New a6xxx housing from Meikon

[Barmaglot]

Well... Seafrogs/Meikon is a stand up company and reciprocating my patronage, loyalty & hashtagging of their product over the years. They are sending me a back in time for my trip. Not just any back... but the first of the new ones that has been to the Philippines and back for real world testing. Yes it's "used" but I'll take it.

Nice!

I just picked up a used 16-50mm, cost me about $125, well below half of what a new one costs around here - thank goodness for small favors. It's silver-colored, but whatever, I'll only use it in the housing anyway. 10-18mm is kind of an expensive dead weight for now, but unless I drown this trip, or my plane crashes, or whatever, I will get the new housing eventually, so it's not a total waste. The liveaboard operator contacted me today saying that they got me a standby berth on Similan Explorer; I've got a week now to make up my mind whether to switch there or look for alternatives, and in the meanwhile they might get enough bookings to go out and obviate the problem.

 

[Barmaglot]

Housing is back in stock now - too bad I'm already in Thailand, heading to Koh Tao today... oh well.
Also, according to this, 16-50mm port with 67mm threading and compact dome port for fisheye lenses are coming mid-May, while the vacuum system "will be available as soon as it comes out", heh.

 

[CanadaDan]

Yeah that line cracked me up!

Got the tested replacement back two days ago, headed to the airport in an hour for my Exuma liveaboard.

 

[Barmaglot]

So, how did the new housing do in Exuma?

 

[CanadaDan]

Just got back an hour ago. Awesome rig. Used my SEL30M35 for the most part. Here are a few unedited samples check my Instagram feed @danaysan for more.

 

[Barmaglot]

Niiice... I spent the last week in Koh Tao, but the visibility was kind of awful for the most part, and I don't have a diopter to put in front of my 16-50mm for shooting the macro stuff. Heading to the Similans on Wednesday, hopefully the water will be clearer.

 

[njdiverjoe]

@CanadaDan , earlier you were playing with float arms and such, would you mind sharing what worked well for your trip?

 

[CanadaDan]

@CanadaDan , earlier you were playing with float arms and such, would you mind sharing what worked well for your trip?

I used the two 410gr carbon fibre floats up top and 1.25lbs of lead on the bottom of the tray to shift the pivot point lower. WIth the YSD2 strobe and 2 UW Kinetics at the ends of the arms it didn't quite work in all arm positions. It was overall slightly positive (which I prefer) and the twist torque was manageable but definitely wanted to float dome up. I didn't mess around with it on the boat, will play more with the weights and floats during shore dives and pool sessions over the coming months.

 

[njdiverjoe]

Thanks @CanadaDan that helps a lot! I'm slowly putting together a photo rig, currently have A6300, YSD1 strobe and 1 BigBlue video light. Planning to order arms + housing in the next couple months.

 

[Barmaglot]

Back from my Similans liveaboard, I'm actually having second thoughts about this housing. There was another diver on the boat using a Nikon D90 in an Ikelite housing, with 90mm and 15mm lenses. Besides that thing being gigantic, we had three (!) dives with whale sharks - and on all three, she had the 90mm mounted, so shooting from halfway back to Khao Lak, she was able to get some pretty good detail on the remoras riding the big guy. Conversely, when she had the 15mm on, what did she find? An ornate ghost pipefish, of course. I'm afraid that if I upgrade to this new housing, with dome and macro ports, and get the SEL90M28G to go with the SEL1018 I already have, I will end up in the same boat - heck, diving closer to home, in Eilat, the macro lens will likely be more useful than the ultrawide + dome. On the other hand, if I keep my current housing and the kit lens, I can invest in a diopter (say, Kraken KRL-03) and an ST-100 strobe or two, and have a setup that can cover anything from a nudibranch to a whale shark on the same dive - with magnetic couplers, switching wet lenses is trivial.