Best smart phone underwater housings

[Pipehorse]

What phone are you using, if I may ask? It seems that phone camera software has greatly improved over the last few years, with the flagship phones able to take great pictures in a wide range of circumstances.

iphone 12 pro

 

[chillyinCanada]

Got tired of toting around my Ikelite housings with the big strobes hanging off of them. I have been using the Sealife Sportdiver for a year now. Easy to use, and more versatile than anything out there, switch from macro to wide angle with a few pushes of the button. Switch from still to video with one push of a button. I am continually surprised at how well it does under low light conditions. As far as results go, you judge for yourself by scrawling back through my posts, on BHB and LBTS. All the images and all the video have been shot with the Sealife Sportdiver on ambient light. BHB and LBTS are shallow dives, nothing greater than 20ft. If it I was diving deeper more often than I might consider adding some light, The Sealife Sportdiver is made of plastic, Kraken has a very similar housing made of aluminum for approximately the same price. Kraken also allows for wet lens addons, but of course that starts to get expensive. Also if you do a little hunting around there is a thread somewhere with more information on Sealife Sportdiver.

EDIT: Adding some images here so need to go hunting around the whole board for them. Respectively, Barred Cardinal, Seahorses, Squid, Lancer Dragonet, Spadefish, Spadefish, Goliath Grouper, Zebra Sole, Wide Angle Channel Barrier, Wide Angle Shark Statues, Barracuda, Beaded Starfish, Porkfish, Scaled Sardine, Scaled SardineView attachment 744280View attachment 744281View attachment 744282View attachment 744283View attachment 744284View attachment 744285View attachment 744286View attachment 744287View attachment 744288View attachment 744289View attachment 744291View attachment 744292View attachment 744293View attachment 744294View attachment 744290

Where were all of these photos taken please? Verrry nice

 

[DirtFish]

Divevolk for the win! No Bluetooth BS, sketchy apps. or stupid vacuum pumps. Being able to use the touch screen is priceless! Take unencumbered photos just like you do on land and manipulate your phone just like on land.

 

[Barmaglot]

I'm not a phone user underwater, but I would hesitate to call vacuum pumps and valves 'stupid' - they are an important safety feature. For example, I have had an incident where I was staying at a house with a bunch of cats. In the morning, before going diving, I sealed my camera housing, pumped the vacuum, and went to have breakfast. Turned around and found the valve flashing red. Opened the housing and found a tiny - only a few mm long - white, almost translucent cat hair on the white o-ring. That thing was nearly invisible, but it would've flooded and destroyed my camera if not for the vacuum valve.

Likewise, I'm not sold on the superiority of touchscreen vs buttons underwater, especially if one is wearing gloves - buttons may be easier to operate.

If I was in the market for a phone housing, I'd probably go for the Weefine/Kraken model with depth sensor. It's solidly built out of aluminium, has a vacuum system for safety, good attachment system for wet lenses, and can double as a dive computer.

 

[Pipehorse]

Where were all of these photos taken please? Verrry nice

I think all the images from that post are Blue Heron Bridge, if the you go to Blue Heron Bridge Trolls thread, I probably have well over 1,000 images and some videos posted in the last 15 months. Also I have many images posted from Lauderdale By the Sea (Trip Reports), videos as well all done with iphone in Sealife Sportdiver.

As I wrote early in this thread I have 2 expensive Ikelite rigs, one for a Nikon D300, and one for a Nikon D800. I got tired of carrying them around in the water. These days I am more interested in documentation than I am in taking beautiful images. However, considering the price of the Sealife Sportdiver, and not using any lights, the cost/image is close to zero as compared with dslr camera housings and strobes. I can carry it with one hand under the slate I use for doing REEF surveys. I can get away with no lights because BHB and LBTS are shallow sites. But even on reefs at sixty feet, if doing closeups the iphone does great color correction on its own. If I was going to do more dive travel I would probably add a video light.

I considered getting a Kraken, because it is rated to greater depths, and seems more sturdy than the Sportdiver however, the iphone 12 promax I have would not fit in the Kraken. I believe there is a new model now that does fit the 12 promax. Really I don't see how anybody who wants to take some images underwater could go wrong with sportdiver, the kraken, or the divevolk, Occasionally the software can be glitchy on the sportdiver, not sure why. I have found that deleting the app, and reloading seems to straighten out any issues. I have had it drop the bluetooth on two occasions, which is annoying because you can't do anything with it until after you end the dive. Divevolk does not use bluetooth it is direct touch screen, however I believe in order for it to be effective, the screen protector has to be removed.

One more issue I would like to address. I was reading on another thread where people were hesitant to put there iphone in a casing because if it flooded there iphone would be destroyed. Well, if you put a dslr in a housing and it floods the dslr will be destoyed. But this not the case with the newer iphones 12 and above. They are waterproof. "Yeah sure" you say. Okay, so I would avoid dropping my iphone into the ocean or a pool if it could be avoided, but if it does get wet all is not lost. You can see the image below was taken at 0925 on July 31, 2022. When I found the iphone on the bottom at BHB, the screen was dark. I touched it and it came on. I put the phone in BCD pocket and proceed to dive for the next 2.5 hours. When I exited the dive I rinsed it off in freshwater. I brought home and plugged it in, granted it sent a message that it detected water and would not charge. However, the phone still had power, and at 1600 in the afternoon a message appeared on the phone saying "this phone is lost, please call xxxx-xxxxx to return". The phone was locked but it allows the call to be made. I called the number. Turns out the woman who owned the phone had dropped in the water at 1600 on July 30, 2022 while paddleboarding. So the phone was underwater for twenty hours and still functioning. The woman who owned the phone drove to my house and picked it up, she was very happy to have it back.

