Which water housing to get?

S

SamFoxx

New member
Hi,

I've recently bought a Sony FS700 and since I'm shooting a lot of kiteboarding, I want to get a water housing for the new camera.
I have no experience what so ever when it comes to water housing so I don't know what to look out for. I've found a couple of housings like the Genesis FS700 but that one seems to be aimed at diving, which I'm not planning to do.

What are my options for filming from the water with a FS700?
 
I have a genesis FS700 housing, it's a great design, strong, good ergonomics and full access to all the controls. I wouldn't be too stressed by the diving tag, all this means to you is that it can withstand greater pressure (and will probably be more attractive for resale)

Things I would look for

- access to the ability to retro fit a vacuum pressure tester. These work by sucking some of the air out of the housing, the monitoring the internal pressure to see if it creeps up again. The primary benefit, you check if the housing is leaking, secondary benefit, particularly relevant to you with the surface work, the negative pressure in the housing compared to ambient pulls all the elements together and helps the o-rings seal. The riskiest place for a housing is at the surface, especially if there's waves or surf... We bought a third part product from DiveLife in the UK (http://www.divelife.co.uk/scuba-manufacturers/DiveLife/7429/Housing-Vacuum-System)
- the ability to fit a top monitor (we have a ninja 2 in nauticam housing)
- port choices : flat ports provide simpler optics and will be easier to lift out of the water for clean shots, dome ports provide better optics and also allow for over and under, but it'll be harder to lift them clear of the water.
- dome port material : glass is more expensive, arguably better optics (especially for up and under shots), but if you scratch them that's it. Acrylic, much cheaper, if you get a scratch you can polish it out.
- lenses : access to zoom control will be defined by the ability to fit and control gears, you may find this precludes using a metabones adapter. Primes, for the same reason, may need to be autofocus controllable (the genesis, you can control manually using electronic control). If you will be doing any underwater shooting (eg looking up at the boards from beneath, looking at waves etc) then you also need to check the min focus.. The lens will need to be able to focus on a virtual image created by the dome port, not the actual subject. I use the new Sony Zeiss 16-70
- weight and balance : you don't want the rig to be too heavy in the water or to unwieldy...

Hope that helps a bit

Stu

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...hibico-Genesis-Housing-UW-shoot-at-2k-100-fps
 
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Thanks Stu, very informative! I never knew there was so much to think about before buying a housing.
Do you have any experience with other housings? The Genesis is a bit out of my price range at the moment but I've found some other ones in the $3-4000 range.

For example:

Mangrove Sony FS 700 housing
https://www.aditech-usa.com/en/news/11-new-mangrove-housing-for-sony-nex-fs700.html

Equinox HD10FS700
http://www.housingcamera.com/Equinox-HD10-Housing-4-Sony-NEX-FS700-p/eq-hd10fs700.htm


To be honest, the best looking housing I've found is from one of the users of this forum. It looks like it has all the controls I'll need and still seems pretty compact.
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?315295-Update-Sony-FS700-Water-housing-2-0


Sam
 
I'm not a great fan of equinox housings, although I know people who are very happy with them.

Mangrove, I've never heard of, sorry. The last housing does look interesting, carbon fibre will help keep the weight down for surface work, although it'll probably be quite floaty, so perhaps not so good if you want to try submerge it/you and get underwater shots. One great thing, it uses the subal bayonet system... Subal are one if the top UW photography housing manufactures, so the ports are excellent, you have various to chooe from.
 
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