Has anyone tried the Aquatica D2X housing UW yet? I have not heard anything since Jean's last postings in August. Any comments about the viewfinder as compared to the Seacam or Subal housing- are they worth the extra $. Thanks

I think it is just in the test stage now so there should be some answers very soon. Just a few out right now.

Hi guys...
The Aquatica D2x is being delivered as we speak and the response is overwhelming.
Since I am with Aquatica, I will refrain from any reviews until someone in the field outside of myself does one. I can attest one thing though and that is that after diving with the initial prototypes, that the finder is very good and although Aquatica will eventually launch a larger finder to satisfy the need of many pros, it is unlikely you will need one as the initial D2x finder is good and when put in the Aquatica housing it shines!
This housing with all its features is Aquaticas best product yet!
I look forward to a review and coments from the many currently with housing in hand.

Mauricio Handler

I would be happy to review an Aquatica D2x housing for Wetpixel. The camera is available here in Houston on a rental basis.

Cheers
James

As it is here (well, in Portland...). But I have to say I would love to be a fly on the wall if a seal failed when using a rented D2x. That could be a mighty expensive paperweight you end up buying

Craig,

I'd either make sure that the camera is insured against water damage by the rental place, or put it on my DEPP insurance. What do you think I am - nutz? OK, don't answer that.

Cheers
James

I really wish housing manufacturers would produce specs on their viewfinders so we could have a true measuring stick by which to compare these standard vewfinders.

Mauricio (or Jean), is Aquatica using the same reducing optic that has been used on the a70 & a20, or something different? I'm not picking on Aquatica, it just seems that unless there is something objective used to compare these, we'll be left w/ emotional taglines or cute trade names in place of facts.


I'm confused by what this means, since the housing will likely reduce the size of the D2x viewfinder (making it look smaller and farther away). If the viewfinder looks smaller and farther away, how is that better than the d2x viewfinder on its own?

Hi:

I've just recieved an Aquatica D2x housing from Blake and Norma on the 13th of this month. I live a few hours away in the Niagara Region at the other end of Hwy 401 from them in Montreal.

I have just done the push button test in the pool to test all the push buttons and levers that can not be tested in a pressure pot. The D2x is a very expensive camera as you well know, so I will be taking it slow introducing it to the water.

I have been using a Nikonos V with a single Sunstrobe 400 off and on for the past few years, so this is quite a step up for me.

My new setup consists of the Nikon D2x, Aquatica D2x housing, 8 inch dome port, macro port and various extension rings, two Sunstrobe 200s, TLC arms, 14mm, 60mm, 105mm Nikkors, and Peter and Alex's Magic Filters (not everything is new). I anticipate purchasing the Nikon 10.5 mm within the next week or two.

Diving here in the Niagara Region is starting to wind down for the winter. Unfortunately, I do not anticipate diving with the new rig here in the lower great lakes until Spring. However, I will be spending a week in Santiago de Cuba putting the the new rig through its' paces later in November. God willing, I hope to have some examples of what this setup is capable of doing at that time.

Since this is my first test, in a pool with it at that, there is not much more I can say about it, except I find the camera housing controls to be placed perfectly. The housing is slightly negative as has been said before, but is not a hinderance. One thing that really did make me feel that this is "the" rig (for me at least) is I now have all my wonderful knobs, dials, and levers like I have so sorely missed from my Nikon F4e. My most recent camera was a Fuji S2 Pro. I think electronic push buttons are great but find myself missing real aperture rings, shutter and ISO dials. I guess you could call me a knobby type of guy . I would love a digital camera about the size and shape of a Minox 35GT with a huge sensor, but I digress...

As this is my first post to the website, I would like to take a moment to say how much I have enjoyed reading the forums and viewing the simply spendid photographic images of the undersea world presented here in these forums. If I attain results that come even close to what I have seen on this website, then I will be one very happy camper . The sheer volume of practical, as well as theoretical knowledge presented on the website is simply superb. I don't know of any other underwater photography website that does it so well. Kudos to Eric, Alex, James, and all the other administrators for a job well done.

