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BACKSCATTER #2269
October 31, 2007 - 12:00AM

Backscatter showed off quite a few products at their booth, but we'll focus on the new products. Backscatter boys Berk, Jim, Dave, and Marshall manned the booth.

First, Backscatter and Reef Photo & Video are now sharing USA distribution of Seatool products, so Backscatter had Seatool housings for Sony HDR-SR7/HDR-SR8 (AVCHD onto hard drive) and HDR-CX7/HDR-CX8 camcorders (AVCHD onto MemoryStick media). Also on display was a Seatool prototype housing for the Nikon D200 digital SLR.

John Zeiss from 4th Generation Designs was also at the booth showing off his Stix line of buoyancy arms and port floats. John showed me Stix arms with various float sizes. New are foam floats for ULCS arms, a custom port float for the Subal 105 port, and a universal port float with 10 adjustable segments. The universal port float provides 20 ounces of lift. John also showed a fiberglass critter poker (heh). Julie used this poker on our last trip to Indonesia, and she reported anecdotally that fish had less of a response to it than to metal pokers, perhaps because the new poker is non-conductive.

Fisheye accessory lenses were also on display, attached to a Seatool video rig. Fisheye has 160° and 100° wide-angle lenses, which are reported to be quite good.

Topdawg video houses now have an optional widescreen monitor back.

There is also a new mini-compact Hartenberger dive light with a lithium battery. It features the newer "digital" back design, which features digital battery level readout and a counter for the number of charges on a battery.

Backscatter's popular Macromate line of macro diopters for still and video camera housings have all been converted to flip-up models.