pay for 20 kg overweight, it is a lot of money.

In the handbag I put the 3 Nikon DSLR cameras with 6 lenses, 2 Canon Powershot G7 and 2 sonny Digicams, Lenovo X60 s TabletPC with a 2nd. battery and 2 external harddrives.

Obviously we could not manage to pack everything we needed into the allowed 20 kgs, so we had to pay for excess weight. Therefor we will fly Singapore Airlines again next year as we did the last 18 years. It is more expensive than Qatar Airline but as divers we are allowed to take 30 kg per person.

Image 27

One of the luggage for the DSLR underwater housing + accessories.

Depending on the camera I use, I spent around 8.000-10.000 Euro for each system including accessories.

 

[etoy56]

Photo gallery

Image 28

Transparancy shrimps

Image 29

Pygmy seahorse

Image 30

Chromodoris Annae

Image 31

Leaf fish

 

[etoy56]

Image 32

Clown fish

Image 33

Softcoral

Image 34

Softcoral

 

[etoy56]

I'm a satisfied Seacam User and I'm not affiliated with this company, if you need more information about Seacam products:

Seacam distributor in Singapore
ScubaCam Pte Ltd, 89 Short Street, #01-09 Golden Wall Centre, Singapore 188216
http://www.scubacam.com.sg/

Seacam USA
http://www.seacamusa.com/products.shtml

Price lists are in Euro
http://www.seacamusa.com/seacam-prices-nikon.shtml

Seacam Austria
http://www.seacam.com/
Ask Seacam owner Mr Hordosch junior per email, when the Seacam housing for Nikon D3 will be available.
The website is not actual.

Vienna, 04.11.2008
Happy diving and greetings from Vienna, Austria
Subagio Rasidi Kusrini (etoy)

 

[rush.]

ｇｏｏｄ　:thumbsup:

 

[ricleo]

very nice and informative thread!

wonder why no one respond to it in almost an entire year!

 

[daredevil123]

Awesome thread. Thanks for sharing your vast experience and knowledge.

Great pictures! :thumbsup::thumbsup:

This thread should be a sticky.

 

[2evans]

wow, great write up. Thanks for taking the time to put this together!

 

[samvision]

In Singapore, does anyone do rental for diving equipment for 5dmk2? pls pm me. Thanks

 

[howeikwok]

In Singapore, does anyone do rental for diving equipment for 5dmk2? pls pm me. Thanks

Try scubacam, they might have a display housing for rental.

 

[jgshuwei]

Good one! I so wish my whole family can dive together.