Ikelite 8" Dome - counterweight?

[Mo2vation]

Just moved into a D200 from my beloved D70 (its all Warren's fault...) It came in on Wed - just in time for my long weekend in the Sierras, shooting Opening Day of the trout season! Amazing. Love the cam. Took about 400 shots this weekend and I'm getting in the groove with this cam.

My Ike housing just rolled in today with the 8" dome. I've been shooting the 6" domes for my 12-24 and 10.5 lenses, and decided to move to dah biggah dome. Depending on the performance and handling of the big dome, I'll likely sell off my others.

HOWEVER - I can see this thing seriously changing the balance of my rig with all that air and plastic. Does it make the rig seriously front heavy? I did a search using SB's bogus search engine, got about 7 pages deep and couldn't find my answer....

SO -

Do any of you find yourself re-weighting the rig when you use the big dome? If so, how do you do it? Zip tie a 1 pound block weight? Tie on a 1 pound pouch? Hang about 30 hose weights from the dome? (that one's for you, Peter....)

I'm taking it all out for the first time this weekend - I'd love to know what you do as I'll be far from home.

Thanks

---
Ken

 

[Diver Dennis]

I have the new 8" dome with the guard on it and it acts just like the old 8", Ken. It is slightly front buoyant but that's not all bad because it naturally goes port up if you set it down on the bottom. I don't find I need any weights.

 

[Warren_L]

Sorry dude, didn't know what I was getting you into. And I know exactly when that happened - it was over dinner at the Catalina Country Club after our dives in Dec when we were checking out the pics from the day.

Although my housing is an Aquatica, I haven't really noticed much in way of differences when I switch from my macro flat port to the 8" dome. As Dennis mentions, it does tend to go slightly towards port up if I lay it down.

 

[RonFrank]

I find the 8" Ike Dome balances fine UW. It's slightly dome up, but when shooting you won't even notice.

If you had been using a heavy glass dome in the past, you may notice a bit of a difference. As it is, I doubt you will notice any difference vs. the 6" domes with the exception that it is much bigger, and easier to scratch due to more surface area.

 

[PapaBob]

Not much to add except my experience is the same as Dennis and Ron.

---Bob

 

[Mo2vation]

Great to know.

I'm not worried about scratching it. I usually enter the water with the cover on, replace it underwater before I come up, have the cover on when its in the boat's dunk tank, etc. Also - when they scratch, they're easy to fix with the MicroMesh kit.

In fact, if I'm loving this dome, the others will be hitting eBay soon. I just wish I could MicroMesh my flat ports. My 105 port is pretty scratched. Its not impacting the images, just the resale...

The mount with the 10.5 mm is a little disconcerting. I dunked it, its sealed, but its weird.

I have a strap wrench I'm using to remove the stalks - I can't imagine what kind of Hercules you need to be to get the stalk off without one.

Thanks, all.

---
Ken

 

[blibecap]

I did have problems with mine and here is a link to my solution.

Dome Port Weights