seatool vs. watershot for canon t1i

has anyone had the seatool t1i and watershot t1i housings together for a comparison? I have a seatool housing for my xti and love it, but for ~$2000 less with ports and gears the watershot is looking pretty good. how do they compare size and feel?

thanks for your help!

Mahalo

Dave

Dave,

While I have not shot with either one underwater, I've had the opportunity to handle both of them. Both are very fine housings.

While not taking anything away from the SeaTool housing, I'd say that I was more than impressed with the Watershot housing, especially for the money. It is smooth, compact, well built and a pleasure to handle. To put it bluntly, if Watershot invited Nikon to the party as well, I'd be an instant buyer as I think they are a great value.

Seatool has more port options at this time if that's a consideration? Both companies have the ability for adaptor mounts for other 3rd party ports and extensions.

There has not been a lot of buzz on the Watershot housings, hopefully they can earn some support and not go the way of the Light and Motion project side of things and back to doing just custom high end production house stuff.

Hopefully you get a chance to handle both of the them and it will help make your decision.

Good luck!

paquito

has anyone had the seatool t1i and watershot t1i housings together for a comparison? I have a seatool housing for my xti and love it, but for ~$2000 less with ports and gears the watershot is looking pretty good. how do they compare size and feel?

thanks for your help!

Mahalo

Dave

Hello Dave,

I've used the Seatool housing owned by one of my students and my XTi for the past couple years or so. I recently bought the Watershot kit and a T1i, and, since then acquired the Watershot dome port. Both systems image well. I've used the kit lens, Canon's EOS EF-S 60mm Macro, Canon's 10-22mm and Watershot has zoom ring gears for these variable focal length lenses as well as a manual focus gear for the Macro lens. I bastardized an Ikelite ring gear and a Tokina zoom ring gear and also used Sigma's 10-20mm with both the ST and WS, respectively.

Watershot currently has a glass dome on the market and port extenders for the Canon 10-22mm (which works for the Sigma 10-20) and an extender for the Tokina 10-17mm FE.

Both housings, IMVHO, are well made. I believe Watershot is a bit more robust with respect to its shutter and its zoom control. OTOH, Seatool enables turning the camera on/off. The Watershot is , again in my view, much simpler or easier to assemble and disassemble. There are other minor plusses and minusses, as there invaraibly are but, none of these are deal breakers, IMO, regardless of which housing one decided upon.

The WS housing is larger than the SeaTool housing but the T1i and XSi are both larger bodies than the XTi. So I am kinda comparing an apple to an orange in this regard. I've not seen the ST housing for the T1i so do not know its size for comparison purposes.

The Watershot is sold as a 'kit' consisting of the housing, with a built in .6x pick-up viewfinder, flat port, and zoom ring gear for Canon's 18-55mm IS kit lens. This sells for $1995. The last time I checked these components under the Seatool brand would total around $3500.

I'd actually been in the market for the Seatool system until the Watershot came into my universe.

For the money, I do not think the Watershot system can be beat.

aloha,

Larry

PS: Disclosure- after trying the WS, I bought it and now deal these to my students of UW photography. The Watershot housings and components can also be bought from Ryan at Reef Photo and Backscatter and the guyz at H2O Photo Pros.

What flash option work well with watershot? S&S, fibe optic slave?

Cheers

/O

What flash option work well with watershot? S&S, fibe optic slave?

 

Cheers

/O

Hello Oskar,

I've used Sea and Sea's YS-110a, and Inon's S-2000 and Z240 strobes with the Watershot housing. Via a Fiber Optic cable. All three worked very well. lg