Housing Design

In my search for a new housing system I have been asking myself a few questions about digital housings. Appears to me that current offerings for digital SLRs are just mods to film housings. I realize that with the small market and expensive retooling costs, major changes are cost prohibitive. Does anyone think these would be viable "wants" for a camera housing:

1. Body independant: L&M is inching towards this with USB control. Couldn't someone design what would be essentially a box that would accomodate a variety of bodies with interchangeable spacers to places bodies in corrdect position for the port? HWile buttons are different on bodies, what we want the camera to do is the same no matter the body.

2. Why do you need to open the housing on a regular basis? Film required opening the body, digitial does not. Could either have prots for download and charging on the body or connect small cables to said ports on camera and clip inside for connection later. Just seal the body with screws or similar and you only need to open for maintenance etc.

3. Come up with a standard port system!! A fantasy I know but I can dream.

I'm sure there are more, just a start.

Good suggestions, but number 1 and 3 will never happen due to economic reasons. If you needed only one housing or one set of ports for the rest of your life, many housing companies would go out of business.

Number two is interesting and would be relatively easy to incorporate if the manufacturers added a connection similar to the strobe connection, which would be closed during the dive and only be openned for download/charge. But you would still have to open the housing to change your lenses.

Today's housing do seem like their film counterpart mainly because the physical camera design (DSLR) has not changed an awfull lot compared to the latest film camera to be housed (mainly N90s and F5) and more important you still need to access vitals feature like lenses, cards (formely known as film) and batteries. It's still faster to swap a 2 gig card and a battery than to wait for one to recharge or a download from a 2 ig card to a laptop or portable drive, so it make sense for the user to be able to easely access both so as to swap them quickly and proceed to the next dive all freshened up.

A generic fit all box would be quite bulky and of low performance, not to mention quite unlikely to be productive, given the complex controls on todays camera and their always changing operating software.

On a practical note most camera's batteries have to be removed from the camera to be recharged, and again altought the idea sound good, I definetly prefer to swap batery and card in 2 minutes than to expose my laptop to the sea elements for 15 to 30 minutes on a rocking boat :glare:

A standard system for port is a great idea in theory, but ask Canon if they would change their mount for a Nikon mount and vice versa.! the same goes for the housing manufacturer. The next best thing are adapter, (some are available at the moment from different source).

When I first got into digitial imaging underwater I used to daydream about the "ideal" system if money and engineering were no object. Then I would compare how close the commercial agree. High on my list was to eliminate as many of the orings and feedthroughs as possible since these are clearly the weak links with respect to maintenace and failures.

My ideal system would be quite exotic. I would eliminate all of the electrical and mechanical feedthroughs and replace them with fiberoptics which would transmit through an optical port. I would pipe power in through an inductive paddle and slurp data out through either WiFi or fiber. I would replace the focus and zoom gears with shaft encoders that sent digital signals to ultrasonic ring motors. At that point the only reason to get into the box would be to change lenses and ports. If money were no object, I would simply seal these in as well and have separate cameras for each type of photography. My hermetically sealed camera would be nigh to indestructible. This is clearly not practical for mere mortals, but I think the exercise of "daydreaming" is important. It frees you up to think creatively, even if real systems never quite match the ideal, it gives a clear direction for future development.

Of course in reality my needs are much more modest. I like my Aquatica setup, but I would be happy if I could get a port lock and some sort of balance kit so it isn't so damn top heavy. I am also waiting impatiently for the long promised magnified viewfinder. Oh and a more robust sync cord system would be nice.

However I agree with Viz'art that cameras vary too much in form factor for a universal housing to be practical. However my mythical system would be much easier to adapt to each generation of camera since you wouldn't have to worry about all of the mechanical linkages. It would also potentially offer better ergonomics since the buttons on the housing would not be tied to the physical locations on the camera. On my 5D for example many of the buttons on the top are very awkward to activate.

I call it the hammer and the nail, simple uncomplicated physic at its most naive level, action = reaction, press a lever get a reaction, the main reason, I suspect, that most manufacturer stick to the knob and lever technology is reliabillity, it pretty damm hard to put these simple controls out of commision, but even if, for instance, one was to bang one of the control out of commision (provided he or she as not fl__ded the housing in the process ) the rest should work and/or be repearable somewhat easely even in the field, get a short or malfunction in an electronically interfaced housing and it shuts down, not even replacing the camera inside (as in a fl__ded situation) could get you up and running. I guess my point is , given the fact most of our diving is done in quite remote location (and costing substantial amount of $$$ ) i'm more prone to go the rugged and dependable way (not meaning rustic and antiquated), I embrace technology, my camera bag (and signature below) will attest to that, but when push come to shove I can swap camera body in a minute, today's camera are small and easy to carry as back up, carriyng a second or (in my case) third housing is just beyond many people's finances and commitment.

But, even if in the end the optical fiber controled housed sound cool, I still would want to swap card in a few minute than wait the eternity of the download, and unless I can manage to squeeze my Dodge Caravan battery inside my housing, I would still want the possibility to swap the battery also. Remember, all we want at the end of the trip are pictures (good one if possible ) and I think today's crop of housings, wheter they are from this continent, Europe or Asia as done a good job of tending to the need of our community. you know, in the end we are pressured into switching to new gear even if we barely had time to master the one we just acquired, I tend to bleed my gear to death, then sell it for whatever I can get that's decent, Modest equipment that is well known is worth thousand of dollars of uncertainity.

Just take the job of prepping the O-rings and maintenance (so you wont have to change so fast ) at heart and life (and the trip) will be nicer.