Nikon D7000 in Ikelite D80 housing revisited

Here's a video showing how the Nikon D7000 fits in an Ike D80 housing.

D7000 camera in D80 housing

OK I was wrong about the D7000 not fitting in the D80 housing. It actually does fit. Must have not cleared one of the controls at my first attempt.

Front and rear control dials, +/- EV, On/Off and focus lock work but there is no access to video switch. Some of the buttons to the left of the screen would be useable with a small reshaping of the rubber push button ends.

It's a tight fit with the camera pushing hard against something at the front so I would strongly advise a test in fresh water before jumping into the sea.

Merimbula Divers Lodge - Eden Tugs

After Jervis Bay we headed down to Merimbula (4hrs) to stay at the Diver's Lodge and dive the Eden Tugs. The Tasman Hauler and Henry Bolte tugs were sunk as artificial reefs back in the mid 1980's in 25 to 30m. The Tasman Hauler is intact while the Henry Bolte has collapsed but boasts more fish life. They're only a 5min boat ride from Eden wharf and about 150m apart.

The diver's lodge has 3 large two bedroom apartments for $29/person, 4 bunks per room. Absolute luxury as dive lodges go, and walking distance to great restaurants and the main shopping drag. We've stayed there twice and always had an apartment to ourselves. Excellent washing and gear storage facilities are provided.

Dive time was 8.30 at the Eden wharf, 20min drive, where we geared up with a Pro Dive mob from Sydney. They were also staying at the diver's lodge and doing a wreck course. The dive boat is a Niiad RIB with just enough space for 12 divers and 2 crew. It's a fast narrow boat that has no storage space for cameras, have to be very vigilant to protect cameras in the pre dive melee.

The vis was 15 to 20m allowing for great wide angle shots. A big school of 60cm kingfish provided thrills on the Henry Bolte. Much better than the 5m green snot we had last visit.

First dive was on the Tasman Hauler then back to Eden for the surface interval, then back out to the Henry Bolte.

$120 for the double dive with your own gear.

Tug dive photos here

For this trip I really wanted to concentrate on wide angle and video. I used my Nikon D80 in Ikelite with 2 Inon Z220 strobes all on manual and Sigma 15mm fisheye, and Virg's Panasonic Lumix LX3 in my old Coolpix 5000 Ikelite housing with a UK Light Cannon HID torch for video.

I took Virg's Macbook and edited video as the trip progressed. This gave me something to do during down time and show off to the non photographers each night.

Rich and I used drysuits, highly recommended, and although the water temp was 20c in JB and 18c on the Tugs, it made the between dive times warm and comfortable. Wetsuit divers shivered.

Next time I'll take my ali backplate rather than heavier SS just for easier handling out of the water, and use an occy neck sling or velcro retainer rather than the useless mouthpece plug.

Jervis Bay - Ocean Trek 5 day trip

Spent the last 10 days on a diving road trip to Jervis Bay and Merimbula.

Buddy Rich Misquitta and I drove from Geelong to Goulburn (8hrs) on the first day, staying at the Alpine Heritage Motel, $85 budget twin room, right next door to the down market Carlton Hotel. The $10 steaks were excellent but the 3 vomiting Canberra teenagers (also our motel neighbours) were not.

Next morning we drove (2 hrs) down the steep windy road to Huskisson staying at the peaceful Jervis Bay Caravan Park (Bushmans Cabin $80, no ensuite). It's a few ks outside Husky on the river and very pleasant. We could leave our car there for the 5 days of the Ocean Trek live-aboard dive trip. The only alternative is to leave your car in the council car park next to the bottle shop. Apparently it's quite safe but Rich wasn't too keen with his new Sportiva. Dinner was at the local RSL. Large meals served extremely fast, kitchen closes at 8pm.

8.30 Monday morning saw us waiting with all our luggage on the Husky wharf. The other Ocean Trek passengers slowly assembled. First Joy from Eden arrived then a minivan with the mob from Whyalla SA pulled up, making 10 divers and 1 non diver.

Eventually a wild haired seafarer in a small dinghy tied up to the wharf and introduced himself as Mick. 3 trips in his precariously overloaded tender saw us all on Ocean Trek, our home for the next 5 days.

Ocean Trek is a big old 18m catamaran with beds for 23. Many years ago Lee Marvin was a guest on Marlin fishing expeditions. Now it's perfectly setup as a diving liveaboard.

