KenByrne

Had several Ikelite housings and never had a problem with fogging. Maybe I'm just lucky but I've dived in the UK in rainy weather, Egypt where there is always air conditioning to contend with and Indonesia with high humidity. Housings work fine but the controls are not as ergonomic as some of the aluminium housings. The viewfinder is not great as you can't see the corners of the image wihout looking around the viewfinder, don't know if alu housing are any better. There are alternative viewfinders available but they're not cheap http://www.scubacam.nl/catalog/en/viewfinders-c-215_117.html

You could try e-mailing ikelite@ikelite.com they're usually pretty good at responding.

I forgot to metion it does depend on the lens you're using it with. I shot with a 90mm macro. I tried it on a 50mm macro and I didn't get any benefit. With the 50mm the subject was touching the lens and I was getting less magnification than with the lens alone. Only tested above water but I don't think it would be any better underwater.

I bought one of these http://reefnet.ca/products/subsee/ and it gives great results. However the depth of field is very shallow and the area you're photographing so finding your subject and getting it in focus is very difficult and I'm still learning. Sample image

FAT16 supports a maximum size of 2GB anything larger has to use FAT32 so all SDHC cards and the larger CF cards use FAT32. I always format the cards in camera to be safe but really as long as you use the right format for the card size you should be OK.

Depends on the conditions where you plan to use it. I have a 50mm and a 90mm macro lens with my D80. Diving in the UK I frequently use the 50mm, in low vis it lets you get closer and helps inprove clarity and contrast and reduce back scatter. In better vis in the UK or overseas I use the 90mm for the greater working distance and get shots of creatures too timid to let me get close enough to shoot with the 50. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

I have a Tamron 90mm macro and use it on my D80 without any problems. The version I have doesn't have a motor in it.

Quite happy to pay that if it's used to help the people in the area or to help protect the environment.

I have a Subsea lens and use it with a 90mm macro on a Nikon D80 it focuses very close to the port. I tried it on a 50mm macro and I can't get 1:1 with it place I actually get closer without it. Not sure if it would work very well with a 70mm macro lens.

I've never noticed a gap between the locks and the port although I've never looked, so will next time I'm in the water. The o-ring does compress under pressure. I once had the wrong port for a lens and while the lens was clear of the port at the surface if made contact with the port at depth. Taken a few 50-50 shots and never had a problem. I think if the locks where any tighter on the port at the surface it would be very difficult getting the port on and off.

I'm on my third Ike housing and no problems. No problems with sync cords either. I've heard of eople having problems with the dual strobe cord but so far mine has been OK although it's a bit of a pain to route it. I believe Ikelite have made some improvements to the dual cord since I bought mine which should make it a little more robust but won't help with the routing.

What you're doing sounds right. It seems like the rubber strips you're using are too fat. I guess that the grip on the zoom gear doesn't need to be quite as tight as you've got it. I use Ikelite kit with a variety of lenses and when I put the rubber strips on to grip the lens it still fills inside the gear sleeve.

Try downloading Google's Picasa it's free, handles RAW files and is simple to use.

I've seen a couple of posts complaining about Ikelite service so felt I had to post about my experience. I recently flooded a 2 year old DS51 strobe. Unfortunately I didn't realise it was flooded until I was preparing my kit for a weeks trip. When I opened the battery compartment one of the springs used as battery contacts fell out. My initial thought was that this would limit my options on my trip. However when I tried replacing the spring with a piece of wadded up kitchen foil the strobe worked. When a second spring fell out during the trip another piece of kitchen foil solved that as well. So firstly I was impressed that the equipment was robust enough to continue working despite some harsh treatment. When I got home I contacted Ikelite and they told me to send it in and they'd provide a quote for repair. I was initially shocked when I got an e-mail to say the strobe was on it's way back to me as I was about to contact them to see what was taking so long about sending the quote and wasn't happy about them repairing the strobe without my go ahead. However I was very pleased when I got the strobe back better than new and at no charge. They repaired the flood damage and I now have the new click stop switch which I prefer to the original and have replaced the tube which I didn't even know was faulty. All this on a flooded two year old strobe.

The the HSL/Grayscale tab in the RAW convertor and the B&W tool in the adjustment menu of CS3 do a great job of convering colour to black and white. The B&W tool allows adjustment of the red, green, blue, cyan, yellow & magenta channels to tune the conversion. The RAW converor also allows tuning by colour channels but uses a more unusual set of colours such as orange and aqua. With my limited experience I'd say the B&W tool is slightly better than the RAW convertor. Either way they both remove the need to use the hue saturation layers method of conversion popular in earlier versions of Photoshop.