sea and sea video housing help

[rubbachicken]

hi there
i have a sea and sea VX-PC housing for the sony pc 120

on a trip to the maldives using the housing for the first time trying to shoot video looking through the view finder on the housing, i have found is very difficult, is there some trick to shooting under water video
i had a jvc dvj 70 with a marine housing and that was easy enough to use, just looking over the top of the housing, but with the sea and sea housing that has not worked, on some still camera's i have seen a kind of rectangle sight, for lining up pictures, would this work on a video housing, mounted on the mounting bracket on the top of the lense
any idea's
thanks for looking

 

[Groundhog246]

I don't see any reason an external viewfinder would not work, aside from the fact you won't exactly what you're getting especially close up, due to parallex issues. On mine it's built that I can see the flip out LCD screen.
My 35mm camera/housing had the issue you described. I couldn't see through the viewfinder. I took quite a bit of practice to properly frame with the external.

 

[rubbachicken]

hi there
by external view finder, do you mean an LCD screen {please excuse my ignorance}, or is it one of the rectangle sight things
i hope it is one of the rectangle sights as i see no where i could plug in an external LCD
thanks for your input

 

[diversteve]

hi there
i have a sea and sea VX-PC housing for the sony pc 120
on a trip to the maldives using the housing for the first time trying to shoot video looking through the view finder on the housing, i have found is very difficult, is there some trick to shooting under water video
i had a jvc dvj 70 with a marine housing and that was easy enough to use, just looking over the top of the housing, but with the sea and sea housing that has not worked, on some still camera's i have seen a kind of rectangle sight, for lining up pictures, would this work on a video housing, mounted on the mounting bracket on the top of the lense
any idea's
thanks for looking

The inexpensive option: Get a sight from an old Nikonos or Sony camera housing and mount it to your housing somehow. I don't know how well it would work, especially for framing as everytime you zoomed in or out what's being captured would change.

Does Sea&Sea make a replacement back for your housing with an integrated LCD monitor?

The expensive option: Get an external LCD monitor from Gates. They even sell a kit to mount their monitor to certain Sea&Sea housings - yours wasn't listed - but they could possibly work something out. It means drilling into your case to add a waterproof connector though. The nice thing about the Gates monitor is that the batteries are in the monitor case, the bad thing is it makes it bigger. They sell two different sizes as well. http://www.gateshousings.com/accessories.html#video

Ocean Images also makes an external monitor with a kind of universal adapter, but the batteries to power it have to be able to fit in your housing, from your picture I'm guessing there's not enough extra room. It's $650US plus. http://www.oceanimagesinc.com/products/accessories/easyviewmonitor.htm

Steve

 

[rubbachicken]

thanks for that,
i'm not sure i like the idea of drilling into the housing, i don't as a rule zoom in under water, someone told me that it would make everything in front bigger, as well as the desired image {i admit that they were talking about still photography}, but the theory must be the same, so for now i will try to find
a sight
as far as getting a different back to allow have the LCD open, that would need a whole new body for the housing, and controlls, indeed inact a different housing
with the money that this one cost me, i am going to be sticking with it, but thanks again

 

[Groundhog246]

hi there
by external view finder, do you mean an LCD screen {please excuse my ignorance}, or is it one of the rectangle sight things
i hope it is one of the rectangle sights as i see no where i could plug in an external LCD thanks for your input

Yep, I meant a 'rectangle thing'. I found zoom to be pretty useless underwater. The air/water interface already makes things appear larger (remember that part of OW, 25% larger and closer?) and viz is generally such around here, that anything far enough away to need zoom, is barely seen. I plan to go the other way and purchase a wide angle adaptor.