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Waterproofing my A-Cam SP16


Olle Knutson

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Soo I want to jump in the water with my A-Cam and would love some tips on how to waterproof it before I do it. Im thinking some sort of plastic bag would work but i dont want to put too much poop in front of the lens and distort the image too much since I want the scene to start on the jetty. Ive attached a photo of the camera, not my photo but it shows the size of it!

 

B_NAB08_A_Cam_2.jpg

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you want to jump into water but not going much under the surface? so a splash bag could do and no need for an actual dive housing? something meant for prosume video cameras could work with the a-cam I believe if the size is somewhat similar. 

you could also let someone to custom manufacture a dive housing for your camera if you'll gonna use it extensively in water so that this kind of better solution would be practical. For example a thick glued-and-bolted-together polycarbonate custom housing which uses Ikelite lens ports.  The deeper you want to get the more challenging it will get to keep the water out (one bar of water pressure added for every 10m addition in water depth) but should be reasonably easy to manufacture one for surface shots where you'll be no more than about one or two meters underwater

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the tricky things with underwater stuff is how you waterproof the camera controls (how to do push button controls and levers that can keep the water pressure out but are still easy to use from the high pressure side) and how you shoot through the watertight housing without the additional plastic or glass surfaces and the air/water boundary distorting the image too much. Nikonos-style wet lenses are the best solution but expensive and very rare. Dome ports are one of the most useful compromises for most uses and I think it should be relatively easy to do a housing which uses for example the DL lens ports https://www.ikelite.com/collections/dl-lens-ports

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Thanks Aapo,

 

The idea is not to dive with the camera but the jump from the jetty might land me  like two meters under the surface. To be sure 2m is probably a good rule. And some sort of plastic bag was my idea as well. Its also my camera, if I break it its okay.. not that i want to but im willing to take a shot at making something myself ?

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I believe you will ruin your camera if you have nothing less than a proper underwater housing. The salt alone, will eventually corrode everything in the camera, continuing well after your shoot. And, you most likely will not even get a clear image of your subject without an optically clear port in front of your lens. Not worth the risk. 

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there is also a great change of getting something knocked off when the camera hits the water at great force when jumping in. The custom underwater housing option would probably be the best bet especially if you want to get a clear image above the surface too.

there is also the weighting issue. you need to balance the housing to be somewhat neutral in water which means you will need additional weights in it with that lightweight a camera. that means the camera setup is NOT lightweight on land and operating it may be more challenging than one would think at first. I don't know the exact dimensions but I suspect the custom housing would weight something between 5 and 10kg with that camera inside because it has considerable external volume even when the camera by itself weights close to  nothing. 

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here is a DIY housing project I am working on. Something similar style could work for your application if you can get someone to built it for you. This is just a prototype and I will change the design on next one but you will get the idea. This is made out of 10mm Lexan sheet (because I got leftover pieces of it for cheap) and the plastic dome is purchased from eBay. More high quality dome would be ideal for you though.

I recommend trying to find the plastic material of at least 2cm thick if you want to do a housing this way... otherwise it is challenging to seal it properly because not having enough room for it. This is just a first prototype after all and I will just do basic tests with it so it will do for couple of weeks of use I hope ?

 

48592317376_ac31ba2212_c.jpg

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