Seatool D200 Housing - Any first hand experience?

Look how small this rig is!

http://www.reefphoto.com/index.php?main_pa...ceecf7d98194490

Looks very cool. Anyone actually used one underwater. Thoughts?

I'm not sure it's for sale yet David. I'd love to hear from anyone that may have gotten a sneak peek though!

Cheers

James

I'm not sure it's for sale yet David.

Ah. my bad. In that case I'd love to hear from anyone familiar with other Seatool products. They're new to my radar. I'd like to finally upgrade to a D200 housing in the next 6 months. This one looks like a contender. I do a fair amount of shorediving here in Northern California. It'd be great to have housing that doesn't feel like a boat anchor tethered to my BC.

Actually, we have a young lady coming to our Digital UW Photo Workshop next week with a SeaTool housing for the Canon Rebel 400 XTi from Ryan at Reef Photo. Am really looking forward to seeing this housing firsthand!

Tom Stack

http://www.tomstackphoto.com

Yeah, the Seatool housings are nice so I'd expect the D200 setup to be good too. I saw the 400D Seatool w/ optical connection to the Z240 and it was awesome for TTL macro.

Cheers

James

Seatool SLR housings are brand new, but they show incredible promise. Right now there are a half a dozen prototypes being dived worldwide with both S5 Pro and D200 Cameras. Production units will be available in September, with revisions from the test divers incorporated. Seatool started as a rapid prototyping company, so they can quickly incorporate design revisions.

I'm so excited to have a vendor that is trying new ways of designing housings! The Seatool D200 will be the smallest and lightest housing available for this camera. If you grip the housing with your right hand, the ergonomics are excellent (that red thing on the grip controls f-stop), but the housing isn't as well suited to a hand on the right handle as Subal, Sea & Sea, etc. I'm not sure how ergonomics w/ thick gloves will work out.

S-TTL with Inon strobes is so accurate it is scary! The more I play with them the more I'm convinced optical connectors are the future... The d200 is also available w/ Nikonos connectors to support legacy systems.

I've dived my prototype d200 housing 3 days, and am funneling all the feedback to Seatool that I can.

Right now the port chart is pretty limited (Nikon 10.5, Tokina 10-17, Nikon 16, Nikon 60, Nikon 105VR), but Seatool is ironing out a roadmap now, and I expect more comprehensive support.

Thanks for the helpful response Ryan. I look forward to hearing more over the months to come.

Is there a suggested retail price yet?

This will be dependant upon viewfinder options, and flash connectors, but I expect a housing w/ optical connectors & a pickup finder to be about $2800.

Wow, thumbs up to Kenji Ohmura and his crew at Seatool. That is indeed a sweet housing!

That is TINY compared to my friend's Aquatica D200 housing.

Ryan, can you explain how the optical connection is setup inside the Seatool housing? I presume the optical cable doesn't actually penetrate fully into the housing interior or does it? Is there some internal glass or plastic that reflects the internal flash to the fiber optic cable? I didn't get to ask Ohmura-san about this in detail when I got a chance to look at his 400D (Xti) housing in Bangkok.

There is a clear bulkhead through the metal that the light passes through. Optical cables are retained on the other side with this friction fit connector.

I talked to someone at Backscatter and they implied that the housing was quite heavy compared to other D200 housing. I found that strange given the size. I was on the phone ordering batteries. She may have been confused as to what housing I was refering to.

The smaller the housing the less water displaced and the greater the in-water weight. If a housing is going to be very small, it needs to have a very small out-of-water weight (obviously the camera weight is a constant) or it will be hard to manage underwater.

W/ that said I haven't heard any complaints about the Xti housing.

Cheers

James

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

Ryan, are you bringing one of these Demo's to Bonaire in December????