Hi all UW photographers out there,
I want to buy a good compact, suitable housing and strobe/LED. To give you an idea about my UW photography experience: In the analog era I used to dive with a Minolta Alpha 8000i with (usually) a 100mm Macro lens in a Hugyfot housing, Subtronic 250Ws strobe w/built-in pilot lamp, plus a Nikonos V with 28 or 15mm lens mounted on top of the Hugyfot housing.
With this setup I could shoot macro and wideangle on the same dive, which was really nice. Disadvantage of this setup was its bulk and weight. Particularly the huge and heavy Subtronic strobe was really difficult to handle when I had to fight currents, as I encountered them near Alor or some spots in the Andaman islands.
So for the future I am looking for something much smaller and lighter, but with a similar level of versatility. Instead of one big and heavy strobes, I want to use 2 really small and lightweight ones.
I have pretty much narrowed down my search to a Sony RX100 II*, but I am not sure what housing I should buy as there are so many.
It should be
- compact and lightweight
- good for a diving depth of at least 60 meters, which I guess rules out the cheaper plastic housings
- give me good control over the camera's settings
- allow fiber optic connection of 2 UW strobes with TTL control
- allow mounting of 2 strobe arms
- allow mounting of wet lenses.
I remember on a trip to Ambon I saw a guy with a housing who had 2 wet lenses mounted to the left and right of his port, one wide angle converter and one close-up lens. He could flip them in and out very quickly. This looked very useful to me.
Do any of you out there know if any of the housings for the RX100 II offers such a mount option?
* Or would you recommend another good compact? I chose the RX 100 II over the newer RX100 models because of its longer lens, 100 instead of the 70mm max offered by the newer versions.
