Startup Housing Company Seeking Your Input

[smellzlikefish]

Well that may be your opinion but I can tell you that in the recent LAUPS International Photo competition (serious photographers) none of the winning photos were anywhere near 250 feet deep and most were from less than 100 feet deep.

This quote is spot on in that all of my personal best photos came from relatively shallow (barring wreck shots). However, while I take my housing down to 200' (mostly for documentation purposes), it is still suitable for shallow stuff when I'm going for that prime shot.

 

[BoltSnap]

So a diver has to buy a new housing setup when the want to go diving to 150 or 200 feet? Most of us do photography in shower water but when there is something that requires doing down deeper, I sure don't want to spend more money to do it. I don't want even to change housings even if I have unlimited supply of $$$..

 

[mjh]

For a start up company it is cost of production vs. potential sales. The cost to design and make a housing good to +250 might not be worth the percentage of sales to divers going to that depth. Look at Olympus housings, a lot of them out there, only good to 130ft. Here the key is first making Universal Housing then worry about depth rating down the road.

For me a question is would you have them concentrate on a DSLR or 4/3 Universal housing?

 

[BoltSnap]

Nauticam is a fairly new company yet their housings are good down to 100 meters.

As I said, if you want to be a U/W camera housing maker for picture snappers only, I guess 130ft is OK but then most folks will take this into consideration when they are buying and will opt for Nauticam or others that go beyond 130ft even though they may not be planning to go deeper in the immediate future.

 

[bvanant]

I guess that I and most of my UW photography friends are going to remain just picture snappers and not a "real photographer or real diver" since I don't plan on doing any photography at 200+ feet deep. I have a nauticam housing (in fact I have several) but I buy them for their ergonomics not because they can go to 100 m. Bill

 

[drbill]

...if I were starting a housing company, I would follow the 80/20 rule and build for the 80% of serious UW photographers who don't need to go to 300+feet and maybe offer an option to go deeper.

When I look for depth ratings, I want a bit of overkill. I used to dive repeatedly to 200 ft with a housing rated to 150 ft... but I knew the manufacturer's specs were pretty conservative (and I never had a problem at those depths). If your ratings are conservative, that would help... but I'd be looking for a housing rated to 300 ft myself.

 

[bvanant]

I don't think the problems with depth rating have to do with flooding or other issues like that but more with the fact that some buttons might not work well at 300 ft. This discussion is a bit like the whole bp/wings vs. BC discussion, but I would argue that for most folks who own UW housings depths below 150 ft are well beyond anything they will try. If you need 300+ ft housings then you can buy one but if I were starting a company I certainly would not focus on that niche, I would focus where the money is and where I can get the benefits of manufacturing volume. I might (like Aquatica) offer a "special" housing for deeper ratings if I could do the engineering inexpensively enough. Ikelite is probably the highest volume DSLR housing manufacturer and they go to 200 feet not 300. My point though really is that there are many serious UW photographers who might buy a universal housing that was not rated to 300+ ft and to suggest that serious photographers need to go deep is disingenuous.Bill

 

[BoltSnap]

The picture snappers are using very low end cameras with plenty of cheap housings available for them including some big name companies. It is a niche market because it is VERY crowded market and is extremely price sensitive and a tiny startup company will have a very difficult time competing.

 

[3D diver]

I'll take a look at the survey.

In the meantime---and this is a very small niche market---I'd love a housing for my Lytro camera.

 

[dhaas]

Maybe .000001 of the diving public needs or would pay a premium for a housing to go deeper than 200'......

Not needed in any new design.

But everyone's entitled to their opinion!

David Haas
www.haasimages.com