Hey Uhuburu, I have the Nauticam housing myself and I am very happy with it. Here's a quick and dirty run down of the housing in the hands of a rank amateur:
PROS
Very well made, aircraft grade aluminium (supposedly... it is very nice tho!
)
Lens can be swapped without undoing the entire housing
Small dimensions (housing is marginally larger than the body of my old Nikon D70)
Light weight (relatively)
Full access to all controls
Nicely weighted shutter release
CONS
Ports have no support for manual focus as of this moment (this effectively limits the use to e-mount lenses only, which is a shame, as I don't see Sony releasing a 50mm/100mm macro for the e-mount any time soon.)
Viewfinder cannot be angled (well, it can be angled up to about 5-10degs. But nothing compared to ScubaMoMo's 45deg angle on the acquapazza, having had a quick play around with over the weekend. But to be honest, this is a very, very minor gripe for me.)
And that's it. There's really nothing that I can find fault with in the Nauticam. The lack of manual focus is an issue for me, but it's something that can be easily addressed by Nauticam in their newer ports. Fingers crossed.
I'm sure ScubaMoMo will be happy to give you guys a quick summary of his housing as well. In my very brief hands on with his kit, I have to say the Acquapazza housing is also fantastically well made. And the zoom port for the 1855 is a real thing of beauty. Zoom and Focus controls are done magnetically, so it really feels so natural, just like using a lens topside, where you rotate the rings on the lens barrel. One thing though is that the housing was quite a lot heavier than the Nauticam, so some form of flotation/buoyant arms will be advised.
Hope that helps!
- THKHOO
ps - I was thinking of starting a separate thread in Sony Snappers for NEX-5 owners to post and share their underwater pictures. I think it would be a really great resource for those thinking of purchasing such a system, as I personally found (and continue to find) it difficult to track down sample pictures with different setups, lens combinations, diopters, etc.
So, please let me know if such a thread would be of interest and use to you. I plan to set that up over the next few days once when I'm back on my home pc and have access to my pictures to get things started.