Housing retailers?

[Mike Ward]

My experiences:

Retailers - I've bought from Cameras Underwater and chatted at length with Ocean Optics, on the phone and in their shops. I think the advice you get and the back-up from each is much the same, but CU seem to have more staff and they don't all know their ranges in detail so you have to speak to someone who does. Apart from that, no diff between 'em in my experience.

Housings - I went Ikelite because of the cost, getting a good deal at LIDS last year on housing and ports for my Canon 350D. I spent a great deal of the show walking around and playing with the various housings, comparing Hugyfot and Sea&Sea vs Ikelite - Subal weren't there or I didn't find them. Ultimately I couldn't see what the extra cost of Hugy/Sea&Sea/Subal delivered. I haven't been disappointed.

I've heard people talk a lot about ergonomics but my experience is you get used to using what you have and anything different is different. My issues with the 350D/Ike combo are driven more by the 350D than the housing (It has only one command dial so is long-winded to use in manual if I want to alter aperture and shutter speed).

On the plus side, Ike housings are robust, offer full TTL flash with their own guns and are half the price or less of 'owt else on the market. Mine now has over 120 dives and hasn't a mark on it (Unlike my shadeless fisheye port, but that's my fault for not being careful enough underwater).

On my last liveaboard there was a guest with a Subal/D70 outfit. Out of the water it was near enough the same size and weight as my Ike rig, but a LOT sexier and curvier. As he had a fisheye fitted as well I had a look through it, view was also near as dammit the same as mine, though I understand Subal do a super-duper viewfinder magnifier (For about an extra £1k I think!) that would make it a lot better than mine. Controls didn't seem to be any better placed or easier to reach than on my housing, but bear in mind it was both a strange camera to me as well as a strange housing. If I'd gone with it I'd probably be perfectly happy and telling you to buy Subal.

Flash cables are the bane of all housed camers, and they have been ever since they were invented. The solution is to buy a pair of cables, use one and keep the other as a spare for when the first breaks, as it will. Usually the wires inside the cables break at stress points where they bend. Ike cables can be rebuilt, you need a soldering iron but it isn't a difficult job, just chop out the broken bit and remake the various connections.

When you go for strobes make sure they're compatible with your housing, and go for new digital guns if you want TTL metering and your housing offers it. Budget anywhere between £600 and £2000 extra for flashguns, unless you go the eBay route, when you can get a pair of usable strobes for £150ish, just don't expect TTL or much by way of adjustability. Arms for them, and the cable, will add anything upto another £300 to £500 to your spend. All this extra spend was another reason I went with Ikelite - the money saved on the housing was intended to allow me to upgrade to a better pair of strobes, but life intervened...... I still use my old non-digital strobes and am quite happy.

Finally, work out lens and port costs as well. Ike sell a range of ports, the others sell a more restricted number of ports and use extension rings of different lengths to attach them to the housing and cater for different lenses. Ikelite ports have a maximum internal diameter less than some other brands and that stops you using some lenses with Ike you can use with other brands. The ike system also means you need to carry multiple ports, as oposed to a single port and multiple extension rings - this can make packing for overseas trips more awkward, but again, multiple Ike ports will probably work out cheaper than the single port and extension rings system. Optically there won't be anything in it as long as the lens matches the port...something of a black art!

As a starter, the Canon kit lens can be housed and will give you a good basic underwater lens to learn to use the outfit. Then add a true wide-angle and macro later to complete a decent outfit.

Hope this helps!

[Tazzie]

Wow some really fantastic information there, thank you very much for going into so much detail.

I've just come back from cameras underwater who were fantastically helpful and it's interesting that you say when comparing like to like at the show that you couldn't see the cost justification. A Ikelite camera housing, two ports (one macro one wide angle) and the leads will cost me around £1450, that seems to be the price for the other manufacturers' bodies alone.

What did really surprise me was the weight of the Ikelite housing, they unfortuantely didn't have any other make's housings for me to compare but reckon they are all much of a muchness, going to certainly mean less clothes when travelling now :unfair:

I did have one big surprise...

I was told not many of the housings actually cater for the TTL apart from Ikelite is that right? Unfortuantely the strobes I have (Sea and sea) wnt work TTL with the Ikelite anyway but I'd have thought thay would with a Sea and Sea one, can anyone help me on that?

Also, just how important is TTL? Am I compromising by not having it if i go for the Ike housing with my current strobe set up?

Once again many thanks, I'll be following through the links this weekend Most appreciated

[John N]

Originally Posted by Tazzie

I was told not many of the housings actually cater for the TTL apart from Ikelite is that right? Unfortuantely the strobes I have (Sea and sea) wnt work TTL with the Ikelite anyway but I'd have thought thay would with a Sea and Sea one, can anyone help me on that?

