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IKELITE
November 1, 2007 - 3:21PM

Ikelite had a few new products on display in addition to their popular line of SubStrobes. Jean Brigham took me on a tour of their new dive lights, housings, ports, and more.

Ikelite's PCm LED is a compact little dive light that now uses a single super-bright LED. It uses 4 AA batteries, which will power the light for 3 hours. The PCa now lasts 5 hours, and the PC Lite, 7 hours. All of Ikelite's dive lights will be LED-based by January. Ikelite will continue to offer both halogens and LED lights.

There is now a flat port for the flared extension used with Ikelite's 8" dome port. It can accept a Woody's diopter, and various extender pieces will be available so photographers can match port lengths to specific lenses. One of the extension pieces features a focus knob, and a single port works both in manual focus and auto focus (supporting lenses that having moving focus rings even during autofocus). The image below is a prototype, so you can expect the final knob design to be a bit more refined.

Ikelite is currently shipping Canon 40D housing and Olympus E-410 and 510 housings. A D300 housing will hopefully be available in December, and they are planning on doing an Olympus E-3 housing as well.

A new iTTL adapter is now available for the Nikon D2X. It looks like like the normal adapter, but has a little "D2X" stamped on it.

The Autoflash AF35 compact camera lighting system, which was showed off in prototype form last year, ships in 2 weeks and looks to be a nice little setup. It features both Auto and manual flash modes, and also has exposure compensation via a dial at the side. The Autoflash AF35 should work with most compact cameras in various housings.

Jean also showed me a new, working prototype of a smaller, contoured housing. It is rated to 200', and the camera just drops in without any fuss (plastic guides ensure that it always falls into the same place).