Hoepfully I will not become too much of a chatterbox now that I have broken my silence .


Poliwog

Hi Poliwog,

Thanks for the kudos and your short report. Welcome to Wetpixel.

Cheers
James

Charles Hood from Dive Magazine in the UK has his out in California at the moment. He certainly likes it very much. Last week he sent me a few images taken with it and the Magic filter and the Hood/D2X/Aquatica/Magic combination seems to be doing the business.

Alex

Thanks Alex for the update on Charles D2x. I am confident that we will get some interesting feed back from Charles Hood in the UK. He has the knowledge, technical and creative ability to really put this housing through the grinder.

Responding to Ryans concern.
I am not an optical engineer and not sure if you are, yet all I know is what my eyes see when I am shooting underwater and the Aquatica D2X viewfinder was good enough for me without additional optics. As I said before, Aquatica will have a new finder available to current D2X owners who want to upgrade. Hopefully very soon. I am sure this will be at a fair price and will indeed enhance the current finder.
On another note. Last month I had the chance to use a Subal D2X with the large viewfinder and it was nice. But is it worth the extra $900 or $1100 ? For this price I would expected more from such a piece of glass. This finder has some draw backs that bothered me as well as others I have spoken to that are currently using this housing. The problem comes when th image is completely obscured and/or blurred when not viewed exactly straight on.

I have not had a chance to use a Seacam or Nexus D2X housing but am looking into them.
I did advise Blake at Aquatica to look at the Subal finder but to try and improve on the short comings of this particular glass.

Mauricio Handler

Mauricio-

I've shot with the Subal ND2 housing with the eyepiece for 8 months and never experienced this issue. Not saying it isn't possible to obscure the image by looking at it from a certain angle, just that you state this as a problem no one else has mentioned. So, I'm curious if anyone else has it?



Rand

I heard someone complaining about Subal's magnified viewfinder, but I think it is just a problem of getting used to it. Having said that, I don't have one and I am perfectly happy with Subal's standard viewfinder, which looks very similar to Aquatica's viewfinder.

By the way, if similarity to Subal is a good measure of quality, I think the Aquatica will be an excellent housing (as the Subal is). All the controls in the Aquatica are in a very similar position as in the Subal, the ergonomics should be great.

Mauricio, what are the dimensions (size and weight) of the Aquatica? Forgive me if you posted this before, but I haven't seen it.

Luiz

I think it just a wording mess up. It is not completely obscured.

The optic is circular. The size of the circle just covers the rectangle of the view finder. If you look through the otpic at an angle to the viewfinder, part of the viewfinder is not within the circle, rendering it unreadable or blurry. This is no different than image circle coverage on large format cameras when you shift the lens.

Although I got better at it using it, I found it still annoying after 20 dives. Perhaps it will be less annoying for macro.

Hmmm, I guess there is some benefit to being ingnorant of what it "Should" look like, thanks. Now it will bug me too. Damn eyepiece...

Rand

feet first again,

I'm with scorpio fish on this one.

I have 2 Subal ND2 housings - one with the Grand viewfinder and one standard unit ( GF wasn't available at time of purchase ).

My opinion is that while the view is nice once you get the distortion from non square alignment undercontrol - but I decided it wasn't a must have on the second housing.

Aquatica have shipped my nice shiny black D2X housing to me and it's due to get out here to the colonies late next week. Then I will be able to have real comparison as to which viewfinder suits me the best.

At this time I enjoy the GF viewfinder for macro and the std for wide angle - still I am not completely sold .... we will have to see. ( excuse the pun )

I received the Aquatica D2x housing a week or so ago, am quite pleased with the product, but have only had the chance to take it out on a couple of shakedown occasions. At first I was a bit concerned about the weight with the whole housing/camera/strobe(s) package (usually only a mob informant has that much weight attached at any one time) -- but all seems quite manageable once in the water. All of the buttons were within easy reach, even with thick gloves . . .

