<Why risk anything - take the housing down without a camera in it and
see if it
<leaks.
I would agree with this as a precaution, especially when you may have
purchased a housing where you don't know its history and how well the
previous owner(s) looked after it.
Someone has already mentioned having the seals replaced - again ,
couldn't agree more.
I don't have any experience with housings, but with my marine biology
background I used Nikonos IV and V cameras with SB-102 strobes for
quite a few years. I would recommend you hunt down a book written by
Jim and Cathy Church about underwater photography. It is heavily
Nikonos-system based, but has good info on lens selection, lighting
direction, backscatter, flash calculations, eqt maintenance,
close-ups, light absorption with depth and many other u/w photography
issues. It is very good.
Be aware that underwater, objects will appear nearer (ie larger) than
they would in air, thus on a Nikonos, 35mm is considered a std lens,
not wide angle.
Also, any suspended particles in the water will degrade image
quality, especially when using strobe (it bounces the light straight
back into the lens) unless you can get your strobe way off to one
side (45 degree angle or so). Thus it is most desirable to get as
close as you can to your subject, even using a 15mm or 18mm lens
(which isn't such an extreme wide angle lens underwater). The longest
lens I used was an 80mm W-Nikkor which I hardly ever used. Depending
on the type of photog you want to do, you may find a 90-100mm lens is
too long. Do you want to photograph fish? corals? other divers?
wrecks? macro/close-ups?
I was always extremely fastidious with O ring maintenance on my
camera and flash gear. After a days diving, I would rinse all eqt in
copious qty of fresh running water to remove salt, then completely
strip everything, clean and dry, then use cotton buds to clean O ring
grooves, then check O rings for grit/nicks, cuts etc before _lightly_
greasing and reassembling. Before next dive (if eqt hadn't been used
for a week or more) I would strip, re-check Orings, regrease and
reassemble . I never had a flooded camera or strobe in 5-6 years of
diving.
It is important not to over grease the seals/o-rings as this can
allow water in.
Also, most manuals tell you to visually inspect seals and o-rings for
cuts/nicks/grit etc. I always found that my fingers were more
sensitive than my eye-balls and by carefully sliding fingers, you
could very quickly tell if something wasn't right.
Also, I replaced O-ring sets on my cameras every 12-18 months whether
they look like the needed it or not. Cheap insurance I guess.
U/W photog can be very exciting and a lot of fun, but I wouldn't
recommend you get too into it too deep until you are a little
experienced with the diving side of things. Too easy to forget where
you are while concentrating on the photo side and do something stupid
(or not do something you should have). It is a pretty unforgiving
environment and you need to make sure you stay alive.
anyway, hope some of this info is useful for you.
peter
<
<Giles
Giles'
That would be done a number of times before I felt confident enough to
put a camera in in the first place. My concern is how many cycles is a
housing good for. Can they be that reliable?
In talking to my dive instructor (he uses a N*k*nos III) he felt that
since I already owned a "good" camera system, that I would be better off
with a housing. Apparently many published photographers start with a
dedicated under water camera then graduate to a housing. I was hoping
there was someone on the list with previous experience, it seems like
every other hobby or profession is represented here by recognized
experts (as opposed to the self proclaimed type). I think I like the
idea of using a less expensive body and lens. Is there such a thing as
a decent 50 mm and or 90 mm (or so) Macro that would not be a crime if
it got flooded?
Thanks again for the help
--
Mike Butler
Chief Mechanic / Engineer
Team FCAR
http://home.earthlink.net/~teamfcar/
Dublin, California
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