Questions for Sea&Sea

Hello Sea&Sea,

Nice to see someone from your company posting on Wetpixel.

Your latest housings look great and I was wondering why Sea&sea does not appear to be building DSLR housing going forward that take advantage of the use of fiber optics even though your strobes seem to be fiber optic ready.

I was also wondering how many Olympus E-510s and E-3 are going to need to be sold before Sea&Sea will expand beyond building just for Canon and Nikon. Olympus has an outstanding lens set for U/W photography and it seems sad that no major housing manufacturer wants to be the first one to step-up and expand beyond the big two. I have been around long enough to remember the days when you could not find a decent housing for a Canon camera until Aquatica came out with one.

Phil Rudin

To offer a counter point, Phil (that I am not too serious about).

I miss the days when only a few camera models were supported by underwater housing manufacturers - because it meant that housings were cheaper and the ergonomics were also better refined as the design effort was spread across fewer models.

I understand why the market is the way it is, and I would think that Olympus cameras will have more options in the near future.

To ask a cheeky question, Phil, maybe you should list some of the flaws in the existing Olympus housings to encourage a big player like Sea and Sea to come in and take up the challenge!

Alex

Hi Alex,

I am not sure that I agree with your first point that housings were cheaper. In fact I think that because of greater competition, e.g more players created by more camera models that in todays dollars things have remained about the same with far more choices across a much broader range of pricing. The E-410 with 14-42 mm kit lens and Olympus PT-E03 housing cost less than my first Tussey Nikon 8008 housing twenty plus years ago. Also it appears that far more housings are being sold which should reduce the cost of many of the components used to build those housings. I also think that overall ergonomics have improved considering that they involve far more controls than film cameras did.

Some of the problems with the existing Olympus housings include #1 the Olympus bulkhead which is useless with anything but the housed Olympus land strobes, #2 only rated to 40 meters (PT-E03), #3 no way to add an enlarged view finder and #4 no support from Olympus for the high end E-1 four years ago or the E-3 now. I would consider Olympus to be a "big player" just not at the DSLR level.

I still feel that the upsides to the Olympus DSLR housings far outweigh the downsides for the price. I don't see Olympus entering the higher end housing market which leads back to the original question of when one of the "big players" will expand into the Olympus camp.

Phil

Ike made a housing for the E-1 and had low single digit sales (not market share, total numbers). An experience like that may put off further efforts for awhile.

Hello Sea&Sea,

 

Nice to see someone from your company posting on Wetpixel.

 

Your latest housings look great and I was wondering why Sea&sea does not appear to be building DSLR housing going forward that take advantage of the use of fiber optics even though your strobes seem to be fiber optic ready.

 

I was also wondering how many Olympus E-510s and E-3 are going to need to be sold before Sea&Sea will expand beyond building just for Canon and Nikon. Olympus has an outstanding lens set for U/W photography and it seems sad that no major housing manufacturer wants to be the first one to step-up and expand beyond the big two. I have been around long enough to remember the days when you could not find a decent housing for a Canon camera until Aquatica came out with one.

 

Phil Rudin

Hi Phil-

Thanks for your questions and hopefully, some answers to them;

1) FOC's are not 100% reliable in the transmission of light to the sensor as witnessed in compact digitals. This is for a variety of reasons, so a hard-wired 5 pin N-type connector has been standard for a number of years. It may be interesting to see a compact housing with a hot shoe connection and sync port though, eh?! In fact our MDX-G9 housing available in the asian market has just that.

2) Olympus has certainly increased market share in the few recent years and domestic and worldwide sales #'s are increasing, so that may be in the future, but currently Nikon and Canon still have a stronghold on the market where are products (housings) are positioned. Of course, that could certainly change.

Thanks.