Since you want electronic controls your only options are Sony camcorders as they're the only mfr. currently providing the required LANC control port.
My personal recommendation is buy an HDV camcorder, either tape or HDD based if you can afford to do so.
If not, the only tape option is the Sony HC96 - the only model in their SD line that has LANC. Unless you buy an older model new/used on eBay. I don't recall the SD HDD LANC-equipped models but they'e summarized in the link I posted in the next paragraph.
Editing HDV will likely require in an upgrade to your computer also to handle HDV capture and editing unless it's a fairly new machine. You can delay that by downconverting and editing the footage in SD, most Sony HDV camcorders do this. Just keep your HDV tapes/footage until you can edit it.
I just summarized available Sony options in a thread on Scubatoys forum so rather than re-type it all here, here's a
link to the post.
In addition to Robin's suggestions, also look at
TopDawg - a cost reduced version of the Light & Motion housing selling at the same or slightly less than O/I.
Other more expensive electronic options are
Light and Motion,
SeaTool or
Amphibico.
One other point to consider is that if you want manual white balance control only some housings/camcorder combinations will support it. O&I does it mechanically with a pushrod in their better, camera specific housings, USVH and TopDawg only for older non-HDV models and I believe SeaTool supports it in most of their line. L&M does with their Bluefin and their older Stingray model but not for HDV models with their Sport III model. Amphibico does not across their current EVO line.
edit: except for the A1U housing mentioned in the next post
Reef Photo/Video in Ft. Lauderdale is probably your closest dealer for some of these lines. I bought from and recommend Mike Luzansky at
H2OPhotopros also.
