Opinion on Meikon Housings

[followtheturtles]

Hi All. I'm trying to purchase housing for my Sony A7ii. Ebay has some models I've never heard of that are significantly cheaper. Curious to hear if anyone in the group has any experience with this. Would love to avoid spending thousands to simply protect my camera from water damage.

Any tips of what to get? Dry dome port vs. regular? Does it absolutely have to a vacuum?

housing for sony a7ii | eBay

 

[saxman242]

I'd spend the little bit of extra money for the sea frogs salted line housing over the old meikon design.

 

[Barmaglot]

I use a SeaFrogs Salted Line housing with my Sony A6300 and it works great, but keep in mind that there's a lot more than a housing to underwater photography. You will need:

• Lenses - 16-35mm f/4 for wide-angle ($1350 new), 90mm f/2.8 for macro ($1100 new)
• Ports - 8" dome ($275), macro port ($169)
  
• Tray with handles ($120), coiled lanyard (about $20) and possibly a trigger extension
• Twin strobes - figure somewhere between $400 (used Inon Z-240) and $1050 (new Retra Pro) per strobe
• Since A7II does not have an on-board flash to trigger strobes, and SeaFrogs housing does not have an optical bulkhead, you will need either a dual sync cord (about $200) or a TTL LED converter with a replacement bulkhead (about $500) and a pair of multicore optical fiber cables (about $100)
• Arms and clamps to mount the strobes - figure about $150-200 for a full set
• Focus light for macro - about $100-150 with a cold shoe mount and a clamp
• Spare batteries, chargers, memory cards, etc

Vacuum valve is highly recommended - its $120 cost is lost in the noise of what you'll end up spending on a complete system, and it adds a significant layer of protection to some very expensive hardware (camera body, lens, flash trigger if you have one). Mine has saved me several times.

 

[stuartv]

I've been using a Meikon housing for my Olympus E-M10 for almost 4 years now. Never had a leak. The only problems I've had with it are:

- it's rated for 132 feet. I dived it to 135 once and several of the buttons were pushed and held in by water pressure, which made my camera not work right. That was about 3 years ago. It has still been fine and never leaked before or since then.

- The button that is used for Back Button Focus has developed a tendency to stick in when I push it. Fortunately, I have always been able to kind of grab it with my fingernails and pull it back out, during the dive.

Really, for what it cost, I'd say my Meikon housing has been amazingly good.

I also started off using the Meikon wide angle dome. That has also worked well. But, a year or so ago, I got a Nauticam WWL-1 wet wide angle dome to use instead of the Meikon. The improvement in image quality is visible to me and to friends of mine who are familiar with my photos from before and now.

Now, I have stepped up to a Sony a7r IV in a Nauticam housing. I'm still using the WWL-1, but it is more limiting when paired with a Sony Full Frame camera. It only works with the Sony 28mm f/2 lens. So, no more ability to zoom in and out, like I had with the Olympus.

@Barmaglot made many good points.

When you total up everything you'll need to spend to take photos underwater with an a7II, you might re-think that whole plan. Also of note is that I think the a7II battery life is not that good. No big deal to change batteries during a land shoot. But, changing batteries while on a boat is kind of risky. The later generations of the a7 have better battery life and don't normally need to be changed during a single day of shooting. But, I think the a7II is likely to need changing during a single day.

If you really want to use the a7II, you'd probably be best off to be patient and look for a used Nauticam, Aquatica, or other more high-end housing.

If you just want to shoot underwater, but don't HAVE to use your a7II, you might consider looking for an a6300 (or 6500) and using a Meikon or SeaFrogs housing for that. Basically, the smaller sensor results in much lower costs downstream (for lenses, ports, etc.). You might be able to get a whole rig, with the camera body, for less total cash outlay than what it will cost you to properly house your a7II.

 

[CanadaDan]

Been quite happy with my Seafrog/Meikon housings.

I would buy direct from their sites and not eBay. Their customer service has really helped me in the past.

 

[Chris Ross]

You tend to get what you pay for, the housing needs to be leak tight to protect the camera and something like a hair or some grit on the o-ring will allow a flood and then your camera and likely the lens is toast. A Vacuum system allows you to pre-load the o-rings and test the seal - if it holds vacuum it should not leak water. O-rings need to be loaded to seal and are most vulnerable to leaking actually at the surface. Having them preloaded makes leaks less likely from for example bumping a port getting in and out of the water. It is cheap insurance and I would not dive without a vacuum system.

The Meikon housings work but the domes for example may not be optimised for correct positioning for all lenses and the range of lenses supported is limited. This means the images may not be as sharp particularly in the corners - depending on which lens you are looking at using. All domes degrade the image somewhat, some more so than others.

Before deciding to use the camera you have, think about the type of shooting you might want to do - macro shooting through a flat port is the simplest situation. Doing wide angle work you need a dome and that brings in a whole new set of complications. If we knew what your interests were we could make some better recommendations.

I would suggest looking in the classifieds on this forum and wetpixel for a used setup - not necessarily for your camera it is often cheaper to get a good setup for a smaller sensor camera. Then you need to think about lighting - you can do ambient light work but a lot of it looks very ordinary and the Sony cameras are not renowned for their UW white balance capabilities. Adding a strobe is what brings out all the colours underwater.

Here's an example of a complete setup with macro and wide angle capabilities: Aquatica AD7000 Housing & Camera massively cheaper than buying it all new. - UW gear depreciates a lot, I'm not saying buy this one, just an example to give you an idea.

 

[BadGoat]

I use a Meikon housing with the dome for my Canon M6. It works very well. I dive a couple times a month and make sure the o-ring is in good shape during assembly. My housing also came with a leak detector.

Mike