Canon 40D in an Ikelite housing

Aloha All,

I think I may be one of the first to take a Canon 40D underwater in an Ikelite housing. I've just had one dive so far...but the live-view is already shown itself to be a very useful tool. At depth it looks like it needs a red filter...but simply for holding the camera out in front at arms length and being able to frame a composition accurately is a dream come true. My idea of mounting a Seacam or Aquatica viewfinder to my housing are all but gone now. I'll post some images in the near future...but for now...this is a great camera/housing combination.

David Fleetham

david@davidfleetham.com

http://www.davidfleetham.com

Aloha All,

 

I think I may be one of the first to take a Canon 40D underwater in an Ikelite housing. I've just had one dive so far...but the live-view is already shown itself to be a very useful tool. At depth it looks like it needs a red filter...but simply for holding the camera out in front at arms length and being able to frame a composition accurately is a dream come true. My idea of mounting a Seacam or Aquatica viewfinder to my housing are all but gone now. I'll post some images in the near future...but for now...this is a great camera/housing combination.

 

David Fleetham

david@davidfleetham.com

http://www.davidfleetham.com

Hi!

Rui from Portugal here, just registered, first post.

I actually have the same setup.

I tried it on a dive this Sunday. Unfortunately my results were not as successful as yours. My housing had a small leak, which I believe has something to do with the seal between the dome port and the dome body.

I was using the 8’’ dome and the #5510.24 extension, and, after a couple of minutes, I noticed a small amount of water in the dome. Luckily it was very little water and it did not reach the inside of the housing itself, the lens (a sigma 17-70) or the camera.

I aborted the dive and no harm came of it, but it was scary. After I took everything apart, I could find no damage to any of the o-rings. I’m hoping it was an one-off deal and won’t happen again.

Since I’m a newbie to the dlsr game, I would welcome any suggestions from anybody that has experienced a similar mishap. Today I’m taking the housing, the two dome extensions and the flat port to the pool to test everything out again.

Also I would like to apologise to Fleetham for hijacking his post and wish him the best of luck with the new toy.

I tried it on a dive this Sunday. Unfortunately my results were not as successful as yours. My housing had a small leak, which I believe has something to do with the seal between the dome port and the dome body.

 

I was using the 8’’ dome and the #5510.24 extension, and, after a couple of minutes, I noticed a small amount of water in the dome. Luckily it was very little water and it did not reach the inside of the housing itself, the lens (a sigma 17-70) or the camera.

I have gone through the same kind of small flood with an Ike housing and the 8" dome port. In my case the problem was that the low profile latches used with the dome were not tightened enough. You need to tighen the screws until the port is not allowed to move more than about 1mm at the edges. If the port is allowed to move more than that, there's a position in which the o-ring is not sealing the port correctly and allows water to enter.

Check this out before the pool tests, and then try to move (not rotate) the port underwater to make sure it seals properly.

I have gone through the same kind of small flood with an Ike housing and the 8" dome port. In my case the problem was that the low profile latches used with the dome were not tightened enough. You need to tighen the screws until the port is not allowed to move more than about 1mm at the edges. If the port is allowed to move more than that, there's a position in which the o-ring is not sealing the port correctly and allows water to enter.

 

Check this out before the pool tests, and then try to move (not rotate) the port underwater to make sure it seals properly.

Thanks LyN, that sounds reasonable. Hopefully it will fix the problem.

I'll try it tonight and report back with the results.

Hi David and Welcome to Wetpixel! Glad to hear your report on the 40D underwater. I've been trying to hold off on getting one of these....grr....

James

Hi David,

It's Todd.

Good to hear of it getting out as I too have been holding onto my 20D but am really tempted to make the move. I wanted to hear to feedback on use and you are the first. I like the idea of the live view for some shark and dolphin action too. Hope to hook up with you again for some dives sometime.

Cheers

Todd

Aloha All,

 

I think I may be one of the first to take a Canon 40D underwater in an Ikelite housing. I've just had one dive so far...but the live-view is already shown itself to be a very useful tool. At depth it looks like it needs a red filter...but simply for holding the camera out in front at arms length and being able to frame a composition accurately is a dream come true. My idea of mounting a Seacam or Aquatica viewfinder to my housing are all but gone now. I'll post some images in the near future...but for now...this is a great camera/housing combination.

 

David Fleetham

david@davidfleetham.com

http://www.davidfleetham.com

Hi David

I was interested in your observations. I have the 40D and have been shooting it extensively topside but I have to patiently wait for the Subal housing to become available to go underwater.

I dont personally have much use for Live View but I have played around with it a bit. It seems to me that if you use autofocus with live view it is rather sluggish and unreliable. Did you use AF or MF underwater? I can see that live view could potentially be useful for a shark feed, say, where you use a wide angle lens with a very large depth of field and shoot in MF but I wonder if you found any other useful application for live view?

I am also curious to see if the highlight tone priority setting will be usefull underwater. I have tried to simulate underwater conditions by photographing a dark tree into the sun and it does seem to help sensor blooming a bit. It may just be usefull to minimise the odd strobe blowout. It doesnt seem to have any detrimental effects anyway. Have you tried it UW?

The other cool feature about the 40D is the ability to store three sets of user preferences which will be great for UW shooting.

It will be nice to hear how you are getting along with your 40D and post some pictures sometime!

Thanks, Andre

I've been slowly warming to the highlight tone priority feature of my 40D topside, especially if you play around with the RAW file in say Photoshop CS3 where the recovery tool seems to do a better job of recovering details from blowouts.

Hi Guys,

I played with the 40D live view yesterday as my friend let me try his.

It seems like it may be useful for some types of shooting. Firstly, let me say that I'm a big fan of big bright through the lens viewfinders :-) However, here are my thoughts on Canon's implementation of live view on the 40D

OK, so you press the Set button to start live view. When it's active the mirror is flipped up so the autofocus is not active. You can activate auto-focus by pressing the AF-On button and it will get focus lock, then the mirror will flip back up and the a live view will show on the screen on the back.

So - I can see this as being very useful for WA shooters that use the "* for focus lock - focus on fin for normal WA, focus on hand for CFWA" method. Like Todd says, it would be good for swimming w/ dolphins or sharks.

For macro, I can see it being somewhat useful as you can use the AF-ON button sort of like the * button. I.E. get a focus lock on something in the same plane as your subject or at the distance you want, then bring up the live view and move the housing in and out. If you want to, you can magnify the live view so that you blow up the center of the field of view - that might help for critical focus.

Cheers

James