Question on housing...

[grock]

I've been diving for about 15 years now, and am just now wanting to get into photography...I know, shame on me, but my interests drifted towards the more technical aspect of diving. Anyway, I have a 35mm Canon EOS 650 and wanted a to ask if anyone could suggest a decent housing for it. I'm not looking to go top line right no, I suspect I'll enjoy it so much that I'll want to upgrade later, so I'm looking for something to get started on. Any help would greatly be appreciated!

Safe Diving!

 

[ssra30]

Hmmm, the EOS 650 is quite old. I think you will have difficulty finding housing for it. Ikelite is generally pretty good but I don't see EOS 650 listed on thier site.
Generally if you go SLR route, housing will not be cheap and will be at least in the $1000 range and up, not including ports and zoom gears for your various lenses.
Also I would suggest going dSLR route instead as learning curve for underwater is much easier with instant review.
With film SLR, initially there is a lot of guess work and you won't see the result until the trip is over pretty much so there is really no chance to go back and correct the mistake easily.
Since film SLR housing is pretty expensive anyway, I don't think it is a good starting point as you will definitely need external strobe as well.
If you are unsure whether you will enjoy u/w photography or not, I probably would start of with digital PnS that has all the manual controls etc and play with that for awhile before stepping up to dSLR if you like.

 

[RonFrank]

I Echo what ssra had to say.

I also have a few SLR's, and DSLR's. But I discovered that putting an SLR in a housing was going to run me at LEAST $1500. For my D1x, more like $5000.

I purchased a Canon S70, and the UW housing for about $550. It does a good job for what it is even if it lacks a few things that really would make my UW photography better.

I have printed 8x10's and they look good. I need to pickup some paper to do some 11x14's, but I'm betting they will turn out well. I don't think I would want to go much bigger, but then again, I'm a bit picky.

I also suggest digital as the learning curve is much quicker. I shoot RAW, and while I try to get stuff right in camera, with the unpredictable nature of UW shooting (especially without a good strobe setup) I find that it is MUCH easier to adjust WB and color balance using RAW images.

I would not purchase a PnS that did not have RAW capabilites, however many do shoot jpg. I shot some jpg on my last trip, but mostly RAW. I can get the images processed in RAW in generally a minute or two. The jpg images I had to adjust were more like 10-20 minute jobs in PS. No more jpg for me!

 

[alcina]

Ikelite can probably build one for you...and by the way, I have a complete Ike set up for the 620 EOS 35mm...I am thinking this will also fit the 650...I'd have to dig out my backup body, but I think those are the two we have.

You can PM me if you might be interested...I just got back from holidays and decided to sell off my film stuff so this might work