Also, just how important is TTL? Am I compromising by not having it if i go for the Ike housing with my current strobe set up?

It's true, Ikelite are the only manufacturer to offer TTL as standard as far as I can see. There are other 'automatic' ways of doing it - by putting a sensor near the camera flash which then fires the strobe for instance. Not sure if that works with the SLR 'flip-up' type built in flashes though.

I've found TTL to work very well with my Olympus 5050. It's not perfect and you will often hear warnings of silver fish being over-exposed due to them being very reflective. I've never had any problems though.

A lot of people do manage without TTL. With the Nikonos system, I was told to set the strobes to 1/4 or 1/2 power. You then vary the exposure by distance to the subject, shutter speed, aperture and with digital now, ISO.
If you want to use your current strobes, hopefully they have manual power settings to let you do that.

It looks like sea&sea do offer a ttl option on their housings, but at a cost.
Sea & Sea TTL Converter 50106 for Sea & Sea Housings for Canon Cameras

It's just another factor in your particular equation. If it's cost effective compared to the other options, you might want to try using your strobes manually with an Ikelite housing and if it doesn't work, selling them and getting a DS-125 (or two!).

[Mike Ward]

The problem with TTL for strobes is that the camera makers have changed the way their cameras control the output of the strobes. Back in't olden days TTL worked by using sensors positioned to measure the amount of light reflected back off the film during the exposure, and every camera on the market used the same basic protocol to determine correct exposure, including SLRs and the Nikonos and Sea&Sea film cameras.

Digital sensors don't reflect back light in the same way and this doesn't work, so the makers set-up their cameras to fire a small pre-flash, which is used by the camera to calculate the full flash required for a correct exposure, and then fire the main flash at the calculated value. This works because the pre-flash occurs whilst the SLR mirror is still down and the main exposure meter sensor can be used.

From the point of view of the underwater photographer, the problem is that every maker uses a different protocol to match cameras to strobes, and the housing makers have to decode this by reverse engineering so that they can make strobes work TTL. Ikelite do this and match the camera controls to their range of flashguns only. I believe Sea&Sea have just started to offer a TTL converter so their housings can control their strobes TTL, and I also think Matthias Heinrichs makes conversion modlues that can be fitted to other makes of housings to give TTL with suitable guns*. Their respective websites should tell you more.

*Suitable strobes means relatively modern units that are capable of the pre-flash necessary for TTL control to work.

The good news, sort of, is that with the instant review screen and the histogram getting good flash exposure isn't that difficult without TTL. Anyway, many photographers never used TTL for ultra-wide angle work where they were balancing foreground strobe and background ambient illumination. My own strobes are old non-digital units with just two manual powers, but they work fine. So well that when my last pair died of old age after 15 years use I replaced 'em with a pair off ebay. They go int he water next week for the first time, so fingers crossed. They cost me £200 including postage, four Ike ports and a housing for the Nikon F90 plus assorted arms and cables, a price I'm happy with.

So - you need to check with the makers about strobe compatibility, but no TTL isn't the end of the world.

All my personal opinions, of course! The guy witht he Subal I mentioned in my earlier post was not happy to have lost TTL strobe control when he went digital.

And finally the weight thing - much of a muchness.

[Tim Ingmire]

Lots of really good info here. One other thing to bear in mind when looking at housings is access to post sales back up especially if you need a service of some type. On this front the support that Ike gives is meant to be excellent - but then I also see stories that suggest they get a lot of practice! That may just be a reflection of the numbers of units they sell tho.

When pricing up the housing take the whole system into account and cost that up. What kind of photography are you after? Spec up a system that meets your needs and cost it. Once you've factored everything in, a cost of a couple of hundred pounds really isn't that much.

Make sure that the housing gives access to all the camera functions that you want - eg some housings do not have a lens release switch; not a problem if you only shoot with one lens - a PITA if you change lenses regularly between dives.

As for TTL, personally, I wouldn't worry about this at all.

Remember, the housing isn't taking the pictures, you are. No housing will allow you to take better pictures than the next guy with a different housing.

[Tazzie]

Once again thank you all... I've finally been pointed in the right drection for the new sea and sea housing and see that it does do TTL which is a bit of a result (given that I've spent all day learning about TTL!) with my sea and sea strobes!!

All that's left to do is see if it fits my hands!!

Really useful info including loads more than I originally asked for - thank you

(Sorry I can't green you guys again! )

[BJ]

oohh...and shoot in RAW mode so that you can change nearly every camera setting on each shot once you are out of the water!