 

[Tournesol2000]

Matthias Lebo gave his reviews on these types of housings. Not all inclusive but clearly one winner as has been mentioned by @DirtFish
I am in agreement. If I upgrade my cell phone, I would buy the DiveVolk. Great price too plus cool add ones.

 

[rmorgan]

We were in Fiji for three weeks in November, resort and LOB. Of 43 dives, I did about 15 with the iPhone in the DiveVolk housing, and the rest with an OM-1. I was able to find a 1Tb 14 Pro Max a couple of days before we left, and it is quite the camera, with hard lenses for wide, normal, and telephoto images. It also goes into macro mode with the wide and telephoto optics. I could actually get two dives on a battery charge, but used a portable power supply between dives on the resort boat and line current between dives on the liveaboard.

Many of the iPhone macro images are surprisingly serviceable, but the iPhone doesn't match the OM-1 with the 60 (and the OM01 with the forthcoming 90mm macro should be dreamy). However, the iPhone's ability to do macro or near-macro video is great, and of course having the ability to go from truly-wide to pretty long is just excellent. As an added benefit, the iPhone's inbuilt video-editing features are good, and as I struggle mightily with video-editing software, that's a real plus. (I did not use any of the alternate camera apps, e.g. Halide or Camera+, with the exception of a few images with Halide. The images are fine, but the need to go to another app for video was more than I wanted to deal with. Next outing, I'll work with Halide and, possible, Filmic Pro. I found the iPhone raw images to be essentially the same as Olympus raw images, but the iPhone JPEGs can become very blocky in editing.

As to the DiveVolk: I had a SeaLife iPhone housing a couple of years ago, and my high hopes were dashed. The vacuum system is very fiddly to depressurize, and alarmed inappropriately underwater. And the menus, while manageable, are a lot. I actually got the DiveVolk twice; I returned it once, but after watching Matias Lebo's good YouTube reviews, did it again. In use, the DiveVolk is very satisfying, albeit not perfect. I had it on a tray with a couple of float arms, one of which had a video light mounted. I did end up using one of those long rubberized twisties around the whole thing, as the weak link seems to me to be the bracket that holds the tray mount onto the housing; that said, I never actually had a problem with it--it just made me a little nervous. Having the touchscreen is so intuitive, it's an entirely different experience; you can lock focus, for example, and pinch in or out, if you need to.

The universal immediate reaction to the DiveVolk is--isn't the membrane risky? Well, I did get the Apple Care all-risk coverage. But so far, I haven't had any concerns with the DiveVolk's integrity (and had several dives at 80-100'). I do have a small (1/4") bubble between the sheets, as it were, which the company says is to be expected. I do have a beef about the membrane, which is that it seems to mar with the sliding in and removal of the tray which holds the device. This is a problem when shooting sunballs and the like (thus, only occasionally). I've used lens wipes on it since I got home, and will see if that makes a difference. But the small size of the rig, the simplicity of operations, and the quality of the images all make me think the iPhone/DiveVolk combination is a keeper.

As to the DiveVolk accessories; the tray is a little awkward to use because the housing has to be taken off the tray to access the camera. I had both the wide- and macro screw-in filters, but did not use either.

These are iPhone images:

 

[12th Man]

I purchased the DiveVolk Max 4 with the wide angle lens. I took it on my recent business trip to Hawaii. I got in six dives. I purchased a new Google Pixel Pro camera as my dive camera. Got it new in box on eBay for $410.00. Overall I love it the dive housing and camera, though it was/still a learning curve.

My first dives I used the wide angle lens with my red filter. Every picture/video I took was blurry. I was not happy. When I got back on the boat, I noticed between the lens and wide angle lens it was half filled with water. I'm assuming that was the issue. I wasn't sure how to keep the water out, or just screw the filter on while underwater so it was completely filled with water! Any suggestions would be great on this topic.

On my remaining dives I took the wide angle lens off. My pictures we spectacular! Actually, I really saw no need for the wide angle lens, but that was me. The camera has a wide angle lens feature. Maybe not as good as the wide angle lens but it worked well for me. I also like post processing on the G Pixel 6 Pro camera. I could zoom in or center objects better after the fact for great pictures.

Below are two of the pics with the wide angle lens that were blurry. The others were without the wide angle lense.

 

[Barmaglot]

When I got back on the boat, I noticed between the lens and wide angle lens it was half filled with water. I'm assuming that was the issue.

It was indeed the issue, but you don't need to keep the water out of that space - you need to let it in. The space between your wet lens and the housing needs to be full of water, with no air bubbles, so in general you need to take the lens off after splashing down, wave out any remaining bubbles, and put it back on.

 

[12th Man]

Thank you so much for the info. There weren't many instructions that came with it. Next dive trip out I'll try it again!