Ikelite housing - problem for small hands?

I thought I had decided on a housing for my Oly C4040, but read one review that had me concerned. I am small (5'2) and have very small kid sized hands. It's even a stretch for me to reach brake levers on a road bike. Will I have some trouble reaching the zoom and shutter with an Ikelite housing?

Ike is probably gonna disagree with me, but I think you are correct in your concerns. That is the one thing that catches my attention every time I pick up an Ikelite housing, what a stretch it is to reach all of the controls while holding the housing by the grips. (I'm 6'2" with pretty good size paws.)

Richard

Hi,

I've got the Ike C-4040z housing and the controls are arranged differently than the Olympus housing. On the Oly housing, the right side of the housing is a grip and the zoom lever and the shutter button are integrated as on the camera. on the Ikelite hosuing, the shutter is operated by a thumb lever on the right side and the zoom is operated by a knob on the top of the housing. The zoom knob has no spring in it to automatically center the zoom lever when you let go of it and I find this to be quite annoying as the camera will not function if the camera is still zooming (IOW, sometimes I will have the camera at maximum zoom and the control will still be pressing the lever). I should probably call Ike to see if they can send me a spring or something for that knob. More to your question, the housing I got shipped with a tray that had the handle on the left side -- this meant that I had to try to hold the handle with my left hand and loosely grip the right side of the housing, which is thicker than and not contoured like the Oly PT-010. I ended up ordering the Ike dual tray (I believe you can also order the housing with the double tray from the start (part number 6130.2 vice 6130.1)) and like it just fine. With a handle on both the left and right side, you'd probably be able to reach the thumb operated shutter lever just fine on the right side while doing most of the "holding on" with the left handle, but even a person with large hands like mine has to take his hands off the handle to operate the zoom knob on this particular housing.