Aqua-Foto Team

The happy trio of Aqua-Foto Team, aka the carbon fiber gurus, were at ADEX again. Bodo Sutterer of BS Kinetics showed off his new, currently one-of-a-kind housing for the Leica S, custom made for one of his clients. The 37mp medium format sensor makes existing dome port sizes inadequate for proper corners, so Bodo will be designing and building a large dome port of about 260mm made of optical glass. Bodo will build the housing as ordered and will be pricing it at around €10000.

Aqua-Foto’s H2O Tool’s Herbert Schmitz and Stefan Horvath were on hand to show of their wares, including my favorite traveling buoyancy strobe arms made of carbon fiber, which they managed to make even lighter which increases buoyancy while making it lighter for travel! I bought a few more!

They also had the dial extensions for the Inon Z240 strobe, a must have for those who have fat fingers or wear thick gloves to adjust settings. The dials protrube out another 1.5cm which is just enough to turn and a big yellow dot indicates the settings, so it has to be aligned precisely with the dial’s indicator.

Another useful product is the 2nd O-ring for the battery cover of the Z240. After seeing people flood the battery compartments of the Z240 because of dirty o-rings etc, the 2nd o-ring idea makes for a great product. It fits right into the battery cap and Herbert claims it goes down to 60m. One photographer said there’s concern about the off-gassing of the batteries and whether it affected that. Seeing how it merely seals off the thread area, I can’t see how that miniscule thread space could affect gas pressure that much. Herbert says there is no effect either.

Finally, there was the red filter for the Go-Pro 3 housing on sale. It has a thread tie so it can be popped off when not needed without losing the filter.

Fun-In Underwater Photo

The Fun-In crew were at ADEX as usual. New for them was the hot off the extrusion mold G15 housing for the Canon G15 camera. The housing has the full access to controls, a hotshoe for strobe accessories and also optical connectors for strobes.

The Magnetic Lens Adapter is just that, a magnetic mount so one can pull off any accessory without the unscrewing action of typical 67mm mounts. Just tug hard and off the accessory goes. Unfortunately for those with multiple accessories, they are not selling the accessory mount side only. But still at $40, it’s relatively cheap.

One of Fun-In’s FIT line newest light is the 2400UV Pro series, which includes a 10W UV and 6W Purple light. The 10W UV light isn’t going to be powerful enough to light much but for macro work in the dark, it should work well enough. Of course, one will need the UV filters for the camera lens as well.

Seacam

Seacam’s latest housing the 5D Mark III was at the show, but it was a dealer’s one. Harald brought the latest port, a new smaller flat port for crop sensor 60mm lenses. The idea for the smaller flat port area is so that more accessories can be mounted. Harald says he has plans for a 67mm accessory mount adapter for the port.

Harald also showed me a sneak peak of the new Seacam Magazine for all Seacam owners only. This magazine features pictures shot by Seacam housings only and has some spectacular images by some famous photographers. The exclusivity of this magazine is very similar to the Blank Ink magazine from American Express.

Subal

Rolf Sempert and Harald Karl of Subal were at ADEX to show a few new housings. For the DSLR shooter, there was the the CD5M3 for the Canon 5D Mark III. The P&S user had the SGX1 for the Panasonic GX1 camera. For those ‘tweeners, the NEX series for the Sony NEX-6 was on hand.

Rolf also mentioned about how the extension ring port locks are possible for any port more than 40mm long. They have to be ordered with a port lock. Harald and Rolf, at my behest, have decided to build a housing for a yet to be released camera. Stay tuned!

Other happenings at ADEX

First of all, I must apologize to readers for not covering the show fully. There’s such a lot to cover and only one person to do it.

Moderator Shawn Heinrichs is a regular speaker at ADEX and was on hand to talk about conservation and also photography. He was also on the panel for a debate on conservation and marine issues.

As usual, on the first night of ADEX, ScubaCam and Wetpixel hosts a party. You can see the pics here.

This was a very happy ADEX and we did have an epic after party hosted by ScubaPix’s Peter Mooney, Scubazoo’s Simon Christopher, DivePhotoguide’s Matt Weiss and myself at Le Noir. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun we forgot to take many photos!

Overall, ADEX proved to be a great venue for the conservation efforts like Shark Savers and Manta Trust, who had a strong presence at the show.

For the consumer shooter, new video lights hitting the market promises to make it more exciting. Ultimately, it was definitely a oogle-fest for the professional underwater production crews, with a strong showing of new cinema camera housings. Plus the promise of 2 manufacturers to produce housings for the Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera and Cinema Camera 4k, it’ll be exciting times this year heading into DEMA. Let’s just hope the manufacturers get less creative with the names and not Nero (Nera?) and Noir! :)