Hi folks,
I had problems with my new Aquatica D7000 housing (got it in June) and wondered if it was just me or are others having the same issues.
I just returned from a trip out to Cocos, we had good shark action but I had real problems with my housing. I had done about 20 dives with it over the couple of months before the trip and had had a couple of issues with the Flash activation leaver when using the optical connector. If I depressed the onboard camera flash with the leaver on the housing when underwater then it sometimes wouldn't/couldn't be reactived while under water, it always worked when back on the boat though so I never really tracked down what the issue was as it didn't happen every time.
At Cocos Is though I had real problems with the buttons on the back of the housing, especially the focus selection buttons. The "9 o'clock" button kept sticking in if depressed once below the 20-25meter depth, which is pretty much every dive in Cocos. It looks like the spring tension on the buttons isn't sufficient to push the button back out again when you remove your finger. Certainly this button feels stiffer to depress than some of the others. On occasion other buttons stuck too and depending on what button stuck and what mode the camera was in at the time the camera sometimes locked up and wouldn't fire until you could free the button back out again. It was often hard to figure out which button it was, so I ended up trying to pull them all back out manually. Not easy wearing gloves and very frustrating as you are missing photo ops. If I hit image preview, the camera would scroll endlessly through the images until you could free the button. Often I couldn't access preview at all and also was unable to engage live view on occasion. Sometimes Live view would come on but "record" wouldn't engage. When I could shoot video, because the buttons were stuck in, the video focus selection just kept shifting to the left of the frame resulting in any shark in the centre of the frame being out of focus. Something I often couldn't see till I was back on the surface. These are minor issues to resolve but really frustrating.
I also had the problem with the flash not triggering, I'm really not sure why, perhaps the onboard flash had been depressed but it certainly wouldn't flip up again unless I came up to shallow water or opened the housing. In the end I scrapped the optical connections and reverted to hard wired connections and this solved the flash issue.
The button problems persisted all week though. I know these housings have had issues with Live View selection, there is a post on the Aquatica website about that but I had not heard there was a problem with the buttons sticking - has anybody else had these issues or is it just my housing ? Perhaps I just got a friday afternoon housing, the Aquatica name tag fell off it this morning as I unpacked it ! Serial No of mine is 20068HYB - 108. I'd imagine its a simple fix, perhaps a stronger spring, or a new button shaft but it really buggered up several dives during a great trip for me.
Its a shame these are good housings, really well designed and when working well they are a joy to use. Aquatica are usually great on service too so I know they will sort out the issue but has anybody else had these problems ?
, (actually you guy's should always knock on the manufacturer's door whenever you have an issue, usually we, and our competitors as well, are well informed on any possible issues that might arise)
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