Captain Mick is also the director of entertainment, Lyn runs the diving and Bob is the chef. They make a great team and obviously enjoy it. Dive videos enthusiastically narrated by Mick, stories of their many dive adventures and a game of "Million Dollar Riff" using Mick's iPod kept us entertained during the evening meals.

Speaking of meals, Bob did a magnificent job. I have done a Taka trip on the GBR and the food didn't come close to Bob's efforts. Home cooked, fresh ingredients, amazing variety and nutritionally perfect for a strenuous dive trip. Lasagne, fettucini marinara, roast beef and veggies, Tom Yum soup, 3 course every night with creative desserts, with no course ever repeated. Hot breakfasts, post dive snacks and fruit always available. Just superb.

Lyn's dive operation was thorough, well run and safety conscious. Any diving incidents were dealt with strictly and professionally. Some of the problems experienced were unplanned and missed deco (no diving for 24hrs), possible saltwater aspiration on 2 consecutive dives, headaches, , dehydration (me), earaches, nose bleeds and some sea sickness. All survived and left the boat smiling.

Each day 4 dives were planned with 2 on the last day making 18 in all. Breakfast at 8.00am was followed by the first dive around 9.30, another at 11.30, lunch then 2hrs snoozy time, arvo dive around 3.30 and night dive at 6.00.

Only 1 diver managed to do the full 18 dives, but he had a pit crew non diving partner, who just happened to be a part time masseuse, lucky bugger!

Weather was not kind to us for the first 2 days with rain, wind and swell, but inside the bay behind Bowen Island there are excellent sheltered sites.
Eventually the weather improved allowing us to move outside the south head. Better vis, big schools of fish and a sea cave made these sites memorable. I have no interest in fresh water cave diving but these sea caves and splits are my favourite dive sites.

Each night we moved inside to anchor off Murray's beach. We also did a brilliant night dive here filming a baby PJ shark mauling a scallop, 3 species of seapen and a walking gurnard in full display.

We also dived around the Docks, Split cave (another fave) and Point Perpendicular. The marine life of Jervis Bay is really spectacular. Swirling bait balls, squadrons of squid, bow riding dolphins, wobbegong and Port Jackson sharks, sea eagles, Navy ships, planes and parachute drops kept the photographers busy. Also saw a very long water spout (mini tornado) reaching up hundreds of meters to the clouds.

Most sites were dominated by big boulders and urchins barrens with big clusters of stalked ascidians and striking sponges remaining. But the amazing abundance of fish and spectacular walls, splits and caves make Jervis Bay the brilliant dive destination it is.

For all this we paid a little over $150/day. You could barely sleep and eat for that without diving at all. Amazing diving, amazing value and I will return.

Can't think of any negatives really, unless it's Mick's very daggy sense of humour and music tastes, but they can easily be forgiven.

10 min trip video here
Dive photos here

Ikelite housing upgrade

My upgraded housing has just returned from Ikelite.

They were offering the upgrade, which involved replacing the entire front section of the housing and swapping over all the hardware, at a very reasonable US$200 plus $60 for a full service.

The housing now has 4 port locks instead of just 2 and a focus light mount on top. Also got a free swap for the new 4 lock short port body including an anti-rotation lock for the 8" and they sent back my 3 leak alarms.

More photos here

12th Dec

I have just discovered that this Fantasea LED 360 focus light has been discontinued. Apparently there have been production problems leading to flooding. Mine is still going OK but buddy Rich's has flooded.

D90 in Ikelite D80 housing

It fits and is perfectly usable!

Dive buddy Richard bought a D90 so I mounted it in the housing to see what worked.
All my usual controls - On/Off, shutter release, front and rear control dials (shutter and aperture) and focus lock work perfectly.
AF, self timer/multi frame and exposure compensation also work.

You probably would be able to push Menu, WB, ISO and QUAL although they don't line up exactly.
The Mode dial knob just doesn't reach but a little rubber washer and some glue would fix that.

There is no access to the 4 way selector or OK button but that's no drama.

So that means this housing can outlast the D80 if disaster strikes down the track.

More photos here

Macro at Blairgowrie

Recent gale and even storm force winds have restricted diving and the water temperature is in free fall. Down to 11c now.

However calm conditions on Friday meant we could head over to Blairgowrie to look for nudibranchs and the soon-to-be-named hydroid.

