S&S MDX-40D housing!

Forgot to mention. Did a quick buoyancy test of the 40D + Canon 100mm macro lens, Athena focus ring (light plastic) and housing with port combo of Compact Macro Port Base + Compact macro Port 52. Not that bad. In water (fresh), it was approx 0.6kg negative. Might be better with the ABS custom port that most people use with their 100mm macro (more air space in that port).

 

With the Stix floats (on Inon arms) and Inon Z-240's, I reckon the entire kit will be just slightly negative.

When I saw you posted in back in this thread I thought you got a chance to take it out for real. Got all excited

amazing how much more buoyant it will be if you do the dunk test with the caps ON the strobes too..

Pak, you've been holding out on me. What ABS custom port are you talking about?

Steve

When I saw you posted in back in this thread I thought you got a chance to take it out for real. Got all excited

Well its pissing rain here and temps are around 13c so no diving for me this weekend... Guess I'll have to wait until next week in the Philippines.

amazing how much more buoyant it will be if you do the dunk test with the caps ON the strobes too..

 

well I wanted to see how well the Inon's do without the waterproof battery caps... Fortunately they're still alive...

Pak, you've been holding out on me. What ABS custom port are you talking about?

 

Steve

Steve. this NX custom port.

Pretty much all the buttons and dials work well. The only gripe I have here is that the gears on the top command dial doesn't grip into the camera that well and it takes an awful lot of spins to change your shutter speed around.

Hi pakman-

Was the caseback on and locked? All of the housings need the rear cover pressure to make alignment proper. Just a thought, it looks like it is meshing OK now. Congrats on having one of the first 40D's out there! Now go get it wet!

Hi pakman-

Was the caseback on and locked? All of the housings need the rear cover pressure to make alignment proper. Just a thought, it looks like it is meshing OK now. Congrats on having one of the first 40D's out there! Now go get it wet!

Bingo... that's exactly what happened. When I was testing it with the back off, the teeth appeared to be slipping a bit. But when closed, no problem...

Yep, got mine from a Japanese shop, but the MDX housing are now starting to trickle into the Hong Kong shops.

OK, finally got a chance to use my 40D and the new S&S MDX-40D housing. Overall, a big thumbs up to this housing and the 40D. Was shooting primarily with a Canon 60mm macro and Tokina 10-17mm FE. The AF with the 60mm (already a fast AF lens) was just amazingly quick and accurate. Coming from a 400D, I am loving the larger 40D viewfinder for macro. Live View as expected wasn't very useful except for wide angle shots from awkward positions where I couldn't use the viewfinder. I was shooting mostly with highlight priority on and at 2oo ISO. Although I didn't do any thorough comparisons with this feature on and off, it did appeared to help on some of the blown highlights.

Housing performed well. I only had a few niggles:

1) The on/off button sticks out a little too much from the rear. Depending on how large of a 2nd stage you use, you might find it prevents you from putting your mask right on the viewfinder (Oceanic Shadow low volume/ frameless mask and Apex XTX200 reg). Just need to tilt your head a bit.

2) In real use, the aperture command dial was just a tad bit too far back to control with my thumb while keeping the right hand on the handle. For those with larger hands, might not be a problem.

3) Shutter speed dial. It would have been nice if S&S was able to set up a higher gear ratio on this dial. The gears are engage well, but the way the angled gears are setup you really need to spin it a couple times to register a change in shutter speed. As the shutter button is very close to this dial, it can cause a minor annoyance when you want to quickly change your shutter speed.

Buoyancy - with a 60mm macro lens, compact macro port set, single 8" Inon arms per side with Stix floats, & Fisheye LED, it was a tad bid negative than I preferred and my right wrist was getting pretty sore from back to back 60+ min dives. With double 8" arms on each side with the Stix floats, buoyancy is better but required the arms to be tilted back else the housing had a tendency to nose up.

And, here are a few shots from Anilao, Philippines (processed in CS3)

Rest of the set can be found on my flickr.com page here.

Hey, happy to see you were able to get it into the water (you know I have been waiting )

The shots look great. Clean, sharp and colors popping.

Sounds like overall, even with the niggles, the rig is a good one.

Thanks Mike, Welcome home! Looks like you had a great time. The 3rd image is absolutely stunning! Very glad the new camera worked out for you. (My housing is finally on it's way) Were you using spot metering or ? most of the time for the macro stuff? Which dome did you end up using for the Tokina?

Steve

Thanks Mike, Welcome home! Looks like you had a great time. The 3rd image is absolutely stunning! Very glad the new camera worked out for you. (My housing is finally on it's way) Were you using spot metering or ? most of the time for the macro stuff? Which dome did you end up using for the Tokina?

