UNDERWATER HOUSING FOR SONY MINI DV

If you haven't noticed, it is getting harder and harder to get all that dive gear on an airplane without excess baggage charges. Currently Delta allows up to 70 pounds for each of two checked bags. By the time I put a BC, my oc stuff, a rebreather, some scrubber, a few scraps of clothes for the week , my digital still camera housing, and other necessary items, I was getting way over with my housing for my regular Digital Video Camera. Besides, this was an excuse to get a smaller system making my dives easier and more fun. I did not want to give up any of the features that I already had, just weight and space.

This time I approached the camera housing, camera project from my toybox rather than buy a camera and house it. I pulled out an Ikelite housing for an old super 8 movie camera and measured the space inside. This had been a tried and true housing that I used some 27 years ago. (Yes I am a packrat). I took those measurements to Circuit City in search of a camera. I was hoping that Sony had a Mini DV Video Camera that would fit. The clerks at Circuit City are used to me asking strange questions about their cameras. Questions like, "when the camera times out and you hit the record button does it come back on or do you have to turn the power back on again?" (If it does turn back on, you need one less control gland.) Does the zoom return to its previous setting when the camera turns back on? If it stays where it was, there is an additional saving of control glands, if you use an aux wide angle attachment.

Needless to say, I found just what I wanted, made the purchase, and headed home to play. The camera was a Sony TRV27.



These and other Design Considerations are listed below.

Use the Ikelite housing I had. Buy camera to fit.
Camera comes back on upon hitting record button.
Zoom stays in place from last position used.
Firewire connection for Computer editing.
Photo stick mode for stills (an extra nice feature to allow frame grabs.)
Digital recording and quality.



Many years ago when the housing was used for movies, the orientation was flat, but when it is used for video, it is stood up on the side. This means I have to seal the holes holding the strap plate and find a different way to mount the handle strap plate. I love these types of puzzles. In this shot you see the old housing and new housing configuration.

Ok, what if you are not a packrat, haven't been shooting pictures for years or never had a super 8 video camera in a similar housing. There is always our old friend e-bay the worlds largest flea market and garage sale. If you click the following URL it will take you to E-bay and the Ikelite housing page or pages. Since I have made this housing I have refurbished my toy box with a couple of these housings for around 75 bucks apiece. They do not always have them but usually a couple of weeks never goes by when one is not on sale.

Ikelite Housing Auctions on Ebay

In these Ikelite housings the body of the housing is Lexan and the front plate is plexiglas. The first step was to cut a plexiglas tray and glue it to the front plate to hold the camera in place. I glued the tray in place then reinforced the joint with a small block of plexiglas. I drilled a 1/4 inch hole in the plate for the tripod mount screw. I determined the position of the hole by mounting the wide angle lens on the camera and making the lens almost touch the front. I used a playing card for a spacer. Next I glued a piece of abs plastic pipe to the inside of the front plate to act as a lens shade. I wrapped the camera in plastic wrap, screwed it tightly in place and used some epoxy paste from Lowes plumbing department to make a cradle so the camera would not wiggle. After the epoxy paste hardened I removed the plastic wrap. The piece of paper showing at the bottom of the tray is a temporary shim as the screw is too long. Rather than make the screw shorter, I eventually glued a small piece of one of those credit cards that keep arriving in my mailbox to the bottom of the tray as a shim.

Here is a front view of the mess so far. You can see the glue joint around the ABS pipe lens shade, the wide angle lens, the glue joints of the tray and support block, and the "O" ring around the front plate. Every thing nice and sturdy. Now I turned my attention to the lexan housing body. I pulled all the control glands and mounting screws out of the housing. Then I slipped the housing on to the front plate and snapped the clamps in place. It was time to decide where the control glands were going to end up. The most important is the record gland. I decided to put make it a thumb push and marked the hole position above and behind the camera record button. I removed the housing, drilled the new gland hole and made a control rod to operate the record button. I have described this process on other housings on this site and refer you to those pages.

This was going about as easy as it could be. At this time I noticed that the old camera trigger control was in a position that could be used (with a little modification) to change the zoom of the camera. I added a little piece of brass tubing to make it longer and it worked perfectly. In this picture taken from the open end of the housing you can see the control rods and the inside of the glands. Note that the record control rod has a little piece of plastic tubing to protect the camera record button and that the zoom control rod has that piece of brass tubing to make it reach. Other holes in the housing have been filled with a bolt and epoxy to make a water tight seal.

The last part of the project was to attach the handles so that the camera operated easily. After playing with the handles a bit, it was obvious that there was only one good place to put them. My first attempt was to glue them on with some epoxy. That worked for one dive trip, but when I got home, the luggage handlers had banged the pelican case holding the housing so hard that the epoxy failed. I just scraped and wire brushed the epoxy off the handles and clamp strap and called Allan, my trusty welder and jack of many trades.

We welded (watch that we, I told Allan where to weld the handle strap on and he did it...I would have destroyed everything). You can see how it all goes together in this top view with the handles on. It is slightly positive in fresh water and needs two pounds of weight in salt water to be just about neutral.

There it is, about two and a half hours of fun and a housing that cost me about 15 bucks. If I had not had the housing it would have still been under a 100 bucks. I built this housing in the Summer of 2002 and have enjoyed using it on three solid weeks of diving so far.