I was armed with the 60mm macro and naturally found a good wide angle subject as soon as I flopped out of the boat. This small keeled octopus hung around for just long enough to get a few shots. Lighting was difficult due to poor vis, strong current and lack of contrast between octopus and sand.

Here are some more shots of hydroids and nudis.

Cuttle colours 18-55mm

These shots were taken at The Springs near Pt Lonsdale. Vis was only 3m with heaps of sand stirred up by the strong current and swell. I was surprised at how little backscatter showed up with the strobes out wide and balanced background exposure.

This is the same giant cuttle over a fun 15 min interaction. Wonderful inquisitive critters.

I used the 18-55mm kit lens with a +2 dioptre behind a 6" dome. Will try a +4 dioptre for closer macro as soon as the wind subsides.

D80 sunburst

Digital cameras generally don't capture sunbursts as well as film cameras. With just a little overexposure you end up with a big ugly cyan blob around the sun.

To get this image I had to reduce exposure as far as possible.

iso 100
1/200th
f/22
Sigma 15mm at 5m depth
Mid morning sun in about 5m horizontal vis.

Brain issue of the day: Just realized that because I wasn't using flash I could have used a shorter shutter speed. Fool!

Housing issue: The dial that operates the front control wheel has started sliding across the wheel rather than turning it. Will have to give the rubber ring more grip somehow.

Technical issues on the Tassie trip

Had no problems with the D80 and my lens choices were perfect. Just the 60mm macro and 15mm fisheye.
But how to store and backup 10 days worth of images. I considered buying more SD cards, an image storage device or an iPod/camera connector but found that basic laptops are so cheap these days that there was the obvious solution.
I bought an HP Compaq C710 for $750 and with the current $150 HP cashback that made it $600. It only has 512 RAM but that was fine for saving images and running Photoshop Elements 2.0. The laptop became hot property after each dive as everyone gathered round to view images.

I found Vista to be a very nice, almost Mac like OS. This PC wont be connected to the net. On return I slotted in 2GB RAM for $130 and it runs better than my iMac 20" G5 now.

Now here's a list of gear problems on the trip:
Virg's Aladin Sport wrist computer went "ERR" - meaning Trevor had to borrow one from the dive shop.
Leaking drysuit chest valve - got wet thermal tshirt and jocks every dive. Drysuit needs valve overhaul.
Leaking Inon Z220 strobe socket - now realize this has been going on for a while so the strobe is getting the socket replaced at Sea Optics for $88 plus labour
Port o-ring sucked into the housing - after opening the rear door on the boat to switch back to autofocus. Glad I saw this as it would have meant a severe flood. So didn't take the camera in for this dive at Waterfall Bay split and enjoyed it so much I called this my best dive ever.

Oceanic Shadow frameless mask

I've been keen to find the best mask for looking through the viewfinder and settled on the Oceanic Shadow after asking here.

This comparison shows the problem, you can't see the whole frame when composing the shot. Even without a mask this is about as much as you see. So you need a mask that does not make it worse by placing your eye too far from the eyepiece.

My Mares X Vision is a very comfortable wide view mask but the glass slopes forward at the top (to give better down view when diving) which puts your eye to far away.
My old Oceanic mask was better but has a deepish frame in front of the glass which clashes with the knobs and protrusions on the back of the housing.
The Oceanic frameless has a lower profile silicon rubber lip in front of the glass and one big wide glass lens. This means the you can put the glass right on to the eyepiece and even move around a bit to take in the whole frame. The black silicon blocks out light from the sides also. Mask photos here.

FIX LED mini focusing light.

Ordered one of these from Yuzo last week and it arrived yesterday. Cant believe how good the service is from this business.

Anyway I made up a bracket to fit the Ikelite arm extention and took it for a dive at St Leonards. Vis was, you guessed it, bad again at 2-3m. Photos here.

This little light, which takes 4 AAAs not AAs like it says in the blurb, is bright enough for night macro and sped up the autofocus under the darker sections of the pier. The D80 handles low light levels very well but the light just made it better. The light also momentarily switches off when the flash fires so does not affect exposure.

Sigma 15mm FE arrived today

The first thing needed was a comparison of angle of view. How wide is this lens with the DX sensor?
Being a fisheye lens the normal angle of view ratios dont apply. With a rectilinear lens you just multiply by the crop factor so a 15mm film rectilinear = 15 * 1.5 = 22.5mm on the D80. A 15mm fisheye is much wider than a 15mm rectilinear lens.

