Diving with A7Cii / A7CR?

[kelpdiver]

To your question why Ikelite is not as popular- it's mostly about the ABS vs aluminum, and that they tend to be chunkier. Yes, this is a very compact housing (and you can't use all lenses as a result), but it still is a bigger box than it needs to be, with dead space above the camera body. All of their housings are boxes - that's a big part of what makes them cheaper to make and sell. Compare it to the Nauticam which is closer form hitting, though the overall measurements are bigger because the two handles are already part of the unit.

BTW, the Ikelite handle has a list price of 90 USD, so don't search too hard on ebay. With it, it looks difficult to take this thing into the water. Also not clear how you can attach a focus light on top.

It is, otoh, very hard to justify the huge Nauticam tax. Built to last forever, but the value of any housing for an outdated camera model is basically zip. You buy it like a new car - to use for a long time.

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

amazing, thanks for the first hand experience.

interesting gear you got to handle there.

I would like to see all those products "in my hands". Ideal way to compare.

One diver there did just that. Steven Lu went out almost every day with a new camera and housing. Gopro, Sony, Nikon, Canon and even an Insta360. The Nikon was a Z8. He tried several Sony's.

75%+ of the housings were Nauticam. (There were two Nauticam reps there as part of the crew too).

There were a number of Isotta housings, and the Isotta's were there, also as part of the crew, with several housings and flashes for demo.

Maybe 1 Subal, an ATO and a bunch of TG5's, 6's and 7's.

I wonder why there apparently were no Ikelites. From my research, it has a great price/value proposition in this market.

Maybe so, but it also has port limitations and perhaps doesn't touch all the controls. That said, if there was an Ikelite rep at the event they might have provided housings for demo.

This was the 21st DSO, and 50% of the attendees were returners like me. I upgraded a bunch of equipment after my first DSO, but I was already shooting Nauticam. I suspect many attendees decided to upgrade to something they had seen or tested.

I just received my Ikelite stuff, bought the housing and port new - plus a used ds161 flash/LEDlight .

Once I have anything to say about it, gonna do but might only find time to unpack next weekend. All I can say now is that I went for the compact housing because I wanted to max out the size advantage of the a7cr plus the optics I chose initially all work on the smal housing,.

There is a lot to be said about minimizing the size of the gear.

Optics are an expensive problem. Check out the Nauticam EWML system. If you get all four lens options, it's over $10,000.

EMWL Explained

www.nauticam.com

I finally retired my YS-D1 strobes in favor of the Backscatter Hybrid strobe/video lights. I've not used them as strobes yet, but I'm sure they'll have more punch than my YS-D1's. More importantly I have Ambient filters for them. While they have a 4-stop light loss, that won't be that noticeable on a strobe with GN40 power. More important is not having a color temperature difference between the strobes and the ambient. Now I can blend light in rather than try to dominate the lighting. Should eliminate a lot of green shadows.

Important for video too, but the light loss has me seriously considering the new Keldan 8XR lights with ambient light output (without a filter). Price for two, plus two spare batteries is just under $7000.

Of course the most expensive rig there was Cristian Dimitrius RED with the 50-1000mm Cine lens. And the heaviest.

 

[PHXAZCRAIG]

It is, otoh, very hard to justify the huge Nauticam tax. Built to last forever, but the value of any housing for an outdated camera model is basically zip. You buy it like a new car - to use for a long time.

Yes, expensive equipment that is incredibly disposable. I couldn't really find a buyer for my Nauticam D810 housing. Didn't try for my D850 housing. Especially since the Z8 came out I don't there would be any demand for my Z9 housing.

At least I used the D810 housing for 5 years. The D850 only got two years before my Z9 craving got to me. It cost me about $18,000 to go from the D850 rig to the Z9 rig, reusing all compatible bits like dome port, arms and strobes. For that $$ I got video autofocus, mostly. Nobody does this to save money.

I'm really trying to justify buying a pair of Keldan video lights and the entire Nauticam EWML system. Would be a lot of fun and give me new perspectives, but will I dive enough in the future to justify it in any way? It would be another $18,000 or so.