DIY video housing (homemade...)

[willydiver]

Wanted to capture the diving adventures for family and friends from our Cozumel honeymoon. Built this housing for my Canon ZR-85 miniDV recorder out of PVC and polycarbonate. I was pleasantly suprised. Both that the housing didn't implode at 90' and the video turned out great. Next modification will be to add a light mount to help with the colors. This was my first underwater video trial and man-o-man did I see what I need to improve on when I played the video back. Can you say: HOLD THE CAMERA STILL!!!! Got some neat video and was able to rip some OK stills using Pinnacle v.9. I'm hooked on this stuff now. There are no external controls on the housing. You have to start recording before you latch the lens down. This actually leads to recording the full dive experience. You catch alot of the "I forgot about that" memories when it records the whole dive sequence. First thing I noticed was I need to purchase a battery with ALOT more run time. The auto-focus works overtime on all of the underwater objects and wears the original equipment battery down fast.

Thanks,

WD

 

[diverdann]

Wow, that is impressive. It does not look too DIY (that is a compliment). Give us a write up on how you made it, including where you got your parts from. You just saved yourself several hundred dollars. Congrats. that housing with the other thread on on mounting the UK lights would go great together.

 

[willydiver]

Wow, that is impressive. It does not look too DIY (that is a compliment). Give us a write up on how you made it, including where you got your parts from. You just saved yourself several hundred dollars. Congrats. that housing with the other thread on on mounting the UK lights would go great together.

DiverDan,

Appreciate the kind words on project. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I posted some more details on the DIY board: http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=101940

Can you guide me to the thread on mounting the UK lights you mentioned?

Thanks!
WD

 

[Padipro]

Nice Job, looks very professional.

I built my housing from schedule 80 PVC pipe not nearly as thick as the ABS pipe you used and it's withstood dives to 130 feet. That stuff looks to be 1/2 inch thick I'd venture to say it could withstand several hundred feet of pressure.

Take a look at my MSN site. I've set up an entire site on building DIY stuff such as canister lights, video housings and O2 analyzers. There are over 600 members of the site and many of them have added their own ideas for their project to come up with pretty cool stuff.

BTW, installing the controls is very easy. You can buy them from any Ikelite dealer and with a drill and pipe tap you have full control over the camera.

 

[diverdann]

Here you go Willy:
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=101223

And please keep on building stuff.