More Battery Power!

I started thinking about this a while back. I wanted to ask Aquatica if they would make an external battery pack housing and use the spare sync port to connect the power to the camera. This would give outstanding run times and eliminate the need for swaping batteries after every dive (PITA with the 19mm wide angle). But, I just started thinking about doing it myself. I would build the battery pack myself (easy), then permanantly seal it with epoxy (might not work because of gas buildup), but the hard part is the housing connection. The extra sync port in Aquatica consumer housings is perfect but a power adapter would have to be madeout of it (not too hard). So what do you guys think? Any suggestions? Any ideas? I really need to be able to take my camera on three or four dives without sswaping batteries.

It would REALLY have been nice had Aquatica made the housing to accomodate the Nikon MB-E5000 optional battery pack, which as an added bonuses uses standard AA's. But I think your idea is a great alternative. In order to keep things standard, ideally the Maha or another existing make is used (perfect if using standard AA's).

If this is a petition, I'm signing up!

Use one of Ike's old SB series clear flash housings. They already have a sync cord coming off them that can probably be used to connect to the aquatica housing. Do you just need 2 wires?

If so, then maybe the flash housing w/ the old manual nikonos cord could be hooked directly to your sync port.

Then grab the ribbon cable coming off the sync port and wire the camera/battery plug onto there.

HTH

James

Good idea James. That does sound like it will work. Time to start a new project!