Mark II Seacam housing?

6.1 W x 6.2 H x 3.1 in. D to quote Canon's website. Pro body or otherwise, I don't think it was meant to be squished in a vice.

How about heating up the housing

How about just making the housing bigger? Am I missing something?

Making the housing bigger would require a new mold, in other words, significant cost. Using an existing housing / mold requires adaptation and therefore minimal cost. This is one of the reasons Ikelite housings are so cost effective, they reuse bodies for different cameras.

Hey Ike, 1DMk2 will probably fit in those oversized 10D housings from the first batch.

Kasey,

Read with interest that you are considering switching "back" to film. As a true film shooter (F5's in Seacams) I would certainly agree with your reasons. Especially the TTL. I have experimented with the Fuji S2 which does work fairly well with classic underwater TTL strobes. But the camera is quite inferior to the F5 & F100 in its autofocus. If you can swing the bucks, I'd heartily recommend the Seacam housing which has a port diameter wide enough to use the Sigma 14mm or Nikon 17~35 f2.8, both of which I use heavily. TTL is very usable with wide-angle lenses, you just have to use more heavily minus compensation settings.

And once you get your TTL parameters worked out, you will find you don't need nearly as many shots to get the right one as with digital.

divegypsy

divegypsy,

Can you offer any other reasons for recomending a SeaCam housing despite port diameter?

Nearly all mfr. can accomodate those lenses.

I'm not Fred, but I think the Seacam "Silver" eloxal coating is SWEET.

Cheers

James

I think they have to put that on there to prevent people from drooling on it and ruining the finish.

I was in Bonaire last week, shooting 1Ds in Seacam housing, and when I got home found my MKII had arrived. Since I last posted we set up as Canon dealers and are now able to sell both cameras and housings, but even as a dealer, the MKII has been on backorder. Demand significantly outpaces supply it seems.

Today I installed my MKII in the Seacam 1Ds housing and found it a pretty easy fit. Shutter speed and aperture wheels are as smooth as with the 1Ds, and all the controls on the top of the camera engaged once I tweaked them a little. Obviously the 3 buttons at the bottom of the LCD can't function via the housing, as the housing was made for a camera with only 2 buttons positioned slightly differently. The on/off is a little stiff. I could probably tweak that too, but as it is very smooth on the 1Ds I don't want to make drastic adjustments, especially since my Seacam MKII housing arrives in July. In a production MKII housing I suspect that shaft will be a little shorter, or maybe simply a new camera mounting tray will restore the precise tolerance necessary to make all work smoothly.

In short, I don't anticipate a big problem using MKII cameras in EOS1Ds housings, and vice versa.

I teach my annual photo course in Key Largo next week, so I'll be giving it the in-water tests then. So long as the lens sits at the exact center of the port, and it appears it does, everything should work perfectly.

One really nice thing about the MKII is that the image comes up on the LCD very quickly. There is a 3 second delay with the 1Ds, and for my style of shooting that can be an eternity, especially when the ambient light level is challenging and the subject is skittish.

Looking forward to giving the new system a try next week.

I teach my annual photo course in Key Largo next week, so I'll be giving it the in-water tests then. So long as the lens sits at the exact center of the port, and it appears it does, everything should work perfectly.

 

One really nice thing about the MKII is that the image comes up on the LCD very quickly. There is a 3 second delay with the 1Ds, and for my style of shooting that can be an eternity, especially when the ambient light level is challenging and the subject is skittish.

 

Looking forward to giving the new system a try next week.

After a great week of shooting in Key Largo I'm very enthused about the MKII.

1. Instant (nearly so anyway) gratification on the LCD is very nice. The 3 second delay on the EOS1DS is tedious, and one of my students told me that is what he gets on his D10 as well. Coming to Canon from a D1X I was used to quicker image review and nice to see it is so with the MKII.

2. The MKII works fine in the Seacam EOS1Ds housing except for the on/off shaft being stiff and the lack of ability to edit underwater. While many would say with a 2 GB card there is no need to edit, but I did get into the water once having failed to format my card. After a couple of shots the card was full. Fortunately I had the EOS1Ds in the housing at the time and I could format the card. The MKII housing will accommodate all such controls, but using the MKII in the 1Ds housing limits this particular functionality.

3. I shot some topside images of people doing giant strides off the back of the boat. 8 frames per second is unbelieveable with a digital camera! Much faster than my F100 film, and compared with D1X or EOS1Ds simply amazing capture rate.

This is a serious camera for underwater (and topside) imaging.

Other housings represented this week in my photo course included Ikelite housings for both the D70 and Canon Digital Rebel. Congratulations to Ike and his staff on their new generation of digital SLR housings. They functioned perfectly all week, and the optics on the 12-24 Nikkor and Ike's dome was excellent. DS125s were popular with my students as well, and they too performed flawlessly.

This was a hybrid course, with about a 50% mix between film and digital. The film shooters used both Nikonos and housed SLRs. It was inspiring to see their collective images last night at our end of the week slide show.

Steve

ECheng has posted several times that he's been disappointed with sunbursts on the 1Ds sensor. I've been hoping the 1DMk2 might perform better in this regard. Any comments?

Also, was the FOV wide enough with a 1.3 crop? Other than the crop factor and the slightly low pixel count, this seems like a perfect underwater camera to me.

