Zoom clamp & Gear Sleeve Help

I finally have my Tokina 10-17 lens in for my 40D and the housing is all setup, however, I am having a terrible time with the zoom clamp/gear sleeve setup and am hoping maybe you guys can give me some advice. It is frustrating me enough that I am considering just removing the entire zoom capability all together and just setup the zoom at 10 or 11mm and call it a day.

Anyhow, the trouble is that the Tokina lens is extremely small as many owners may know, so I have to use the sleeve (rubber piece with bungies that fits around the zoom ring). The issue is that there is no way that I can see where you can set everything up on your lens and slide it into the housing. The clamp (clear plastic piece) has to be installed between your housing and dome port. This means that when I go to slide the camera into the housing, I am trying to line up the two lines on the sleeve on my lens with the two lines on the clamp perfectly to slide in the body into the housing. I have tried 10 times and every time I wind up with not a good alignment and it ends up pushing the sleeve up on my lens and as a result I don't have any zoom capability. Am I missing something here or is it really this complicated? Any help you guys can provide would be greatly appreciated.

It shouldn't be that complicated. Are you putting the dome on first and then installing the camera? If so, maybe that's the problem. Install the camera first, then attach the lens with the zoom ring, then the port. I never had any problems when I was using Ikelite.

It shouldn't be that complicated. Are you putting the dome on first and then installing the camera? If so, maybe that's the problem. Install the camera first, then attach the lens with the zoom ring, then the port. I never had any problems when I was using Ikelite.

Yes I was, and I see the problem now. I was laying the dome down and placing the ikelite housing on and twisting it into position vs laying the body down and putting the port on it. I think the reason I started doing that was because of the O-ring, which was on the port extender originally and it would just fall off if I turned the port upside down. I just realized that it doesn't cause any issues if I put the o-ring onto the housing though and flip how I was putting things together. Fixing that now solved all my other problems, because I was able to properly align the zoom clamp and sleeve then put the port on. Thanks, I know it was a noob question, but there are a lot of pieces to these things when you first buy them, and the directions are not always exactly intuitive. =)

I think that the o-ring should be better on the dome when you attach the dome to the housing.

You may lubricate the o-ring and it will stick to the dome and wont fall off when you flip it over (at least mine) and

it will help the o-ring to slip easily in his place. When the port is not slipping easily into his place, your o-ring must be lubricated.

Here how i do it with my D90 with the Tokina 12-24mm and Ikelite housing:

1. unmount the lens from the camera

2. screw the camera without lens on the backplate and close all 3 locks

3. fit the zoom ring and the clamp over the lens

4. align clamp, rings and lens and lock the lens in place

5. lay the housing on his back and mount the port in place taking care to align the o-ring and close the port locks

6. recheck all locks and o-rings

Chris