How are housing prices determined?

I'm just wondering what determines such high prices for housings? Is it the manufacturing? The costs for pressure-testing? The fact that it's a specialty field (i.e., selective, smaller market)? All the above?

My thinking would be that all of the above has some impact, but the mrket size is the primary determinent to the high costs.

Engineering of a custom housing is time consuming, and costly. Lets face is it, in comaprison to the market for your camera, markets for UW gear is minute. Couple that with the fact that camera bodies are changing with the advent of digital photography every year or faster.

Even a small change of button placement has a huge impact on a housing mfg. I personally think this change in camera design will lead to more and more plastic housings like ike makes. Changing the machining for a custom made aluminum housing to move the on/off switch 3mm has got to cost a TON more than where you place the button on a plastic one, I would think. (Just goes to show Ike truly was a "visionary")

I would think that by this point in time, the cost of designing the seal system for the pressure testing is pretty much recovered and would have the least effect on the high prices. Unless they are changing the seal system, its should be a matter of remachining the housing every time the camera body changes. (Like I said earlier, every 6-12 months) :-D

What i wonder, is with the availibility of injection mouldings nowdays at very inexpensive pricing, why doesnt a housing mfg. co. develop a "custom mold for each camera that fits like a glove? If you could engineer a focus/zoom gear system you could make much less bulky/weighty housings that could be changed much easier than retooling for a completely new aluminum housing.

My 2 cents!

Although it's been a while since I worked with tool shops I'll throw in my $0.02 on Bob's question about custom platic "glove" housings...

Injection molding has become significantly cheaper, but there's still the cost of the tool to amortize over the life of the housing. I'm not even going to pretend to have a feel for what it costs to get a tool created for a housing, but it's significantly more than the cost of machining an aluminum housing if memory serves, possibly 10x? The delta in cost is probably material / time related, since tool steel takes much longer to machine than aluminum.

So, while we all accept that aluminum housings are more expensive because of the machining cost, what we (me) sometimes forget is that there is a machining cost in the plastic housings as well. So, if the mfg'rs created a custom tool for every camera, there'd be significantly more cost associated with that plastic housing than there is now.

I'd assume that's why Ike's been able to keep costs low relative to the other mfg'rs, because of the reusability of the mold across housings, and why Sea and Sea has blatantly taken a page from his book (imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all).

There might also be an issue with the structural strength of a contoured plastic housing, which would limit depth. That might explain why the PT series housings (which are essentially contoured) have a lower depth rating.

Of course, I could be completely off base, especially since it's been a long week already and it's only Wednesday...

Tom

Pressure testing is the easy part.

1) Engineering design and development time. Amortized over estimated units of production.

2) Tooling, including CNC programming. Amortized over estimated units of production.

3) Manufacturing time, including setup, milling, deburr, inspection, assembly (install of all controls and windows).

4) Inspection time (including pressure testing)

Molds can be relatively inexpensive to very expensive. I seen plastic part molds for as little as $1000, as much as $20,000. Even using molds requires a relatively costly setup procedure and you still have the installation of controls, regardless of aluminum vs. plastic.

In the not so old days, Ikelite housed all ther SLRs in one of two housings. The aluminum back held only the viewfinder. Now the back must contain controls for digitals.