Housings too fancy?

[klausi]

I had a problem with the electrical strobe connections in my camera housing and I had a friend massively simplify the electronics. Are many housings designed too fancy, with too many features, instead of focusing on stability and failure-point-reduction? I certainly think so! Please read my thoughts on the issue.

 

[Larry C]

I can't necessarily agree with you. I'm not a fan of PC boards in underwater eqpt. because when the PC board fails the mfg. often no longer supports it. I have a useless Sea & Sea YS-110 in my cabinet that "can no longer be serviced". Some people I know have actually bought spare PC boards with their housings for this reason. I do feel, however, that the vacuum system and ttl unit are good features and worthwhile to have. Having suffered two major floods, a vacuum system would have been nice as both would have been easily prevented had I known about the loose connections that caused them. Sea & Sea no longer produces the ttl system for my housing, which was sold separately and quite expensive. Their current version isn't compatible with my camera or old strobe and the old one isn't compatible with my other strobe. I feel that including a ttl system with the housing is a good idea, and I like using one for macro.

 

[klausi]

Thank you for your comment! I agree that TTL can be useful, but why is there not a separate connection to the strobes, if the board fails? And leak sensors are now available as separate units which just connect to the bulkheads. So while I like these features, they could be engineered in a manner which does not disable the whole housing if they corrode. I was really lucky to have an electronics nerd friend, otherwise it would have cost me several 100$ to get my housing back in operation.

 

[Larry C]

Agreed. Too many modern appliances are dependent on overpriced PC boards. I've had a washing machine replaced because the PC board cost more than the whole machine. My microwave had the same PC board replaced twice under warranty within it's first year. Had it been out of warranty, I'd have probably bought a new one. Custom PC boards are a blight on the universe. In the old days, my cousin (then 8 years old) would take the tubes out of my grandfather's broken TV, go down to Thrifty Drug and put them on the tester, then he'd buy a new tube to replace the bad one and the TV would be like new. Try that today. (Yes, I am that old)

 

[bvanant]

:cool2:Yeah but your Grandfather's TV was a 9 inch screen in a 15 cubic foot box and cost $4000 in today's dollars.
Custom boards (and even more, custom ASICS) are the reason that we have small electronics. I am not so depressed by custom boards, but custom connectors and custom batteries make me nuts.
Bill

 

[danclem]

Boy, I don't know. I have been shooting Nikons in Subal housings with Ikelite strobes for years, and have not had any major issues. Also not sure it is overly complicated or dependent on pricy PC cards. I have a custom remote release bulkhead, but everything else is standard.

Also, if I want to shoot TTL (which I don't), there is an Ikelite sync cord that has an external TTL switch on it. Pretty simple and bullet proof for the last decade and a half.




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