ECheng has posted several times that he's been disappointed with sunbursts on the 1Ds sensor. I've been hoping the 1DMk2 might perform better in this regard. Any comments?

 

Also, was the FOV wide enough with a 1.3 crop? Other than the crop factor and the slightly low pixel count, this seems like a perfect underwater camera to me.

I didn't consciously shoot sunbursts this week, but it is something to look into during my next trip. I doubt there is a massive imrovement in this regard over the 1Ds, but will withold judgment until further testing.

FOV was fine with the 16-35 and 15mm. I'm sure the 14mm lenses from Canon or Sigma would work fine too. I did side-by-side testing with the 1Ds and 17-40 and the MKII and 16-35 before I bought. There isn't a drastic difference between the two. I achieved the same FOV by bobbing my head back with the MKII/16-35 and giving a bit more distance. Not enough difference to matter, even underwater, as far as I could tell. The 15mm is actually improved on the MKII compared to the 1Ds as it crops some of the barrel distortion off the edge.

As for the pixel count, I expect this one to tide me over until the 1Ds replacement comes along.

In fact, I did a test today to satisfy my curiosity about resolution with the MKII. I shot the same scene, tripod mounted, with 1Ds and MKII. Same shutter speed/aperture/ISO/white balance, and each in RAW. The 8-bit TIF from the 1Ds is about 32 MB. To get a 32 MB file I converted the MKII file in both Photoshop CS and Fred Miranda's Stair Interpolation with 116% value plugged in. SI gave a better file than CS, as would likely be expected. But the interesting aspect of the test was the "Actual Pixels" comparison between the SI interpolated MKII file and the uninterpolated 1Ds file. Very similar in terms of enlarged detail, aside from the obvious scale difference between the full frame capture and the 1.3 crop. But to my eye there was a slight resolution advantage to ... drum roll ... the MKII file. Perhaps 3 years of evolution between the EOS1Ds and the MKII adds up to something.

Three years is a long time in the digital imaging world. 1Ds is a classic of modern camera design, but there's plenty of reports of banding and other issues on areas of similar color, especially when underexposed, as well as the sunburst issue. I think/hope both of these problems are less of an issue with newer sensors, even the 300D. It'll be interesting to see how the 1DMk2 goes in this respect.

It's also interesting to see the detail comparison after stair interpolation of the 1DMk2 file. I wonder if this holds up if you were to continue to stair interpolate both files up to a larger size (like you would do in real life for a big print).

Right now, $4495 for a 1DMk2 is much more tempting than $8000-ish for a 1Ds, IMHO.

Dear Ryan,

You asked me - Can you offer any other reasons for recomending a SeaCam housing despite port diameter? Nearly all mfr. can accomodate those lenses.

There are a number of reasons I chose Seacam for my F5's. None of them included the super bright silver color because in my experience with small critter (like shrimp gobies, etc.) photography I feel that the bright silvery color put the animals "on guard" at a greater distance than a duller color. So I have painted the from on one housing a flatter semi-camou color.

My reasons for liking the Seacam. First was the convenience of the control positions for the F5, which I talked with Harald about at length a year before the housing existed. I especially like the fact that you can change AF focus points very easily with your had on the handgrips something he has unfortunately dropped in his S2 housing.

My final choice for housings came down to Seacam vs Sea & Sea and I preferred the control set-up on the Seacam. I also preferred the port flexibility inherent in the Seacam system whereby they offer extension tubes in a wide variety of lengths allowing you to put together almost any port/extension conbination you want. I shoot 4.4x on film with a nikon 105, 92mm of kenko tubes and a Nikon 2x AF-S converter rig that requires a very long port extension plus a manual focus for the 105 as auto-focus does not work. Seacam is also willing to make manual focus gears combo's for many lenses that others do not including my all time favorite macro lens - the 70-180.

And working with a machine shop I have been able to make exotic gear combos for such lenses as the Nikon 14mm and 17-35mm F2.8 that allow me to switch between AF and manual focus. I have also been able to modify the housing body controls to allow engagement and disengagement of manual focus gears simply by changing the housing control for that without having to pull out the manual focus knob, which can be almost impossible if you are fairly deep.

I especially liked the fact that there were two complete lens controls on the left side (viewed from rear) of the housing allowing both a zoom and manual focus possibility with most Nikon lenses.

I also like the glass dome ports.

I also like to dive deep (60+ meters) on occasion and its nice to have a housing rated to those kinds of depths.

divegypsy

Hi guys,

Another thought. Looked at DPreviews test of SLR/c and noticed numbers on resolution and extinction for S2. Then compared to 1DMkII. They're almost identical with 1DMkII having only a very slight edge. So if you don't need the high frame rate (and price) an S2 will give you similar image quality and allow you to use normal old-fashioned TTL.

SLR/n Looks like a very interesting camera. But I've decided to hold off until fall to see what Nikon may finally come up with as a D2X. If resolutions were similar, or even 10-20% in Kodaks favor I'd probably go with the Nikon if it were based on a body similar to the D2h, which in all tests I've seen has really excellent auto-focus and viewfinder info. It also uses the newer and theoretically better i-TTL, which some underwater strobe mfg might finally "crack", whereas d-ttl is probably of interest to almost no-one. The D2H also has some very interesting custom functions which would be of great use if i-TTL is cracked

divegypsy