Nikon Coolpix 5000 with WC-E68 wide converter - TOP
Nikon D80 with Sigma 15mm FE - BOTTOM

The Coolpix wide setup gives the same angle of view as a 19mm lens on a full frame camera.
Calculation - 7.1mm Coolpix = 28mm film, multiplied by .68 (Wide adapter) = 19mm

D80 with Sigma 15mm FE gives a slightly wider horizontal view (maybe like an 18mm lens on film) and slightly less vertical view. So the equivalent would be about a 12mm rectilinear lens.
Calculation - 18mm divided by 1.5 (Crop factor for D80) = 12mm

Pay no attention to image quaity. Coolpix image cropped top and bottom from 4:3 to 3:2.

Blairgowrie marina 60mm macro

Jan, Trevor, Rich and I set off in the boat to Blairgowrie. It was a choppy trip over with 10kn easterly but conditions were great at the marina. This is probably the best pier dive in the bay. So many nudibranchs, gobies, blennies, crabs, cephalopods and abundant fixed life.

The 60mm macro was sensational here. 75 min and 100 shots passed too quickly. Here are the results.

We called in to Portsea Pier on the way back but recent pile works and annoying surge detracted from the dive. 2 dives at Blairgowrie in the future.

This was the first decent dive with the new rig. In a word.....awesome.
Now I feel like I am only limited by what I can find rather than whether the equipment can capture it.

First test in the ocean. 60mm macro

15th Sept 07
St Leonards Pier
Now for the real thing. The wind was in the right direction so the sea was flat but vis was bad, maybe 2m.
Most of the shots from the pool were underexposed so I darkened the review screen for this dive and of course most of the results turned out overexposed. I was checking the histogram occasionally but need to interpret it better next time.

Here are the results which I thought looked low contrast and washed out unfortunately. Needed a fair bit more Photoshopping than I'm used to.

First test in the neighbours pool. 60mm macro

14th Sept 2007
Time to get wet!
I asked over the fence if I could jump in the pool (still unheated from winter - 13c, so donned the drysuit and scuba gear) and after checking the orings too many times took the first slow steps into the water.

I took a few colourful objects to photograph like Nuditor the test nudibranch and Fragmento the test great white shark.

Using the 60mm macro and flat port here are a few of the first shots.
First impressions
The very first thing I noticed was the restricted view through the viewfinder! I was not expecting this! With my Mares X vision mask, which slopes forward at the top, I could not get my eye close enough to see the full view. Note: Next dive try my older smaller mask. (This improved the view markedly but could still be better)

Once I accepted this issue I started to have fun with the lightning fast and accurate autofocus. It was like using a real camera again, just brilliant.

Nikon D80 arrived

13 Sept 07 pm - D80 arrived
Woo Hoo. The camera and lenses arrived. But of course the batteries needed charging before i could do anything. While waiting I attached the kit lens and peered through the viewfinder at an unfocussed and very grainy image. Even twisting the manual focus ring would not bring the image in to sharp focus. Ah, it's the eyepiece dioptre adjustment I thought, but that did not fix the issue either. Virg said "Just wait for the batteries to charge." She was right. I inserted the fully charged battery after an agonising 1.5 hrs and there it was, a bright, clear and sharp image in the eyepiece.

Ordered the D80

2 Sept 07 - Nikon D80Ordered a Nikon D80 (+3yr warranty) with 18-55 kit lens and 60mm macro with spare battery and 2GB Sandisk Ultimate 3 SD card from www.camerasdirect.com.au on the Gold Coast. Very impressive service and communication and prices that can only be beaten by risky ebay imports from Hong Kong. Later ordered a Sigma 15mm fisheye as well.

The lenses I bought were: Nikon 18-55 kit lens - surprising good review from Ken Rockwell, Micro nikkor 60mm macro - It seemed like this macro lens is the most used of any lens underwater, Sigma 15mm fisheye for wideangle - I contemplated the Nikon 10.5 DX fisheye but it seemed way too wide for my needs and A$300. dearer.
The Sigma 15mm, equivalent to a 12mm rectilinear on a DX sensor, is a full frame lens as is the 60mm macro so both are "future proof".

Decisions about lenses and ports were helped/confused by this info at Wetpixel, Splashdown divers , Cameras Underwater,
and by talking to Bruce, Anthony, Aengus and Dave.

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.