This was my first test with Ewa Marine VFS7 underwater housing for Sony NEX-FS700 with Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. At first I wanted to use 16mm Sony’s E-Mount pancake and go all AUTO (focus, exposure) but it was too small for the housing. As I was still struggling with idea to submerge my precious camera into water this was only to familiarise myself with the problems when shooting under water and to get used to swimming with the camera.
The guys said that the water wasn’t to clear that day and I had no additional lighting besides pool lights. I was also shooting at 100 fps (1/200s shutter at F/2.8) to cope with constant moving of the water so I had to raise the ISO to 1600 and than used denoise filter in post.
Good first try which will I hope will become even better.
Camera in the housing in the dry studio.
I had a few good tips for the shoot from @VisionWrangler from twitter and one was always test the housing at home and at the location without the camera before every shoot. So I dipped it into a baby bathtub.
Me during the shoot. It is quite difficult to swim, hold the camera and shoot yourself all at the same time.
Both camera and me survived the first dive.
Thanks to underwater hockey team DPA pH. Next time I will bring lights and a friend in a bikini.
Update: I had a question from the reader. Here is my answer.
Q: This is Cheong from Hong Kong. I’ve read your blog about the FS700 with Ewa-Marine underwater housing. It is really nice and great to see the gear able to swim. For the reason I got a high speed shooting which need it inside water. I would like to know is it able to adapted 77mm lens like Canon 17-40 f4? Because I saw it come with 67mm filter thread adapter only. Any other parts inside?
A: I wouldn’t know if your lens would fit the VFS7 underwater housing but I was using it with Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED for my video.The lens is quite big. 77mm filter size (I was using it without the supplied filter thread adapters), and its dimensions are 85.5 x 110.5mm (Diameter x Length). When zoomed out to 17mm it even expands a bit more. I taped the zoom so that it wouldn’t slip and everything was o.k.