Friday 21 September 2007

The beginning. D80 Ikelite housing


16 Aug 07 - Ikelite #6806.1 housing
Ordered the housing with #5502.41 flat port (Nikon 60mm macro lens) from www.digitaldiver.com.au in Cairns. Great people to deal with and the cheapest prices for Ikelite gear. They also ship straight to you rather than a dive shop. You could try importing from BHphoto but if you factor in GST then prices are comparable.
Here it is beside my Coolpix 5000 housing. It's a fair bit bigger and heavier.

Digital Diver gave me a very good quote just before the Aus dollar took a big dive. However they honoured the quote even though my payment deposit would not have cleared till a few days into the lower Aus dollar. The housing with flat port arrived safely 2 weeks later on 30th Aug.

Why did I decide to upgrade to a DSLR?
Well, I had gone as far as I could with the Coolpix 5000 underwater. It was and still is one of the best compact digitals for underwater featuring... Full manual exposure control and macro at all zoom settings as well as manual focus. The autofocus was not great but I developed a technique using macro framers and manual focus which helped greatly.

I chose the D80 over the Canon 400D for it's bigger brighter pentaprism vs pentamirror, Degrees Kelvin white balance, 3200 ISO max, more solid build. I also had a Nikon lens and flash. This info came from dpreview and Dave Harasti.
I chose the Ikelite housing because it fitted my budget, and I was very happy with the Ikelite Coolpix housing used for the last 3 yrs.


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