the ewa-marine question

so, i'm thinking of getting one of these creatures -- i can not currently afford a "real" housing, but would like to take me dslr and macro lens underwater. i wouldn't take it much deeper than 10-15 feet...

so my specific questions are

have you used one of these at shallow depths (15ft and under)?

did it "work"?

was it hard to use?

any problems with vignetting?

anyone have a leak at under 30ft?

yes, i know they are the boil in the bag option, but it might be this year's solution, until i can afford something much more serious.

thanks in advance

Hi!

First of all, it's hard to drown. You've got to blow it up a bit in order to have enough space to move the glove when at working depth. Some cameras may tend to lock push buttons due to higher pressure. That would mean going up a bit to make it come back out again (happened years ago with a Canon).

You're limited to macro and moderate WA (about 28mm SLR equivalelnt) because of the flat port. It's not the front glass diameter that limits but the water-air border that acts as a lens. An internal flash is mainly at one of the worst considered positions so "snowy" pictures may occur at less than perfect visibility.

I had an Olympus OM-2 with a 50mm and a spare 28mm lens in the bag and managed to change lenses inside! (because the camera was pretty small, compared to the Nikon F2 which also fitted in the bag) Nevertheless, regarding handling there's absolutely no comparison to a housed camera.

Considering that the bag isn't a cheap solution after all, my advice is to save up and wait for it ;-)

Helge ;-)=)

I'm not aware of anyone other than myself on planet earth who's stupid enough to dive with their DSLR in a plastic bag.

I've spent a fair few hours freediving with my 10D + 17-40L or 90mm macro in the EWA-marine. It works, it hasn't leaked, it's allowed me to get some really cool photos that I wouldn't have got otherwise. The 17-40L BTW worked fine at 17mm through the flat port - I'm sure that optically it's distorted but for most subjects it's not obvious.

It's a fairly clumsy housing to use. I've been using a 420EX on camera as strobe, and backscatter has been my main problem. Still, there's a lot of keepers coming out of this setup. And you can shoot TTL macro shots! Even seacam and subal don't support TTL, I guess EWA-Marine is more high tech!

Having said all that, I wouldn't go so far as to recommend you actually do it. I'm currently in the process of upgrading to a real setup, but the EWA-Marine has at least got my DSLR under the water up until this point.

Hey whitey, second one on plant earth, I was also stupid enough to dive with their DSLR in a plastic bag :shock: . And it worked. But it was no fun.

I used a Ewa-Marine U-AX with my D100, 24-85 and SB26 flash. I went down to 12m/40ft.

The handling is very uncomfortable, the only buttons working are shutter release and the ones at the back. Even the zoomring was very hard to turn. The bag is compressed in the depth so you need to blow air inside before drowning to be able to use it lower the 3m. And that needs approx. 2-3kg more weights. At the surface the rig has much buoyancy, in the depth it drowns.

I'm glad to show my D100 the red sea in a real housing in May .

Daniel

Daniel, it's good to see their is another hellman out there!

I use the U-AX also. By the way, mine was second hand, off E-bay. And I dived with L-series glass. So I still claim I'm stupider. Although 12m is a pretty "brave" depth to go to.

I've suggested in these posts before that EWA-marine should start sponsoring me, but seeing the dollars haven't started rolling in I think I can say these housings sort of suck. They're not as suicidal for your camera as people would have you believe, though, and they're a fair bit cheaper than a Seacam (especially for my Ebay 'Made in West Germany' model)