New Seatool HC7 Housing

[Ryan]

Ryan, I tell you that XTi/400D housing would make a perfect compact travel DSLR setup along with a couple Inon strobes. At first I questioned why Ohmura-san went with an optical connection but now it makes sense. No need for an expensive TTL Converter, you don't have to worry about electronic cables failing or bulkheads flooding. Battery life on the 400D is pretty good so using the internal flash shouldn't cause too much of an inconvenience. You can always switch the strobes to manual...

You didn't have a chance to try his dome with that housing, did you? He said it was designed to work with the Canon 10-22 and the Tokina 10-17.

If I wasn't in the market to house my HC7, I'd serious consider selling off all my S&S gear and getting that Seatool housing...

Hi Pakman,

I haven't dived the dome port yet, only the flat port. The glass element is Athena's OPD-170 (aka Sea & Sea Optical Dome Port), and the collar supports BOTH Zoom & Focus (a cool feature, since manually focusing the 10-17 is a really easy and offers total control of the focus point). Assuming the port collar places the dome correctly, the optics should be very good (we have customers using the same piece of glass on Sea & Sea housings for Canon with good success).

 

[pakman]

Thanks Ryan... As a current Athena OPD-170 user (on my S&S), that's great news that Kenji's dome will also use the same optical glass.

 

[H2O Photo Pros]

Wow we received our first shipment of the Seatool HC7 housings yesterday and they are beauties!! Extremely compact just like Seatool is known for...and now with a slightly lower price too! I will be taking some product shots this weekend for those that would like to see the housing in more detail. One big notable change, the HC7 housing is now using the 67mm lenses as opposed to the AD mount lenses.

 

[DocWong]

Hi Mike, how has the housing for the HC7 turning out? I notice there's no followup comments on the housing, problems with it?

 

[pakman]

Doc, a fellow diver on my Cocos Island trip in Aug had a Seatool HC7 housing. Gotta say it is one compact housing (see the pic of the Seatool w/ Inon Wide Angle lens next to my Gates HC-7 housing and S&S DSLR housing behind it). Nicely built. Only quibble he had was that the buttons on the handles are spaced a bit close and can be hard to tell which is which u/w. It lacks MWB, but given the depths and visibility we were dealing with at Cocos, that wasn't an issue. I couldn't tell from the playback on the camera LCD on how well the Inon wide angle lens worked (if there were any issues with soft corners, etc...) Looking at the LCD via the mirror is a bit awkward but OK as long you weren't too shallow and had sun glare.

 

[DocWong]

Thanks for that photo, I really like the size of the housing! For doing video out here in Northern California, I think I'll need the MWB feature. Any other feedback on the housing would be appreciated.