Aquatica has announced the release of the AN-5 housing for the Sony NEX-5 EVIL camera. Despite a very small form factor, it features a flash activation lever, a pair of optical strobe connectors and 300ft/90m depth rating. Aquatica has also designed a series of compact ports for use with the NEX-5 lenses as well as an adapter that allows the sue of existing ports. Lastly, due to the absence of a viewfinder on the camera, the cameras LCD screen can be angled at 15° within the housing to allow fore easier framing.

Aquatica AN-5 housing for the Sony NEX-5 camera.

Montreal, Canada, October 15, 2010. The Aquatica Team is proud to announce the release of the Aquatica AN-5 housing for the Sony NEX-5 camera, Sony has once again pushed the boundaries with this camera, yielding the punch of the DSLR sensor and the size of a compact camera; this flexible camera with its interchangeable lens and after market accessories will fill the needs of many underwater photographers seeking a high level of imaging performance in an easy to pack travel system.

With the recent upgrade of the Camera firmware, Sony has made the NEX-5 even better for the task of underwater imaging, namely, access to a larger selection of Sony lenses is now possible, better focusing in both still and video, improvement in the aperture priority mode while video recording, even the difficult task of manual focusing has been addressed with an upgraded method.

As for the housing, 28 years of designing and constructing underwater housings was the starting block on which we built this Aquatica AN-5 housing, while sporting a state of the art high tech look it nonetheless features time proven methods of construction and sound optical principles. We, as usual, only use the highest grade of corrosion resistant materials for its construction and is has been designed and built by an experienced team at our Canadian based headquarters, a country know for the ruggedness of its diving condition. The housing shell is anodized and powder coated to a smooth finish that will resist years of extensive use, all controls are double sealed in order to face the 300ft/90 meter depth rating assign to this housing, every shaft and push button is manufactured to a mirror smooth surface and is made of the finest grade stainless steel, Montreal is the third largest aeronautically industrialized city in the world, this strategically give us access to the best raw tools available on this planet. Bottom line is; if the material used is good enough to trust your life to it, then it’s good enough to protect your camera from the harsh environment it will be faced with.

Special care has been taken to locate every control at their best possible positions and the basic layout of the camera has been reproduced externally to retain the visual comfort of not having to search for a relocated controls. Even with the extremely small size of this housing, Aquatica has managed to built in a quick access lever to bring the internal flash up and down allowing for quickly alternating between strobe illuminated and ambient light, plus a pair of built-in dual optical strobe connectors are provided, this features is not an optional accessory and is included in the Aquatica AN5 housing price, aside from assuring a sure fire exposure every time, it maintains the housings at its original compact size and it is unlikely to come loose, be lost or forgotten like an external adapter would.

A very innovative approach was taken to secure and release the ports and lenses, all based on a multi function mechanism, rotate clockwise to position 1 to release the port, continue rotating to the end for disengaging the gear rack mechanism and allow the user to pull out easily the tray mounted camera and lens with the Focus/Zoom gear attached to it or simply push on the lever to remove the lens without having to remove the camera.

To accommodate the Sony NEX-5 lenses a series of compact port were designed for its range of optics as well as an adapter that will allow the mounting of our current line of ports, this will be appreciated in light of the extended range lenses now available via the various camera mount adapters available for this already popular camera.

And finally given the absence of a regular view finder our design staff integrated a 15 degree of angle to the rear LCD screen; this was done to give the user a much more comfortable position for viewing in diving conditions.

A very compact housing at just 165mm /6.5” of width, a height of 141mm /5.5” (including optical bulkhead) and a mere thickness of 84mm/3.3”, the production model should tip the scale without the camera at less than 1Kg/2.2lbs.,