A while ago I promised to write up a short review on the Hugyfot D70(s) housing. Due to various other commitments and even some issues with the housing itself, it has taken it's time. However, here's the first part on the housing itself. I will write on usage more when I get some more divetime on the kit.
The housing, as expected by Hugyfot/Greenforce is very well made by machining out of a solid aluminium block. The finish is satin dark grey, not painted but I suppose anodised. It feels very nice in the hand, but seems to scratch reasonably easily.
All the buttons are in the right places and I can really say that this piece of kit really scores quite high on ergonomics. The shutter and both rear and front control wheels are where you'd expect them to be and I especially like the AF-AE lock lever to the top left of the housing. This falls just right under my finger when holding the housing with the Hugy trademark neoprene strap. When using a second handle to the right, it does not work so well...
My only gripes about the handling are the missing Flash comp. button (Yeah, I know, soot manual, blaa blaa blaa...) and the fact that the front control wheel requires almost a full turn to shift the exp. time by one stop (I use 1/3 stop increments and the speed to the front for consistency with my topside kit). The rear wheel is perfect as is the focus control, of which more later.
Inside, the first thing that caught my eye was that the inside of this housing is bare metal, when the old Hugy housings had a soft fabric. No biggie, that. The closure of the housing is through two bolts that fall nicely into place when aligning the pieces. The main o-ring is very secure, although the one that came with mine from the factory felt just slightly too long.
The leak detector battery as well as the Heinrichs-Weikamp iTTL chip are located to the left of the front part and still I can just about fit the USB cable to the camera without removing the camera from the tray. Fitting the camera into the tray is not a one-handed operation, but requires quite accurate alignment. The orginal fingerwheel to fasten the camera is a joke.
Now, When I first got the housing, I tried it with my trusty Tamron SP 90mm macro lens using my old focus gear. This was a very tight fit and practically unusable. After some emails exchanged with the factory they concluded that the measurements in the gears probably had changed when Greenforce took over the manufacture. Hugy promptly sent me a new style focus ring, but this was even worse. After a couple of nights of tweaking I finally concluded that the camera tray was misaligned inside the housing. After some shimming, the camera now sits straight in the middle and all the focus gears align as expected. Minor stuff, but very time consuming.
After a couple of dives on the housing I can say that underwater it performs very nicely. The housing itself is slightly negative with camera and a small dome, so some form of bouancy addition may be necessary with heavy strobes and arms. I dive almost exclusively with thick drygloves and even with these on, all the controls are totally usable.
Sizewise, this is indeed a small housing. The comparison with Hugyfot Atlan 81 for Nikon F80 shows that it is not much larger. I'll try to shoot comparisons with other housings some time soon.
All in all, after the initial gripes I'm happy. I now have loads of ports and lenses to use with my D70s and I look forward to getting to some serious action in the first weeks of October in the West of Sweden. Below is one image from m/s Coolaroo wreck here in Helsinki shot with this setup (Nikon D70s, 15mm Sigma FE, f2.8, 1/8 sec, ISO1600).
timo