The viewfinder I found quite sufficent, though I admit that I still miss the DA-20 sportsfinder of my housed Nikon F4. I was happy to hear that Aquatica was thinking of upgrading the optics of its D2x housing; though, having had a recent chance to check out the Subal version, I still find the Aquatica standard viewfinder superior . . .

Does anybody have a time-frame about the Aquatica upgrade and whether it will simply be installed by the customer or require a dealer? Didn't Seacam also offer a couple of different viewfinders for their D2x housing?

David

There is a pretty thorough review by Charles Hood in the latest issue of UWP magazine.

Reading between the lines he seems to be saying it is very similar to the Subal, but cheaper.

Alex

Ding ding ding ding! I just downloaded the new issue of UWP and I'm glad to read that Charles echoes my thoughts.

Both housings are machined from solid, have excellent controls, and great ports. But one is much cheaper. It makes me wonder if Aquatica is just more efficient, or if the mark-up on Subal housings is just extremely high.

Cheers
James

Well someone in the UK who has seen the Aquatica said to me that it looked like a pretty close copy of the Subal. Maybe this means Aquatica have lower design costs

Being a bit more serious I would imagine that the strong Euro and the weak Canadian Dollar have a bit to do with it too.

Alex

Well, Aquatica's been making machined-from-solid housings since they did the Coolpix 5000 housing way back when. So I'd hesitate to use the word "copy" now that they've done another...

Agree RE the strong EU vs Can $$ though.

Cheers
James

To be fair, I think the same can be said about Seacam.

He was actually referring to the layout of controls rather than the materials. But this line of gossip is probably best left alone!

Alex

Hi again.

Here are some comments sent to Blake at Aquatica from Udo Stensitzky,
one of the first users of the Aquatica d2x housing. Blake asked him what he
thought of the viewfinder and this was his answer:

It is perfect. Honestly spoken I had some doubts before my first dive with
the new housing, since I could remember the old days with the sports finder
on my F3 and the view finder on my Nikonos RS. Before I contacted you the
first time I was first intersted to stick to the D2 housing made by Seacam
with their huge S45 view finder. But after the first dives with your D2
housing all doubts are wiped away. I just came back from the first macro
dive today. Handling is perfect, better than with the RS. Autofocus works
fast, very fast, the housing is well equalized and operation is intuitive.
Good job. I only have to work on my Hartenbergers for neutral buoyancy.

Udo Stensitzky


Mauricio Handler

Luiz-

B&H Photovideo lists the specs on the Aquatica D2x housing as:

8.5 x 8.5 x 5.25" (215.9 x 215.9 x 133.35mm)

8.5lb (3.86kg)

pretty close as far as I'm concerned.

I figure my rig with camera, housing, TLC arms, and dual Sunstrobe 200s comes in at about 20-23 lbs (9-10.5 Kgs) although I have not weighed it accurately. It may be heavy topside but is only slightly negative underwater and suprisingly effortless to manoeuver.

Have also read Charles Hood's review of the camera and housing in UWP magazine and was amazed to find I was noticing the same things during my pool sessions.

Charles commented on the 8 inch dome always turning upward, and found this to be disconcerting. I did too at first, but realized I might appreciate the rig hitting the lake bottom on the housing and not scratching the dome should such a thing occur. It should be a simple process to attach a small weight to the lens shade to counteract this tendency.

I got the itch to use the rig so bad that I more than likely will be diving or snorkelling with it this weekend even if I have to freeze my tail off to do it.


Poliwog

Thanks for the specs! The dimensions are pretty similar, but there is a difference in weight.

This is typical of large domes - large airspace with little metal and glass inside. To balance the effect Hasselblad put a second dome on the rear end of their EL housing so it balances very well. I do know of anyone else who has done this.
Tom

I have often been involved using over 10 housings at a time When doing elaborate long assignments.
The fact that they all face upwards is a blessing as I lay all on the bottom, picking one rig at a time to work with.
I prefer them facing up. As long as there is no surge then you are fine.

