My Subal C10 has a documented depth limit of 70m (210ft) but on the FE2 Dome Port there's a sticker that says "Depth Limit 180ft".
Has anyone taken their Subal to 200ft or deeper with the dome port?
I don't understand why the dome port couldn't go as deep as the flat ports or the housing itself. It's the same bayonet mount and my understandng is that spherical surfaces are better at depth than flat surfaces because they distribute the pressure more evenly across the entire surface.
thanks,
Marty
Marty,
I maxed out my DP-SWC to about 170 with no ill effects but that's not a depth I normally go to.
Stu
Thanks Stu - I'll let you know if I break that mark this weekend :-)
I took my CP5 with the modified SWB to 180 to 190 ft in fresh water without incident.
I doubt that the problem at depth is likely to be catastrophic failure of the port or housing, rather simply that the buttons won't work properly.
Arnold could of course correct me.
Why not get your friendly neighbourhood U/W photo shop to pressure test your empty housing to say 11 bar and see what happens?
Subal C10 Operational depth followup
I just wanted to follow up to this question I posted a few months ago. I just finished a weeklong trip with the opportunity to shoot some wreck photos at 200+fsw. On the first dive I tried to make some exposure adjustments like boosting the ISO or simply hitting the lcd light button on top of the housing and the camera totally locked up until I ascended to around 120fsw where everything started working again. On the second dive I set everything the way I wanted before going deep and the camera worked perfectly as long as the only controlls I used were the main dial, speed dial and shutter lever controls. I purposelly left the buttons alone and could shoot images at will for the whole dive. On both dives I used the FE2 dome port without problems. The conclusion I have now is that the button springs are strong enought to hold buttons out from sea pressure but not strong enough to return them to the up position if depressed beyond 160fsw or so.
I'm not sure when I'll be able to test depth limits again, bit its good to know the housing can hold up just fine beyond its documented limits.
