Nah, Subal may be the Mercedes of housing but Seacam would be the Rolls Royce of housing! The housing is not much more expensive but Seacam do have some niffty add ons and the ports are quite a bit more expensive. Their very nice viewfinders alone is more expensive than Ikelite housing. :11:
Subal housing does not come with ports as ports will be different depending on the lenses that you want. For example, the 4 lenses that I use, I have one domeport, one flat port with a few different extension rings to support all the lenses. One domeport may not work with all the wide angle lenses especially if you pick a smaller domeport so it would be good if you do your homework on lenses and ports combination before deciding on a particular housing. Not all housing manufacturers will support all of the same lenses either. When I switched to dSLR, I did not consider Ikelite mainly because Ikelite does not support my most used lense, the Nikkor 70-180mm macro.
Yep, Ikelite housing is cheaper, their ports are also quite a bit cheaper. They either look pretty plasticky or pretty cool, depending on your fashion sense but it is a well built housing with all the neccessary controls. The only real disadvantage I could see is that it is bit bulkier than its aluminum competitor but it is also the only one that will let you shoot i-ttl with underwater strobe (Ikelite strobe only). With other housings, you will either shoot wi manual strobe only (not as bad as it sounds) or else you will have to house the Nikon SB800 flashgun to get iTTL. Ikelite is supposed to be working on a big magnifying viewfinder for its housing but don't know when it is going to be available yet. D70 viewfinder is a tad small and for now, only Subal/Sealux and Seacam offer you a nice big magnifying viewfinder (at a big cost)!
I would definitely house the D70 rather than N90 as the cost won't be any diffferent and the learning curve will be much easier with D70. However, housing and ports with zoom gears/focus gears for wide angle and macro setup probably will start at close to $2000, not including strobes so it is definitely a major commitment. The setup is big however it is not heavy underwater but it is quite a drag and I think my air consumption got a bit worse when switching from PnS to dSLR.
If you don't want to invest and want a smaller package, there are so many good PnS system now that offer excellent quality at a fraction of the price/size.