Mauricio Handler

I agree Mauricio, the housing facing up is an advantage. The problem comes when the dome pulls the housing too much. I used to be really tired and my wrists hurt a lot (in long dives) when I dove with my F100 in the Sea&Sea housing and the large dome. The Subal tends to pull too, but not nearly as bad as the Sea&Sea because Subal's fisheye port is smaller and heavier. So the real question is, how strong does it pull the housing upwards? I would assume not too much because aquatica has that heavy dome shade add-on (what is it called again?).

Some manufacturers counteract this by putting a heavy dome shade on the dome port. You may want to try that, as opposed to using the Aquatica ABS shade...

Cheers
James

Thanks everybody for posting. I've decided to purchase the Aquatica rather than the Subal. I can't see any reason that the Subal should be twice the price.

Cheers

Steve

With the large Subal dome and an extension ring pushing that buoyancy further in front of the housing, I found that the torque on my hand and wrist was too much, particularly if doing a trip with a lot of dives or when attempting to operate one-handed.

Rather than weighting the dome, I switched from Subal handles and strobe arms mounted on top of the housing, back to a ULCS tray and strobe arms mounted on top of the ULCS arms on the tray. This solved the problem, mostly (I think) by shifting the axis of rotation from the center of the housing downwards. It adds a bit of weight to the housing, but it works, and I also prefer having the strobe arms attached to the ULCS handles, keeping the controls and viewscreen at the top of the housing clear. The housing will stay lie happily on its back.

Frogfish

More or less pushed into digital underwater photography !?

What does that mean? Just let me give a brief explanation, how this could happen. I stepped into underwater photography about 15 years ago when I came to Jeddah at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. A Nikonos V with lenses from 20mm to 80mm was my first setup, which has been replaced by a Nikon F3 with sports finder in a Hugyphot housing combined with two Hartenberger flash units in 1992. When purchasing a Nikonos RS system 3 years later, I thought I had reached the top of the line especially true for optical performance however handling with auto focus could have been improved. The RS has been my companion during recent years until the day I got the shocking message from our local film processing lab that slide films will no longer be processed!

What to do? I was already shooting digital at this time (on land) and honestly spoken all my analogue gear even my medium format cameras spend all their time on the shelf since then.

So it was obvious to look for a proper housing for my D2X. Choices were more versatile than expected. Thanks to the web I was able to collect a lot of information until I contacted Blake from Aquatica who responded immediately to my remaining open questions. In the end the only open issue which could have canceled my decision to go for the Aquatica housing was the view finder. Unfortunately the D2x is not as modular as for example the F5 or F3 with the opportunity to replace the standard finder by a sports finder. Needless to say anything about the brilliant RS view finder, which set a certain standard I got used to all the recent years. Finally I didn’t want to wait for the first reviews about the new D2x housing and I could imagine a big demand for these housings at Aquatica. So I decided to hurry to be one of the first users despite the unknown view finder performance.

End of October the box has landed with all its goodies. It took a bit longer due to a few customized changes. The housing has been assembled quickly for a first pool test with 4 lbs soft weights inside to keep it on the pool’s bottom. The original poly… handles have been replaced by aluminum handles fixed via custom made brackets to the housing due to improved ruggedness when combined with my heavy flash units. I placed the housing on our compound’s pool ground in 2 m depth for approximately half an hour and checked the moisture alarm frequently. The first hurdle has been taken successfully, the housing was properly sealed. In the next step I fixed the D2x with a 14mm lens and added my old Hartenberger flash lights which still do their work properly even after more than 10 years in the field. My first impression of the view finder was …wow! I could clearly see a magnified picture of the viewfinder in a suitable distance from the housing’s rear side. So composing a picture is definitely a joy and I really don’t miss the predecessors in this field. During this pool session I tested the 20mm and 60mm micro lenses additionally, played with different camera settings and was amazed about being able to use all the camera’s features under water. Checking correct exposure values with the separated RGB histograms for example is a perfect tool on the way to increase capturing efficiency.

