The annual London International Dive Show was held over the weekend of 31 March and 1 April at London’s ExCel exhibition center. Underwater image making was strongly represented, with the Photozone hosting a series of talks and lectures throughout both days, with manufacturers and retailers showing off their products to the public. Wetpixel’s Associate Editor Alex Mustard presented a talk offering advice about how to win photographic contests as one of the keynote speakers for the event, and manufacturers representatives attended from all over Europe, Asia and North America.

Wetpixel’s Adam Hanlon attended the first day of the show. Alex’s talk was began at 11.15 and was well attended by over 150 people in one of the large lecture theaters at the venue.

This was followed by an informal question and answer session, during which Alex fielded questions from the audience.

Back on the show floor, we wandered onto the Cameras Underwater stand, where Jenny Rosenfeld kindly took some time from a very hectic stand to chat to us.

For those of you who are not UK based, Cameras Underwater represents several big imaging brands, including Ikelite, Gates, Amphibico and Aquatica. The latter drew Jean Bruneau, familiar to those on the forum as Viz’art, all the way from Canada to the show.

Aquatica were showing an 800 lumen focusing light. Small, compact and constructed from aluminum with a rubberized coating, it has 4 power levels, and will retail at about £400.

Also in its final product form was the Aquatica A-5n housing for the Sony Nex-5n EVIL camera. The model that was on display will be winging it’s way northwards for the Wetpixel NEX-5n housing review next week, but suffice to say that it seems very compact and feature rich.

Also featured was the Recsea NEX-5n housing (which we also hope to review) as well as prototype Subal housings for the NEX-5n (also hopefully to be featured in the review) and Panasonic GF3 EVIL cameras.

For compact users, Jenny showed us the Epoque DCL-30 28mm wide angle wet conversion lens. Uniquely, this has threads to fit both 67 and 46mm threaded housings.

Also on display was an array of products from accessory manufacturer XIT404 and torches from Keldan including the LUNA 4V.

I then moved over to the Hugyfot/Green Force stand that had Pascal Eekhoudt and Hugyfot UK’s Andy Fenn in attendance.

They were displaying a new 5” dome for fisheye lenses. This will retail at €950 and is available now.

Pascal also had the Green Force Squid 1850 video light head. This has an 1850 lumen output with a color temperature of 4100°K and a CRI of at least 80.

The head is compatible with a variety of Green Force battery packs, the one pictured below with the Go Pro HERO is the Hybrid 8, and will give a burn time of 1 hour.

Inevitably, talk turned to discussion about the new Nikon and Canon SLR cameras. Hugyfot plans to have a D800 housing available in May and Pascal said that they had had many enquiries for this. It will be followed by housings for the D4 and 5D Mark III over the summer. Hugyfot had renderings of their new housings on the stand.

The Underwater Visions stand was manned by Alex Tattersall and Kaz Okada from Fisheye.

The latter have taken on the distribution of Watershot products in some markets, and Kaz showed me how they had modified one of the company’s battery packs by adding balls to make an arm. These can be connected in series, so two arm segments become one battery pack and so forth.

In addition, Underwater Visions were displaying other Fisheye products, including their S100 housing and the revised Aquavolt 3500, a 3500 lumen video light incorporating a small LCD display that shows output intensity, inner temperature or selected mode.

Underwater Visions is the UK distributer for Nauticam, and had a wide range of products from the manufacturer on display. Amongst these was the NA-DP4 housing for the SmallHD monitor, and the NA-D7000V housings that has recently received a Red Dot award for design. Nauticam has released an upgradeable LCD display window for their NEX-7 housing that allows the addition of either straight or 45° viewfinders to view the NEX-7’s electronic view finder.

Also in evidence was Nauticam’s new housing for the Panasonic GX-1 EVIL camera.

It is understood that Nauticam plan to support the Nikon D4, D800 and Canon 5D Mark III. It is expected that they will have all three housings towards the end of April.

Maria Munn had a stand for her company Ocean Visions to promote sales of her book, video and courses.

Underwater cameraman Jeff Goodman has released a new book entitled “A guide to Underwater Wildllfe Video and Editing”

Over on the H20 Photo tools stand, Patima has produced a 200m housing for the GoPro HERO2. It allows access to all the POV cam’s controls and sells for €299.

H20 tools have produced a red filter that can be added to it that will retail for €55, and still gives full access to the controls.

Patima has also produced a housing for the iPhone 4/4S.

Again rated to 200m, it gives access to camera functions via 4 push buttons.

And similarly, there had a prototype of a red filter for it, however they may add a screw thread to this which would allow for the addition of wet wide-angle lenses. The housing will retail at €299.

H20 Photo Tools have a pair of carbon fiber buoyancy arms and a clamp that have 400g positive buoyancy. The two arms are 29cm and 25cm long, and the clamp is a long version which allows the arms to fold back fully towards themselves.

The company, as always, has a range of accessory products that enhance existing products. They have produced an adaptor that can be used to convert a Light and Motion SOLA light to a YS mount. It is available now, costs €29 and is supplied complete with the mounting bolt.

Lstly, H20 Photo Tools have produced a +5 and +8 wet diopter lens, the former with a 67mm thread, and the latter with a 48mm thread respectively. In addition, they company has produced a range of 67mm threaded adaptors for compact camera housings, including the Canon G1X, S100 and Panasonic TZ10.

We called on the Ocean Optics/Inon UK stand and discussed with Mark Koekemoer about whether Inon has any new product releases. At present, there are no new products to report.

The Tank Bangers were generating support for their next film.

Ocean Leisure Cameras had a very busy stand, complete with Stephen Mawle of Light and Motion UK and Dan Baldocchi of Underexposures.

Paul “Duxie” Duxfield and Dave Glanfield were so busy that we didn’t manage to get much time to chat.

Inevitably, the talk of the imaging community is the new camera releases. The consensus seems to be that the D800 is the most significant new camera commercially, if for no other reason than it is the first Nikon offering that competed directly with the Canon 5D Mark II. The 5D Mark III, although it is seems a significant improvement over its predecessor, ultimately replaces a camera that most of its owners are still largely happy with and hence are in less of a rush to upgrade.

The D4 represents a pinnacle model that will produce amazing images, but is unlikely to attract a large following for underwater use.

The British Society of Underwater Photographers (BSoUP) had a stand at the show, with copies of its new photo book on display, as well as prints from competitions that it has run over the last year.

Travel is big business at the show so it was not surprising to find folks from resorts passing out informations about their organizations.

Sea Shepherd were on hand.

The London International Dive Show is a busy show, perhaps not as big as some of the others, but nevertheless a gathering point for underwater image makers from all over Europe. I look forward to LIDS 2013!