 

Steve

Thanks Steve! I was using just evaluative metering. I am shooting my strobes on manual, so for macro I don't think metering mode would have mattered unless I was trying to meter in some blue water in the background. I am using the older Athena glass dome (170mm dia) and the SX extension. Appears that Athena has a newer one OPD-F170V which is what S&S sells under their own brand now.

Hey,

Thanks for this great thread! I'm just putting together my 40D rig, my first DSLR set-up, so all these tips are fantastic. Got the camera, a 60mm and the 10-17 but no housing yet. Leaning towards Subal, kinda waiting to see the Nexus, but will be sure to look at the S&S as well. Dying to get it in the water but I don't have a trip until May. Any additional tips for a DSLR beginner are greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks,

Phil

For starters… Glad to see so many of the same people are still around. I had to jump out of the hobby for the past 3 years for reasons that would take too long to explain. I found a great deal on a MDX-40D and a Canon 50D. Previously I had a D30/60 and aUK Germany housing with dual Ikelite strobes. The housing was nice, sending it to Germany was not!

I still have the following lenses

• Canon 17-40mm L

• Canon 100mm Macro

• Sigma 15-30mm

• Sigma 14mm Fisheye

The housing came with a “NX Standard Flat Port”

Questions;

1. What if any lens will fit into the NX Standard Flat Port?

2. What lenses / Ports do you recommend?

3. Do any adapters exist to allow you to use other brands of Ports?

4. Can you use Ike strobes with this setup? If not, what do you recommend?

5. Anyone using the Sea & Sea TTL converter? Or the Heinrichs Weikamp ? If so, how well does it work?

6. Any benefit to the Sea & Sea Shutter-Activated Focus Light?

Sorry for all the questions but I’m ready to get wet!

Chris (RK)

Hey Chris, welcome back! So what happened to the Jim Watt housing - it's certainly a collector's item.

Cheers

James

1. What if any lens will fit into the NX Standard Flat Port?

2. What lenses / Ports do you recommend?

3. Do any adapters exist to allow you to use other brands of Ports?

4. Can you use Ike strobes with this setup? If not, what do you recommend?

5. Anyone using the Sea & Sea TTL converter? Or the Heinrichs Weikamp ? If so, how well does it work?

6. Any benefit to the Sea & Sea Shutter-Activated Focus Light?

Hi Chris,

1. From looking at their chart, Sea & Sea recommends the NX Flat port for the Nikon 60mm F2.8 and the Nikon AFS 18-55 no recommendation on their chart for a Canon lens, not sure what you could make work.

2. Everybody is loving the Tokina 10-17 on the 40D, great lens. and the 60mm and or 100mm for macro

6. The folks that have them seem to think they're OK, A lot of people are using the Fisheye LED 48X or the Fisheye Halogen. There are a bunch of good focus lights now, much brighter and wider than the S&S.

Congrats on the new rig, the 50D in the MDX-40D is a great setup.

Cheers,

Steve

Hi James! How have you been, am I reading this right, you are shooting a Canon now? Still doing the flower garden? I gave Jim's housing to a friend of mine, I think it's actually collecting dust, a shame really, it really worked well for me.

Hi Steve, I noticed the NX standard port isn't mentioned as a Canon port, except under the system samples

Sea & Sea Who knows, I wish the site included actual sizes for the ports, that might make the process easier.

Thank you for the suggestions on the Tokina 10-17, B&H has a used one for under 500, thanks again for the tip. I'm surprised I can't find one on ebay. The focus light you mention below, is this the one?

Thank you for your help and the warm welcome back....

Chris

Steve, what port are you using with the Tokina 10-17?

Steve, what port are you using with the Tokina 10-17?

I'm using the big NX Fisheye dome port with the SX extention. Sea & Sea recommends the optical dome port but our friends at Backscatter said the Fisheye dome would work fine. I think Ryan at Reef photo would tell you he like the glass dome. Recommend you give them (one of the sponsors) a call. They see every setup in the book. I was trying to save some money and use the dome for both the Tokina and the Canon 10-22 by just changing extentions. Once I put on the Tokina though the 10-22 hasn't been back on the camera. I think it comes down to plastic or glass, your choice.

The focus light a bunch of folks like is this one; We've had good luck with it. You can get a cool red diffuser for night dives.

A lot of folks are using the halogen version too, more expensive though.

The Hartenburg Nano is a very popular light too in the same price range as the Halogen FIX light,

If you do a search there are quite a few posts on focus lights.

Cheers,

Steve