During this pool night I faced some trouble with flash firing, i.e. from time to time the flash hasn’t been triggered. When removing the connector from the camera’s hot shoe I noticed one of the spring loaded contacts stuck in the hot shoe connector’s housing. What happened? The seat of that connector in the camera’s hot shoe is very tight, so I had to push it with force into its position and bended the foremost contact most likely during this action. This problem has been rectified with little contact alignment after disassembling the connector. This contact bending can be avoided by using an aid, which works like a shoe-horn by pushing these spring loaded contacts back while sliding the connector into the camera’s hot shoe and releasing the contacts one after the other. But a long term solution could only be a little change in the design. Either stronger contacts could be used or the actual contacts and/or their PCB could be slightly moved upwards in its housing for better contact guidance.

After a further alignment of the release lever, the housing was ready for its first dive in the Red Sea. For this first sea dive the D2x carried a 14mm lens (at this time it was a Sigma AF lens), the 8” dome port plus shade has been used and one Hartenberger 250 flash unit mounted onto the left handle. Unfortunately the conditions weren’t that good for wide angle photography, e.g. lots of nutrition particles in the water due to temperatures above 30°C. I was quite excited when entering the sea, many thoughts were turning around in my mind and in fancy I saw the red LED for moisture alarm blinking and asking myself what to do, if…. . But nothing happened, I calmed down very soon, forgot all my worries, handled the camera as I was used to the predecessors, changed additionally settings for WB (white balance) as well as operation modes, selected different auto focus brackets and modes, checked the exposure values on the RGB histograms and shot one picture after the other until the frame counter reached an estimated number of 33 exposed frames. I still must have this number in my blood from the old film days. The last three or four frames have always been reserved as spare just to have at least a few remaining unexposed pics for any likely event. A look through the large housing’s top window on the camera’s top display gave evidence of plenty remaining shots, which was somehow sedative. A 1 GB extreme ultra III CF card has been used during this dive, which gives space for almost 90 shots when stored as compressed raw, which I use exclusively. RAW seems to be most suitable especially when it comes to WB settings. The auto WB usually doesn’t give satisfying results under water, so I leave the WB always fixed to 5000K, which unfortunately works properly only for one fixed object camera distance but has to be tuned later in post processing. Usually the number of frames per film roll was the limiting factor for my dive time, but on this first digi dive my empty tank forced me to ascend while there was still space on my CF card! A new experience.

Further dives followed with different lenses, but I have to admit most dives were done with the 60mm micro Nikkor and I have never seen before so many details in my pictures, even when my Velvia 50 slides have been digitized with my Nikon ED8000 scanner at highest possible resolution. Wow!

This picture taking machine is the most versatile I have ever used under water. Its view finder is excellent, the handling is intuitive, the overall balancing is good. Yes, it is of course dependent on the used lens and port combinations and further more on the used flash gear. Almost every single camera button can be reached and used through its corresponding housing’s control. For the one who is in doubt, every control is labeled, which will help in the initial phase of use. The windows in the housing are perfectly matched to the camera’s windows with just one minor exception: the program mode indicator cannot be seen, if you look straight onto this window. The overall impression is rugged with only one weak point, the acrylic port glasses. These need to be handled with care in order to avoid scratches. But that’s true for any port. Moreover this housing is as solid as a rock and inspires confidence. Operation of the latches is simple and save and contributes to the overall confidential impression. Changing a port is simple and usually it stays fixed in its end position. But once the 8”dome port is fixed with an extension ring I would feel saver if this combination could be somehow locked in its end position.

I am looking forward to receiving a new 10.5mm fisheye lens and a 14mm Nikkor as a replacement for my old manual focus 15mm Nikkor within the next days. Unsharp captures due to personal mistakes while focusing manually will be history very soon. The auto focus on the D2x is amazing and I really appreciate its capabilities. Sure I am not saying that auto focus is everything, but it makes life much easier. And so does my D2x housed in this wonderful Aquatica housing.

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