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Diving with a DSLR or interchangeable lens mirrorless camera can be complex, cumbersome and expensive.
Parts and Cost
In most housing setups, there are a number of different parts needed, not just a housing for the camera. For example, you need ports for different lenses, and those lenses require gears for zooming in and out (for zoom lenses) and/or gears for manual focusing.
Ikelite polycarbonate housings start from $1500 + about $200-500 for a port per each lens. Gears can range from a $50-$250.
Nauticam or other machined aluminum housings can cost more – in some cases quite a bit more – for example, this housing from Nauticam costs several times more than the cost of the camera itself. A very general rule of thumb is to expect to pay at least the same amount for the housing as you did for the camera.
There are some cheaper options, including universal housings, but usually these are not recommended for use beyond very shallow depths. They also often do not allow ergonomic access to camera functions.
Because of this, for those looking to start out in underwater photography, we often recommend that you consider diving with a compact camera to start.
With that said, compact cameras cannot compare to the optical quality, low light performance and speed of a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
And, if you’ve built up many skills on land with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, and want to take advantage of that experience, housing your current land camera can also make a lot of sense.
More about diving with DSLR’s here
Size and Weight
Another practical consideration is the size and weight of additional equipment. As a hobby or profession, diving often involves travel, as the best dive sites are usually not close to where we live (unless you’re lucky!) This can be a fun part of the experience, but as divers know, transporting equipment hundreds or thousands of miles can be a pain.
The same is true of underwater camera equipment. And, unlike some dive equipment, underwater camera equipment can be a bit fragile. In the past, DSLR setups have almost universally been very large and hard to transport.
Even inexpensive DSLRs are large, and when you add a housing and ports, it’s a lot to handle. This kind of setup usually requires it’s own case, like a Pelican case, and many people choose to carry extra fragile items like lenses and some ports in their hand luggage.
Recently, the camera market has dramatically shifted towards mirrorless cameras. This boom in new technology has in some cases made cameras more compact – even the most advanced, expensive mirrorless models like the Sony A1 are reasonably sized in comparison to the massive models of the previous decade.
Some mirrorless models today are hardly bigger than compacts, when all parts are considered – for example, the Sony A7C is incredibly compact, but still a fully-featured, full-frame camera.
If you’d like some advice on a new setup, reach out to us: [email protected] !
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