Digital Camera Housing

I have had a diminishing number of requests for information on my underwater camera systems. Until the late 90's I used the conventional film systems but then I discovered digital. My first digital housing was for the Sony Mavica digital camera that saved images on floppy disks. It was great. In 2000 I put together a housing for my new Sony Cybershot S70 3.3 megapixil camera. I had already taken the camera on an extended cruise to Western Europe in the summer.

In Russia and fell in love with the camera because I took almost 600 images at 640 x 480 resolution in the summer palace on a 64 meg stick. I had been using a Mavica floppy disk camera and was already impressed with the Sony system. I eagerly awaited the introduction of a 128 meg stick. With that stick, I can shoot about 80 shots at a resolution of 2000 along the long axis. If I am willing to drop resolution, many more are possible. Because I can shoot so many images, I can load the camera in an air conditioned room and not worry about condensation in the camera when diving.

Another joy is having the luxury of up loading the images quickly into my laptop and seeing my daily results as soon as I get to the room. At dinner I can share the pictures (bore) with those who dive with me. The trick to keeping their attention is to take a number of pictures of the other divers. I figured that the camera paid for itself on the summer cruise by eliminating film and processing costs. I can produce a CD of the pictures for less than a dollar.

Shooting at 2000 pixils is important as it allows me to take a wider shot and crop a photograph out of a picture. You can see the difference in this cropped photo from the head shot on this page. There is plenty of opportunity for personal expression. If the final crop resolution is at least 1200 pixils, a great 8x10 print can be made using my hp photosmart 1215 on photo paper. It is virtually indistinguishable from a 35mm print. If I am lucky enough to use the whole image, the print is often superior to a 35mm print. If I print using the photosmart print engine, a 640 x 480 resolution image is acceptable in 8 x 10 if it is hanging on the wall and not 18 inches in front of your face.

The housing was a unused Ikelite box I had in my "toy box". Ikelite no longer will sell to individuals so I bought the control glands through my local dive shop.

On another page, I will show you how to adapt an Ultratorr or other fitting if you have problems getting a gland.

I chose to mount the camera tray to the front of the housing. the tray was just a small rectangle of plexiglass. I used thickened plexiglass cement.I drilled the tripod screw hole in the tray then wrapped the camera in plastic wrap and mounted the camera. To make the camera stay in one place, I used epoxy paste and pressed it up against the camera and tray. The plastic wrap prevented sticking to the camera. After the epoxy hardened, I removed the camera and painted the tray and epoxy black. Now the camera would have a stable position in the housing.

The cybershot camera only needs two controls for operation. One control is to turn the camera on. The other control is for the shutter. Everything else is automatic.

I assembled the housing and determined the position of the hole for the on off control. I cut off a piece of 1/4 inch stainless steel rod and polished it in my lathe....a drill press will do. I molded an epoxy foot to turn and push in the recessed on off switch of the camera. Then I lubricated and tightened up the gland. For additional protection I used epoxy paste to make an additional seal around the gland (not the rod) inside and outside of the housing.

Next I drilled and installed the shutter release. There were three options. A plunge type release. Unfortunately water pressure can make the camera shutter activate at depth so I never use that option. That leaves two types of levers. The first is a pull trigger going down the side of the camera that extends a lever forward from the gland pressing in the shutter. This is great for video systems. For still cameras I always try to use a down press at the back of the camera that activates the shutter which is almost always on top of a camera. After installation, I again protected the camera from leaking by using more epoxy paste for sealant.

Next I added a eye bolt to attach the tether. One more hole drilled, tapped, and a lot more epoxy. A little blue paint finished this part of the project. The paint is not just for show, it actually acts as an additional sealant. Hans Hass used lots of paint to seal small holes in his camera housings in the early days. The camera is slightly buoyant and floats above me when I dive. I could just grab the tether, pull the camera down and shoot away with wild abandon knowing that I would be able to throw away those "non keepers" we always take.

I dropped the camera into the pressure pot and tested it to 240 feet without a leak. I was ready. In Honduras in January of 2001, I had some trouble with leaks--it was due to a leaky gland but got some great pictures. To protect the camera during that trip, I mostly shot with my Mavica in its bulky housing. When I returned to the states, I fixed the gland and everything was perfect. I took all of the submarine races shots with the cybershot in the summer of 2001 and shot with it at Walkers Key. I molded a epoxy bandaid on the housing to commemorate the leak and painted it flesh color to constantly remind myself of the trials and tribulations of underwater photography. It is not a case of if a camera will leak, it is when.

In the fall of 2001 I decided to add a wide angle adaptor to the camera. All serious underwater photographers understand the advantages of taking pictures through wide angle lenses. You can get close in turbid water and still get a shot of a full sized diver. The depth of focus or field is expanded and the wide angle lens compensates for the narrowing of field by the water air interface. It is almost a rule...the wider the better. I purchased a wide angle adaptor on ebay. It extended the length of the lens past the front of the housing. Additional modifications to the housing were going to be necessary, but it was going to be worth it.

In this image you can see the wide advantage using this lens. Since most objects are not straight lines underwater, the fisheye effect is not noticeable. If there is a straight line, keep it in the center of the image.

I now was faced with a problem. To use the camera in the housing I had drilled a hole in the front plate and glued on a flat plate. The thickness of the housing flat plate was perfect to extend the space. Now I had a long lens sticking out. Out came the hole saws. I first made a series of round disks our (don't you love spell checkers) out of 1/2 inch plexiglass with the larger hole saw. Then I used a smaller hole saw to drill them out making a series of flat donuts of plexiglass. I sandwiched two of them on the front of the housing. It was still about a 1/16 inch too short. What the hell, I grabbed a plexiglass dome and glued it on. Everything fitted perfectly. It looked really cool but in camera housings it is better to take cool pictures than to look cool.

This was Wednesday prior to my Friday travel to Roatan on the 2002 winter trip. I headed to the pool to try it out. My buddy John and I were going to work on bailout procedures for my rebreather and this was a great opportunity for testing the camera at the same time. The rebreather tests worked great but the camera tests failed miserably. Focus was limited to blurry 5 feet away or more.

That afternoon, I cut the dome part off with a dremmel and sanded the flat part of the dome smooth. It was 1/8 inch thick...just enough to hold the longer lens. I glued a flat plate on top of the sandwich to finish the housing and tried it out in the aquarium in the front office. My fish hate to see me coming with weird objects toward the tank. The camera seemed to work well. I was out of time anyway. My worst case scenario was just to take digital video with my video camera and do frame grabs.

Thursday morning, I put a 3 inch ABS pipe cap on for a lens cover and packed it up for the next days trip. It worked perfectly and far beyond my expectations. While I had expected the wide angle to give me a clarity advantage, I had not expected to be able to take closeups or "macro" shots with the same lens and no adjustments. It worked far better than I had imagined. The following two pictures were taken with the same camera, lens, and two controls.






Tools used, drill press, two hole saws, and a belt sander.

Pretty good huh. Grandpa would often say, "Even a blind hog finds an occasional acorn." Pretty folksy for a guy with a PhD in Math from UNC in 1906....

Wonder how all those brains got lost in the genetic shuffle.

As you can see from the pictures taken in Winter of 2002 in Roatan the camera worked quite well. I also used it in La Jolla and Roatan in the summer of 2002. In October I tested the housing in my pressure pot to 140 feet prior to an offshore trip on the North Carolina coast..

Happy pixilating

Tom